Calling all iNat fanatics!
Hello Everyone!
I wanted to let you all know that the John Ball Zoo is bringing the City Nature Challenge to west Michigan. I (@trav_kurtz) will be the point person for the zoo on all things related to City Nature Challenge. Our challenge covers the entirety of Allegan, Barry, Kent, and Ottawa Counties and runs from April 26-29. You will be able to see the full list of cities here: https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/. While this is not purely competitive, there are dozens of other participating cities, including Lansing, so it is fun to see where we stack up compared to other challenges.
I’ve tagged you in this journal post because you’re a top observer in the geographic area covered by our City Nature Challenge over the last year or so. We’re really hoping you’ll participate in this year’s City Nature Challenge; while we know getting observations from as many people as we can is important, we also know that it’s top iNat observers like you that will really push us ahead in the number of observations made and especially the number of species found in west Michigan!
The easiest way to join in is to just make as many observations of as many species as possible in any of the four counties during April 26-29. Helping with IDs will also increase our species number, so that’s a great way to help out as well. And of course, spread the word! City Nature Challenge 2024: West Michigan iNaturalist project: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-west-michigan/.
The details: the CNC runs from 12:01 AM on Friday, 4/26 to 11:59 PM on Monday, 4/29. All observations from Allegan, Barry, Kent, and Ottawa Counties count. We're announcing results on Monday, 5/6, so between 4/29 and 5/6 we will just be working on identifying all of the observations in the project. Also, the more observations we can get identified to Research Grade by then, the higher our species number will be.
We’ve also been brainstorming about places around the area that would be really great to have people go to during the City Nature Challenge – places that have high diversity and/or unique species. We are working on creating a formal list, but if you have places in mind please leave a comment with where we should direct folks.
I (@trav_kurtz) am planning to lead some trips to a few places and you’re more than welcome to join us! Once I have a Google spreadsheet, I will link it in a journal post, and there will be a sheet where you can add your name if you’d like to join us on one or more of these expeditions. Also, if you’re willing to lead a trip to one of the places listed (or any other place!) please add the place, the date, your name as the leader, and potential taxa/species of interest to the Google spreadsheet once it exists, and then others can sign up to join you!
We’ll also be adding bigger, public events to our bioblitz webpage and you’re welcome to join those events as well. If your organization will be holding an event in the April 26-29 window that people could come to and make iNaturalist observations for the City Nature Challenge, please let me know and we’ll add it to the list and it will be promoted in the project’s journal, as well as with the rest of the zoo’s media surrounding this project.
Please feel free to brainstorm other ideas, ask questions, etc. in the comments – and definitely add others to this journal post via tagging them in the comments!
@anna120 @rdegeer @mmoerdyk @thecaiman1 @wonderful_world @sammoer4 @rbdllama @dwightbaker @shrontzilla @joshdyer1 @coopermike @greathorn @cdoe @matttryc @valerie112 @trtgers @acanthusmxmli @mettcollsuss @s_atkinson @sarasyswerda @juliakmil @michiganne6 @delbachert @cjkrueger @gdwyer @eehinger @tyrannus1 @ovanantw @ian_pope @wmich_birding @izokait @mizamykins
