Creek Critters®

A Smartphone App. An Engagement Tool.
Empowering People to Check the Health of
their Local Streams.

Creek Critters®

Nature Forward’s Creek Critters® app walks you through finding and identifying the small organisms – or critters – that live in freshwater streams and creating stream health reports based on your findings.

These macroinvertebrates can reveal a lot about the health of your region’s waters.

Through a short series of steps, you’ll learn one method for catching critters using an aquarium net. You can simply pick up submerged rocks and carefully check them for critters if you don’t have a net.

Visual keys lead you through identifying 30 commonly found critters. Identification screens include line drawings, photos and more!

Aquatic macroinvertebrates serve as indicators of stream health because they exhibit varying levels of sensitivity to pollution. As you identify critters, you’ll be building a stream health report.

Creek Critters | nature app and engagement activity

Creek Critters refers to both a nature app and an engagement activity. The free Creek Critters® app is used with groups as a tool for education, community science and outreach. You can also search for critters with family and friends.