An annual competition will celebrate nature and promote biodiversity across the globe.
The City Nature Challenge is a citizen science initiative in which participants gather biodiversity data in their area from April 25 to 28, with around 650 communities worldwide set to take part this year.
It's the seventh annual Calgary edition of the worldwide City Nature Challenge and the 10th anniversary of the event worldwide, explained organizer Matt Wallace.
"It gives people a reason to engage with nature, learn a little bit more about what lives around them," he said. "It also fosters relationships with natural areas and provides a platform for people to support conservation, stewardship initiatives and to take pride in their local region."
People can take part in the challenge by submitting photos or audio recordings of flora and fauna in their area to iNaturalist, a citizen science social network that collects data on biodiversity worldwide. Observations can be submitted on the iNaturalist website or mobile app, and precise species names can be identified by experts after observations are submitted.
"Any photo that's posted in that time period, or that was taken in that time period, is automatically collected within our City Nature Challenge project," said Wallace.
The deadline to post photos taken during the April 25 to 28 observation period is May 4 at midnight, and global results will be announced on May 5.
Beyond Calgary city limits, people can participate in the Calgary City Nature Challenge in Okotoks, High River and throughout Foothills County, as well as Airdrie, Chestermere and Rocky View County.
The 2024 Calgary City Nature Challenge saw the event's best-ever participation with over 13,000 observations submitted. This year, Wallace hopes for over 15,000 observations.
Wallace, who serves as vice-president of Nature Calgary, is happy to see so much love for biodiversity and nature in the Calgary metropolitan area.
"There's a lot of like dedicated iNaturalist users in our region, and people can go pretty crazy," he said. "I'll spend probably 10 hours a day outside, and I'm not the only one doing that kind of thing."
He added that last year, around 6,000 iNaturalist users were registered throughout the province. Within Calgary city limits, 65,000 observations were added to iNaturalist by 1,200 people.
"It's probably the most robust data set we have across all of the biodiversity within the province, and definitely within our city," said Wallace.
People can participate anywhere, whether that's in one of the area's many parks and greenspaces or in their own neighbourhood.
"Most of the data that we've collected over the past seven years is mostly in parks where people head out to, but really where we want to see people participating is in their communities and filling up the data gaps," he said. "So when a bobcat visits someone's backyard, that's a really important observation for us, because it's really important."
The first-ever City Nature Challenge was held in 2016 as a competition between the California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, sparking a worldwide movement.
The 2024 City Nature Challenge saw a whopping 2,436,844 observations of 65,682 species submitted by 83,528 participants worldwide.
Learn more about the 2025 City Nature Challenge, which also marks the 10th anniversary of iNaturalist Canada, on the iNaturalist website.
