April 26-29

Have Fun and Support Nature at the same time!

Are you looking for a good reason to get outdoors that also helps nature and is fun for everyone? There is a great challenge for you and it’s easy and free to do.

The City Nature Challenge 2024 is an opportunity for individuals or groups to spend time outdoors, make observations of nature and document them in a way that allows others to get a better understanding of biodiversity wherever they are. The City Nature Challenge is organized on a global scale by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences.

By simply using either a camera or smartphone and software known as iNaturalist you will create records of what you see and be able to review, learn and share them with others.

Not sure what you may see, no problem. Your observations will be verified by other citizen scientists (like yourself) and specialists from all around the world. Hint: check out YouTube by searching for iNaturalist to learn more.

This challenge has become an annual event that happens simultaneously on the same dates around the world. It started with only 2 cities in 2016 but has grown to over 480 global cities and Nature Vancouver is now leading a team based on the Metro Vancouver Regional District (MVRD). The 2024 challenge will run from April 26 – 29, 2024. 

Busy schedule, not an issue. You are totally free during the event to decide when and where you make your observations.

To make it more interesting the observational data results are tabulated and reported back to participating cities so that we can see how we do compared to other cities both in Canada and globally. It would be amazing if you are part of making our new MVRD ranked in the top 3 in Canada for the first time!

In addition, the data generated by you will be available to researchers, policy makers, environmentalists, teachers and more. You will be contributing to this and be able to look at all of the city nature challenge observations or everything else in iNaturalist. Your learning opportunities are unlimited.

Your observations are still valuable if you are not in the MVRD so please participate anyways. You may wish to see if there is a local iNaturalist project set up for your location or even create your own. If not, your observations will still be logged within the provincial boundary of BC.

You can learn about the iNaturalist project by going to: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-metro-vancouver-regional-district-mvrd

If you are new to iNaturalist you can learn about this free tool at: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started

If you would like to know more about many more opportunities that Nature Vancouver offers, please visit our website at: naturevancouver.ca

To contact the Nature Vancouver team email John Martin at: john.martin@naturevancouver.ca