- On The Wild Side
City Nature Challenge 2019
Spaces for wildlife
1st April 2019
An insight into Anthrax | Guest Post
12th April 2019
Cities around the world will be competing to see who can make the most observations of nature, find the most species, and engage the most people in the 2019 City Nature Challenge.
The City Nature Challenge is an international event where people find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe: a bioblitz-style competition where metro areas are in a contest against each other to see who can make the most observations of nature, who can find the most species, and who can engage the most people.
In 2018, 68 cities motivated more than 17,000 people to upload 431,000 observations of nature to iNaturalist in the four days of the City Nature Challenge.
The 2019 City Nature Challenge takes place in 2 parts; Taking pictures of wild plants and animals on April 26 to 29 and identifying what was found on April 30 to May 5.
In 2019, more than 100 cities (Nairobi is one of the three cities participating from Africa) on all seven continents are taking part, asking residents of and visitors to these urban areas to explore nature all around them and document the species they find! Results will be announced Monday, May 6.
What is the City Nature Challenge?
Started in 2016 for the first-ever Citizen Science Day, the citizen science teams at Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences dreamed up the City Nature Challenge as a fun way to capitalize on their home cities’ friendly rivalry and hold a citizen science event around urban biodiversity. The first City Nature Challenge was an eight-day competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, engaging residents and visitors in documenting nature to better understand urban biodiversity. Over 20,000 observations were made by more than 1000 people in a one-week period, cataloging approximately 1600 species in each location, including new records for both areas. During the 2016 CNC, we heard so much excitement and interest from people in other cities that we decided we couldn’t keep to the fun just to ourselves. In 2017 the City Nature Challenge went national, and in 2018, the CNC became an international event!
There is nature all around us, even in our cities! Knowing what species are in our city and where they are helps us study and protect them, but the ONLY way to do that is by all of us – scientists, land managers, and the community – working together to find and document the nature in our area. By participating in the City Nature Challenge, not only do you learn more about your local nature, but you can also make your city a better place – for you and other species!
The City Nature Challenge is organized by the citizen science teams at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences.
How to take part
Find Wildlife
Take a Picture
Share!
Visit citynaturechallenge.org for more details.
