City Nature Challenge 2020: Liverpool City Region's Journal

ONLINE | FRIDAY 1st MAY

Wow! What an incredible City Nature Challenge this year! We are so impressed with the fantastic 4,363 UK residents who joined the global community of 38,000+ people getting outside and making observations of nature – while staying safe & keeping others safe as well. A huge THANK YOU to all of you!

So now we’re in the uploading/identifying phase of the City Nature Challenge and we still need your help to put all this amazing nature on the map!

On Friday 1st May meet some of your fellow UK challengers for the City Nature Challenge UK DataBlitz to help identify the records submitted over the international weekend. Log in to a series of zoom calls throughout the day for themed chats hosted by expert naturalists or bring your own beverage for an end of day social. Each Zoom call will be led my experts on taxonomic groups and will help get the UK total up before the final worldwide tally is announced on the 4th May!

Join the Zoom calls with identifiers across the whole UK:

10am – Mammals
12pm – Invertebrates
2pm – Birds
4pm – Plants
6pm – UK City Nature Challenge After Party

WHAT NEEDS DOING?

To make all the photos uploaded count towards conservation efforts here in the UK, we need to help identify the species people have been finding! You don’t have to be an expert to help ID – just log in to iNaturalist UK project and help with these tasks:

IDENTIFY SPECIES – Find photos of “unknown” and give them a coarse ID like “plants” or “beetles” or “fungi” – this will help those folks who do know how to ID down to the species level find those observations. If you can improve on or agree the current ID then great! Check out this short video on how to use the Identify Page on iNaturalist: https://vimeo.com/246153496
POINT OUT THE PETS – from goldfish to garden roses, mark anything that looks captive/cultivated as such
SHOWCASE SOME HIGHLIGHTS – add any interesting finds to the UK highlights spreadsheet to be included in the post event press release: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1x5VVv7emROZzs3BY_JSOiH5yfc8uXUTsIpcUUntSuFc/edit?usp=sharing

More information and Zoom call links here: https://www.bnhc.org.uk/bioblitz/city-nature-challenge-uk-datablitz/?fbclid=IwAR2C0n0mqjqVtkH8PQKGk_YwjD3YsMQ4Ee_GDUrs2by-ozHyS2JSPpDkfmo

Wow! What a fantastic effort!

At a glance (as of just now) you have so far 163 of you have sent in 5,351 wildlife sightings covering an amazing 874 species. For a city on lockdown that really is incredible and it is great to see that participation is up on last year.

As we start to wrap up the City Nature Challenge for 2020 don't forget there is still time to send in any extra sightings. You have until the 3rd of May to finish identifying things and uploading photos. After that time the totals will be taken and results announced.

Also let people know that if they are unable to (or just don't want to) use iNaturalist i can import their records for them, but need their permission to do so. Let me know at info@merseysidebiobank.org.uk

Just over two days to go and the forecast is for a beautiful weekend! We've seen Swallows and House Martins arriving over the past week, Orange-tips and other butterflies are out in force while our spring flowers are putting on an incredible display!

The weather for this weekend is looking good, certainly a lot better than the storms we got last year! So we can expect an brilliant natural spring festival.

Obviously, we can't put anything out these days without acknowledging COVID. However, engaging with nature either from home our during your daily exercise allowance is a great way to stimulate the mind and open your eyes to what's around you.

The challenge is also a great way to explore those places you can't get to at the moment. See what others are seeing and perhaps help them learn by sharing some of your own knowledge.

Have fun, stay safe!

24th to the 27th April will see the Liverpool City Region compete for the 2nd time against Cities around the world as part of the 2020 City Nature Challenge. This year will see over 250 cities and regions taking part!

Lancashire County is already building their partnership with councils and nature partnerships from Arnside and Bowland rallying together.

Greater Manchester is planning out events with their festival of nature partnership.

In the LCR we don't have a large area and we don't have big established projects but we do have you. Last year 3 people from our region were in the top 10 out of 34,000, no-one can deny the dedication!

This year we'd love to see more people involved. Anyone can take part at any time over the 4 days from anywhere in the LCR. All you need to do is go outside, seek out some wildlife, take a photo and upload it to www.inaturalist.org every observation counts!

Ultimately, it's not about the league (for everyone 😉 ) but it is a great opportunity to get outside and explore your local parks or go for a walk somewhere new.

Perhaps take a closer look at some of those plants and animals and use the iNaturalist website or app to help you learn more about what they are.

Make use of the challenge to promote and discover the incredible, often hidden, diversity of wildlife of our parks and green-spaces.

Find out more -> https://www.lancswt.org.uk/events/city-nature-challenge

p.s. if you run and organisation and would like to help by running an event (e.g. lead a wildlife walk using iNaturalist) then please do let me know so that we can help promote and advertise it!

You did fantastically well during the City Nature Challenge 2019. Ensuring the Liverpool City Region made second place in Europe & Asia, an outstanding achievement for our first year!

By popular demand we have entered for the 2020 competition which will be running from the 24th to the 27th of April (inclusive). More information can be found here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/

We are again looking for people and groups to help support the event in the LCR, be it leading a small walk, nature recording session or running a bio-blitz to help encourage people to take part. If you can help please let us know so we can advertise your event however big or small! (ben.deed@merseysidebiobank.org.uk).

Obviously even if you don't feel able to run something for other people please do get outside by yourself or with your friends and family and photograph the plants and animals that you discover.

You can also click "join" in the top right of this page to receive any news and updates we send out via iNaturalist.