City Nature Challenge

Male House Finch, photo by Benny Pol

Male House Finch, photo by Benny Pol

The City Nature Challenge is what Celebration of Our Mountains is all about during this time of social and hiking restrictions. This annual event begins this Friday at 12 AM. Although we are all socially distancing a bit, the City Nature Challenge is a great way for us all to come together as a community. El Paso environmentalist and birder, Kevin Floyd, has created Facebook events for each of the four days of the Challenge. Just go to the El Paso Audubon page.

Basically, the City Nature Challenge encourages all of us to get out and identify the wildlife in our area from the lowly fungi to the tiniest of insects to birds and plants and more. The tool used is the iNaturalist app. Go to the iNaturalist web site to learn how easy it is to use the app which you can download from your android or iphone store. Be sure to check out the video tutorials. You take pictures using the app, and learn more as your observations are identified.

Go to City Nature Challenge for more info.

Now is a great time to begin learning more about Nature around us. And, by using the iNaturalist app and participating in the Challenge, you become a Citizen Scientist. How cool is that.

Here are a document and an email from Alison Young, an organizer, to help you get started:

April 2020 Planning Meeting Call RECORDING

Hi everyone,

Can you believe the City Nature Challenge starts this week??? We're so excited to see how the 6+ months we've been working with most of you and all the time and effort and work we've put into this turns into a successful City Nature Challenge event! Even in these weird times, where the City Nature Challenge is not looking at all how any of us imagined, we believe people are still excited to participate and really want to connect to nature - maybe more than ever.

And interestingly, this will probably be the most "city" the City Nature Challenge has ever been! In years past we know a lot of the focus was on parks and open spaces in and around our cities, so with this year's focus pivoting to houses, backyards, and neighborhoods, we're actually poised to collect more urban biodiversity data than ever! This will definitely help us fill data gaps and get a better understanding of which species are living and thriving in our cities and metro areas. And I'm sure we'll find some surprising things existing in people's backyards!

Some reminders:

  • If you missed last week's calls, listen to the recording and follow along with the agenda.

  • Tomorrow (Tuesday, April 21) at 1pm PT / 4pm ET Lila and Alison and four other CNC organizers will be on a livestream with Science Friday. Feel free to join & encourage others to do so as well: https://www.sciencefriday.com/articles/citizen-science-parties/.

  • Be sure to add some observations from your city to our "interesting finds" spreadsheet - if they're in there by May 3, they could potentially be included in our results press release. Remember that this can (and should!) include fun things people are finding in their backyards!

  • We added a "City Nature Challenge Frequently Asked Questions" post in the CNC umbrella project yesterday - feel free to use it when you get questions from participants, or point people there to find answers to their questions.

  • The iNaturalist forum also has a section for City Nature Challenge, which is a great place for people to ask their iNaturalist-related questions.

  • Encourage folks to post to social media using #CityNatureChallenge and take the #CNCNatureSelfie.

  • We'll email out the results probably around 2-3pm PT on May 4.

And don't forget we have some COVID-19 related resources as well:

We'll hold a CNC debrief call probably sometime in late May or early June - look for an email from us once the CNC is done!

Good luck, stay safe, and also be sure to HAVE FUN!

Alison, Lila, and Amy