Our core goals drive everything that we do as an organization. Though the ICSC has grown and changed over its history, these three goals, in various forms, have implicitly shaped how we approach our event planning and projects. In 2025 we set them down in writing as our "Three Pillars" upon which the club rests, and which now explicitly guide our decision making, our leadership structure, and our approach to understanding and protecting invertebrates and caring for the people who love them.
Community
The ICSC fosters the community of invertebrate lovers in Southern California by hosting in-person events across the region and through maintaining a thriving online community. What started as a few hobbyists meeting in an IHOP has grown into a club that hosts an annual Bugs & BBQ, tables collectively at reptile shows, and meets for regular hikes to discover SoCal’s incredible biodiversity. As a community of friends who meet face-to-face, we support and help each other pursue our shared interest in invertebrates, and in doing so build meaningful connections that benefit both people and the creatures we love. When the club started in 2019, community was its guiding tenet, and over six years later, community is still integral to the ICSC and the first of the club’s three pillars.
Education
As a club we are committed to educating both the invertebrate community and the general public on proper and ethical invertebrate husbandry, zoology, and conservation through outreaches, guest lectures, partnerships, and workshops, and by developing and promoting online resources that advance these goals. Our work aims to share the wonders of invertebrates in California, one of only 36 biodiversity hotspots in the world, as well as of invertebrates globally that through the pet trade can now be brought into people’s homes. Our abiding love for invertebrates and our desire to see people move beyond fear, misunderstanding, and ignorance of these fascinating creatures drives all our educational efforts.
Conservation
As a collective of amateur invertebrate enthusiasts, citizen scientists, breeders, and professional researchers, we strive to unite the energy and talents of all these demographics to protect invertebrates in the wild and in captivity. We work to reduce the pressure on wild invertebrates that the pet trade has unfortunately placed on it by educating our members on poaching, unsustainable collection, and misinformed husbandry, and by proactively resisting these practices in our sphere of influence through position statements, blacklists, and networking with conservation professionals. We also partner with local habitat restoration and land conservation organizations so that together we can preserve and expand the ecologies that support such an astounding diversity of life in California and across the world.
