Cities around the world will soon be competing to see who can make the most observations of nature and engage the most people in the City Nature Challenge 2020. Over 260 cities are signed up globally to take part, including 10 cities or urban areas in the UK.
The key dates
The first part of the challenge is from Friday 24 to Monday 27 April. Over the weekend as many people as possible will be asked to record the wildlife they see around them.
In the second part, between Tuesday 28 April and Sunday 3 May, all these sightings need to be verified so that they can be included in the tally. Verification can be done remotely, so anyone across the UK can be involved in confirming these wildlife sightings.
The cities
The 10 UK cities / areas taking part this year are:
- Birmingham & the Black Country
- Brighton & Lewes Downs
- Bristol and Bath
- Glasgow
- Greater Manchester
- Lancashire
- Liverpool City Region
- London
- North East England
- Nottingham City
The full list of cities and links to the project pages is available on the City Nature Challenge 2020 website, where you can find out more about the individual city events and how to take part.
In 2019, seven UK cities took part and identified over 6000 species from 45,753 observations made by 1084 species.
How are the sightings recorded?
iNaturalist is used to record the wildlife sightings by all the cities taking part across the world. The records are shared with GBIF.
Last year there was a trial of importing records, including City Nature Challenge records, from iNaturalist into iRecord, but the differences between the systems made it difficult to fully address issues around verification and data flow.
Further information
More information on the challenge happening in the UK can be found on the City Nature Challenge 2020 page on the NBN website and more information on the overall project and the cities taking place globally can be found on the City Nature Challenge 2020 website