Identifying species in your city with the City Nature Challenge
This past April, iNaturalist, an app that helps people identify plants and animals, launched their annual City Nature Challenge. The City Nature Challenge began in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. The goal was for participants to find and document any wildlife they found in the areas.
The competition has expanded to cities all around the world. From two cities and one country participating, the City Nature Challenge now has 690 cities and 51 countries that participate in the challenge.
Participants are tasked with finding wildlife, including plants, animals, or evidence of life in their city. They take a picture of what they find and share it through the iNaturalist platform. This massive data collection effort helps scientists gather valuable information on local species, their distribution, and ecological trends. The data can be used for research, conservation planning, and tracking biodiversity changes over time.
What is great about the City Nature Challenge is that anyone can participate. You can participate alone or with your family, as a class with students, or even help your city participate in the challenge.
Between April 26 and April 29, 2024, 2,436,844 observations were made across the globe. The app recorded over 65,000 species and close to 4,000 rare/endangered/threatened species. With over 83,000 participants, La Paz, Bolivia, earned the top spots for most observations (165,839), most species (5352) and most participants (3593). Following La Paz, for most observations, were Monterrey, Mexico and San Antonio, Texas.
Some notable findings from this year’s challenge include the Taiwan Thrush, which was found in Central Taiwan. It’s a rare bird endemic to Tawain, and only one was seen/recorded in this year’s Challenge. Another single observation was the Dingy Purplewing, which was found in South Florida and is a rare butterfly in this state. An Indri was found in Madagascar, one of the largest living lemurs and a critically endangered species. A Baird’s Tapir was captured on a camera trap in Peten, Guatemala. It is an endangered species due to the loss of its habitat. Many more interesting observations can be found on the City Nature Challenge website.
What’s important about the City Nature Challenge is that it highlights the biodiversity that exists in urban environments, which is often overlooked in favour of more natural settings. By engaging the public, the Challenge fosters a deeper connection between people and their local environment, helping them realize that nature is all around, even in cities.
The City Nature Challenge brings together people from different backgrounds, including schools, community groups, scientists, and nature enthusiasts, to work toward a common goal. This sense of community can inspire collective action for local environmental issues and foster a shared sense of responsibility for protecting urban nature.
By spotlighting local species and their habitats, the Challenge can spur interest in conservation and lead to initiatives aimed at protecting urban wildlife and green spaces. This is crucial for maintaining biodiversity in cities, where development often threatens natural habitats.
Finally, the City Nature Challenge offers a hands-on learning experience about local ecology, species identification, and the importance of biodiversity. It provides a platform for educators to teach about science, conservation, and the environment in an interactive and engaging way.
It is fascinating how people can come together in the name of nature and record so many species in a span of four days. This type of citizen science will go a long way in helping us study, understand, and protect animal species worldwide.
The next City Nature Challenge will be live from April 25 to April 28, 2025. It will be exciting to see what species are discovered next year.
