City Nature Challenge 2020: Denver-Boulder Metro's Journal

With the 2020 Denver-Boulder City Nature Challenge just weeks away, we wanted to give some updates on the current status of the event due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The event from April 24th- May3rd is still taking place however, this year the City Nature Challenge will no longer be a competition between cities but rather a general initiative to get outside and observe nature. We want to embrace the healing power of nature and encourage the collaborative aspect of the CNC. This will allow people to safely document biodiversity in whatever way they can, even from the safety of their own homes if necessary. We urge all participants to carefully follow public health guidelines provided by your local governments, as they are changing in real-time. For more information, please visit our website: wild.org/naturechallenge

In light of the COVID-19 pandemic, we will no longer be hosting or promoting any group activities. We encourage all individual participants to explore nature close to their homes*. If you have trails and open spaces in your neighborhood, that’s great! Please check the status of all parks and open spaces before visiting. Please be respectful of all people and wildlife nearby, follow all social distancing requirements, and abide by local land and facility closures. Please avoid overcrowded areas.

*If you are concerned about revealing the location of a sensitive organism (or where your house is), you can hide the exact location from the public by changing the “geoprivacy” of the observation to “obscured.”

Today is the first day to get outside and start collecting observations for the City Nature Challenge! From now until April 27th, observations can be made within the Denver-Boulder metro area boundary to go towards our CNC totals. Although its not a competition this year, we still encourage everyone to collect as many photos as possible to help increase our biodiversity data for the metro area!

Although observations must be made by end of the day on April 27th, photos can be uploaded to iNaturalist until May 3rd as long as they were taken during the observation window. After the observation period begins the race to identify as many observations as possible to get the data collected to research grade. This means that at least 3 people confirm each observation as the correct species. Getting the data to research grade makes it useable for scientific and management purposes.

As a reminder, please follow local regulations pertaining to COVID-19 and practice safe social distancing when in outdoor spaces. We encourage people to get to know their own neighborhoods and back yards by staying close to home* instead of traveling to parks and open spaces.

*If you are concerned about revealing the location of a sensitive organism (or where your house is), you can hide the exact location from the public by changing the “geoprivacy” of the observation to “obscured.”

For ideas on how to get out there and participate please visit our website: wild.org/naturechallenge.

Keep the observations coming, Denver-Boulder! We're so impressed with what we're seeing thus far. Thanks to you all for your hard work!

Today is the last day of the City Nature Challenge biobliltz. You have until 11:59pm today (4/27) to document your observations, and until May 3rd at 11:59pm to upload those observations to iNaturalist. Remember that any wild observations taken during the April 24-27 bioblitz within our Denver-Boulder boundary will count! Tomorrow we will move into the identification period- stay tuned as the observations will continue to roll in until the very end.

Visit www.wild.org/naturechallenge for more details about the Denver-Boulder challenge, and let us know if you have any questions. Stay close to home, practice safe social distancing...and have fun!