April EcoQuest: City Nature Challenge

Let’s celebrate Earth Day and our Front Range biodiversity by participating in the City Nature Challenge. This is a yearly event for folks in cities all over the world to observe and document biodiversity in their own backyards. Any living organism is fair game for observation – plants, animals, birds, insects, fish – they all contribute to the City Nature Challenge! To participate, make observations of any organism on iNaturalist for a few days in late April. This is followed by an identification phase—where you can join a community of nerdy naturalists to identify the species observed.

City Nature Challenge 2024
Observations: April 26 – April 29
Upload and Identification Phase: April 30 – May 5

For last year’s global challenge, there were almost 1.9 million observations of over 57,000 species, with 2,570 species considered rare, endangered or threatened. These observations were made by more than 66,000 people from 482 cities in 46 countries around the world.

In the Denver-Boulder metro area, more than 3,500 observations were observed by 457 people of 666 species. The organisms observed were mostly plants, insects and birds. Fun species observed included black bear, bobcat, beaver and even northern spleenwort (Asplenium septentrionle), a vulnerable plant species in Colorado. Let’s see if we can increase our numbers this year!

It’s easy to participate – your iNaturalist observations will automatically be added to the City Nature Challenge 2024 Denver-Boulder metro project if they are made during the challenge event and occur in the greater metro area (see above link for map of included areas). Additionally, all plant and fungal observations will automatically be added to the Denver EcoFlora Project. Here at Denver Botanic Gardens, we select our favorite observations from the area and send out prizes! We can’t wait to see what you discover this year!

To learn more about this event, how to use iNaturalist, and to find details on local hikes and trainings check out our website.

Bobcat (Lynx rufus), observation by @donaldschaffer

northern spleenwort (Asplenium septentrionale) by @christian_nunes

Posted on April 1, 2024 10:17 PM by alissa_iverson