coparksandwildlife's Journal

For those of you who don’t know, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) is an international competition conducted through iNaturalist to see which city can document the most nature in only 4 days! It started in 2016 as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Last year 16 cities together made over 125,000 observations. Over 8,600 species were identified, 392 of which were endangered, threatened, or rare! This year over 60 cities are competing around the world!

The 2018 CNC takes place April 27-May 3. The first four days, April 27-30, are when all the observations will be made. The last three days, May 1-3, are when the observations will be identified. Every observation IDed down to the species level will count towards the city’s total! The winners will then be announced on May 4. There will be a winner for the categories of most observations, most species, and most participants.

All you have to do to participate is join the City Nature Challenge project for either the Denver Metro Area or Boulder, and then upload observations April 27-30. If you’re busy that weekend, or live too far away to make observations in the project areas, you can still participate by helping to identify all those observations!

Visit the project pages for Denver or Boulder to get more information and learn about upcoming events!

Hi everyone!

Congratulations! You’re tagged in this post because you’re among the top iNaturalist users around the Denver Metropolitan Area!

We want to make sure that you, of all people, know that City Nature Challenge has come to Denver! If you’re not familiar with it, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) is an ongoing project to document urban biodiversity and engage city residents in the nature around them. The project is conducted as a bioblitz-style competition between cities to see which can make the most observations, identify the most species, and have the most participants. The program was started in 2016 by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles and the California Academy of Sciences as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. This year over 60 cities on 5 continents are participating in the City Nature Challenge!

As I mentioned before, you are our local iNat Power Users, and we need your help in order for Denver to win! The Denver Metropolitan Area encompasses Adams, Arapahoe, Broomfield, Denver, Douglas, and Jefferson Counties, so anywhere within their boundaries is fair game. You can visit our Project to see a map and get additional information. While one of our main goals is to get as many people as possible engaged in the nature around them, we also know that it’s the top Observers and Identifiers like you who have the experience to collect or identify the most observations and notice what others might miss.

The timeframe of the competition is listed below:
April 27-30: This is the time to make observations! Any observations collected within the Project boundary between 12:00am April 27 and 11:59pm April 30 will be included.
May 1-3: Upload any remaining observations from April 27-30 and start identifying everything! We can only count observation that are identified to the species level, so this is really important!
May 4: Results are announced! There will be winners for most observations, most species, and most participants.

We would love for you to help in any way that you can! Whether it’s going outside and collecting observations, sitting on you couch making IDs, or just telling your friends about CNC, it all helps! If you, your organization, or your club want to get even more involved by planning events, helping with promotion, or any other project coordination contact Matt Schulz (matt.schulz@state.co.us). Thanks in advance for all your help, and may the best city (Denver) win!

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