City Nature Challenge starts in less than 2 days!

Or more precisely in 34 hours in New Zealand ! We hope you all feel prepared and excited and looking forward to getting outside to look for and document nature. Your efforts make the City Nature Challenge the phenomenal event that it is – Surrey couldn’t do it without you!

As of right now, our numbers are 485 cities across 46 countries participating!
We’re really hoping to find wild plants and animals. If you do make observations of organisms that are not wild, please mark them as captive/cultivated (and as people work to identify observations, they can also mark anyone’s observation as not wild in the Data Quality Assessment section).
If you have questions during the CNC, there are a couple good places to look for answers:
o The City Nature Challenge frequently asked questions [https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/faq]
o For questions specifically about iNaturalist, there is the City Nature Challenge category on the iNaturalist forum which is a great place to look for help [https://forum.inaturalist.org/c/city-nature-challenge/21].

And remember, observation have to be tagged between April 28 - May 1 (12:01 am to 11:59 pm), and all uploads complete by May 7.

Please don't leave your observation as unknown, and check that your phot or audio file has uploaded. If you're stumped but know it's in the plant, fungi or animal kingdom, make sure to refine your ID.

And if you have time, help others with their ID, but only if you are confident (does it occur here, has it been verified here previously, is it a close look-alike with something else...?). Genus and species is the Goldilocks goal for observations, but sometimes you can only get to Order, Family or Subfamily.

Remember, there are almost half a million observers out there and a whole lot of folks to help you refine your ID. Don't be afraid to tag someone for help!

The forecast shows multiple days of awesome weather ahead, so have fun!

Posted on April 26, 2023 09:40 PM by surrey-bc_biodiversity