All done.
Congratulations southern Africa!! Well done.
We are done, but it will still be hours before midnight crosses the international date line and the 2021 City Nature Challenge finally concludes.
Observations.
Cape Town amassed a whopping 71,000 observations, shooting well above their target of 60,000 observations. Only two cities among the over 400 managed more than half this.
((and unless you helped, I dont think you can comprehend what identifying ~70,000 observations over 6 days entails - OK, Cape Town only managed to ID 65,000 of them - but it was a colossal effort.))
If is was not for CT, then we would be celebrating the Garden Routes amazing achievement of being in the top 10 cities (out of almost 450) in the world. It must be tough hidden in Cape Town's limelight when one produces such an amazing result. This is a headline achievement and they really deserve far more attention than they will probably get for their hard work and dedication. Twenty-three observations short of 20,000!! (how out of 19,977 could they not find two dozen more?). Very well done!!
eThekwini with 7,442 and Tswane with 7,305 were neck to neck in the challenge, within the top 50 cities. A great result!
Nelson Mandela Bay and Northern Botswana managed over 1000 observations. A great effort.
Clearly as concerned and aware citizens go, southern African's are aware and keen on their biodiversity.
Species.
Ignoring the non-city component which were lumped, and therefore not a meaningful species total, southern Africa did even better.
Cape Town at 4,252 species is tops, with 700 more species than Hong Kong in position 2.
Garden Route is fourth, with 2,748 species.
Ethekwini with 1,443 species is in the top 25 cities.
Yes, we are one of the 10 most biodiverse countries in the world, but clearly our cities also teem with wildlife. Thanks for caring and showcasing our great heritage.
Observers.
How can so few people achieve so much? We did not do nearly as well as we should have in mobilizing our citizens in participating in the challenge. This is clearly an area we should be able to improve on.
Only Cape Town (in position 5) was in the top 50 cities in terms of observers.
Unfortunately it was not possible with school holidays and covid19 issues to mobilize the youth within the schools. However, our youth did participate: Some 288 Scouts made 8,851 observations, and 92 Girl Guides - in Cape Town - made 4,474 observations! Alone, as a "city" our scouts and guides would have made the top 25 of the cities in the world for observations in the 2021 City Challenge!
This bodes well for the conservation of our biodiversity into the future.
Credits and thanks to all involved!
Observations: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2021?tab=observers
Identifications: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2021?tab=identifiers
Comments
Tony thank you so much for this. Huge congratulations to Cape Town. A really amazing effort.
We had a great enthusiastic team in the Garden Route and its good to see the younger people taking part. We had Elena-rosa Lee who is 10 years old posting good photos. I would like to thank the Outramps for working so hard and producing such good results. Well done to you all.
A superb achievement that was made possible by strong leadership and champions across southern Africa
Thanks Tone, and ditto Jenny. Everything been said above so all I will say is thumbs up to one and all.
Great teams, great results, and great achievements.
It was a pleasure participating for the first time. Very excited for next year's challenge!
Huge congratulations CT and Garden Route....!
I thoroughly enjoyed participating fir the first time. Unfortunately had to travel unexpectedly from Cape Town to Port Elizabeth on the Saturday so could not compete as fully as planned but this enabled me to contribute to both cities.
Thank you for all the hard work by the organisers. Next year our family will be back!
@pallylad And you took nothing in the Garden Route. Could have made it 3 in a row 😀.
Oy vey? a new spin on the City Nature Challenge: how many cities can one take part in as an observer?
Will the fun ever stop?
Thank you Tony and ALL the teams participating. It was lekker and looking forward to see how we can make the CNC work for conservation and citizen science mobilisation even more. We have a superb base to build from.
Thank you everybody for helping out with ID's of my observations, sadly work took most of my time but in between I quickly took a few snaps here and there. Next year Hopefully I can get a lot more of our species on and hopefully a few of our members to take part & we can push the Garden Route past 20 000!!
Every little bit helps @springerbaaiecoestate
If it was not for your "few snaps" we would not have had the Secretarybird on the GR list for the CNC. You got the only observation of it.
Well done to all. Did really get much of a chance to do any actual observing this year but managed to spend quite a bit of time identifying.
Congratulations Cape Town. Quite incredible. Proud of big brother. The structured planning and execution paid off with interest. I loved the funky CT Insta feed. Great video! Big thank you and pat on the bag for the Garden Route as well. An excited buzz, hard work and super field trips. Special commendation to 19 Outramps CREW members who delivered all round, wowzer contribution, plus Shaun and Christine as backbone organisers. There is something amazing about being part of an event, together with so many others across the globe.
Well done all you amazing inatters and congratulations to everyone from organizers to participants. I tried to name as many peas as I could but with competing, centres found it hard to keep up there were so many to check. I am a huge fan of citizen science and am dedicating my talk on legumes (May the peas be with you, on May 19th as part of the Kirstenbosch - Struik Wednesday zoom talks) to the amazing contributors of legume photos, a number of whom have discovered new species. The talk will give ideas of how observers can contribute more than just names and distribution and how these observations are advancing our knowledge of legumes. I will post yje talk link to the Fabaceae of Southern African project blog as soon as I receive them. Check https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/fabaceae-of-southern-africa
Immense work from Cape Town yet again. Great to show off the countries brilliant biodiversity like this on a global scale. Congrats to all observers and identifiers.
Congrats to all! A great initiative and wonderful to see our cities are still full of life.
Congrats folks! An amazing achievement!
Well done to all, we had great fun participating in the CNC. as a NMB organiser I feel that we have a huge room for improvement in terms of planning, but I'm grateful with the results we have achieved, and thanks to those who made contributions to more than one city!
@tonyrebelo which species were observed the most?
@kenneth_oberlander
On top: click on left hand menu bar (twice) to get to the project
click on Species in the upper menu bar to see the species to see the most frequently seen in decending order.
ditto: on on observers or identifiers to see who made the most, respectively.
the statistics will tell you the breakdown by groups, and the identification status.
If you want to see which Oxalis were most recorded, on the menu bar click Observations and on the submenu bar click Search
In the species box type Oxalis and click the option, and then use the menu bar to see species, or observations or identifications.
iNat has amazing and powerful interrogation tools. These are just the standard public interface options. Have fun!
Oh: feeling lazy? Click here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-southern-africa-2021?tab=species
((or go one step back and select your city, before clicking on the species tab, to see what was seen most in each city. ))
PS: this year the emphasis across cities was plants.
During Lockdown last year it was quite different:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/lockdown-southern-africa-2020/journal/33149-how-can-our-cities-be-so-different
Thanks @tonyrebelo!
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