Amber Esparza
Arts, Culture & Entertainment Editor
The 2024 City Nature Challenge (CNC) is in full bloom this weekend. Wildlife explorers from all walks of life are observing, photographing, recording and identifying the natural flora and fauna around them.
And they’re doing it all from their phones.
Nearly 700 cities across the world are competing to observe the most wildlife in this year’s City Nature Challenge, a four-day friendly competition “biodiversity bioblitz project.”
Jane Weeden, Bexar County coordinator for the City Nature Challenge, encourages people from Texas A&M University-San Antonio, Bexar County, the state of Texas and around the world to go outside and become “city scientists” with the iNaturalist app.
iNaturalist was developed in 2008 by three University of California-Berkeley School of Information masters students, Ken-ichi Ueda, Jessica Kline and Nate Agrin, to learn about ecosystems and connect people with a shared interest in biodiversity and nature.
Today, iNaturalist has over 3,000,000 users who take pictures and record sounds to compile open data information that naturalists, biologists, scientists and the public can use for research.
“All of it is actual verifiable proven data that the scientific community definitely uses,” Weeden said. “Last year, over 800 different [scientific] publications referenced pictures and research done in iNat.”
While the citizen scientists using iNaturalist are the ones doing a lot of the legwork, Weeden says the app also “provides information to you.”
“You get an education. You get to identify plants and animals as you’re walking around thinking ‘What the heck is that plant?’ You can take a picture of it, and it’ll tell you all kinds of information on the species,” Weeden said.
Last year’s challenge had over 66,000 participants from over 450 cities documenting the wildlife they came across.
Weeden said San Antonio beat Austin last year with 1,000 total participants during the four-day challenge, but San Antonio came in third in the state, just after the Dallas-Fort Worth and Houston-Galveston areas, according to the 2023 CNC Texas cities leaderboard.
Weeden’s goal this year is for San Antonio to sweep Texas. And it may happen.
At the time of Weeden’s interview with The Mesquite, just before 5 p.m. on April 26, Weeden said “We are winning Texas.”
A&M-San Antonio is also participating in this year’s “Campus Nature Challenge,” a more concentrated version of the City Nature Challenge where local colleges and universities compete against each other to document bugs, plants and animals found on or around their college campuses.
Anyone looking to become a citizen scientist this weekend, or any time of the day or year, can get started immediately in the iNaturalist app. No special education or background in science or biology is needed to use the app, which is available to download for free on any Apple or Android device by anyone 13 or older.
Students, faculty, staff and alumni can participate in A&M-San Antonio’s Campus Nature Challenge by joining the “Campus Nature Challenge 2024: TAMUSA” project in the iNaturalist app.
San Antonio residents and community members can participate in the San Antonio area challenge by joining the “City Nature Challenge 2024: San Antonio Metro Area” project.
Dozens of guided nature walks will be held across the city Friday, April 26 through Monday, April 29 as part of San Antonio’s CNC this year. Locations and meetup times for the free and public guided group walks can be found on the organization’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
Although the city and campus nature challenges end Monday, April 29 at midnight, Weeden encourages people to use the app year-round.
Weeden also shared tips for being a successful contributor. This includes documenting only wildlife — no pets, zoo animals or potted plants. And taking several good-quality pictures or sound recordings of the observed species is always the best practice.
The total number of observations and highlights from around the world will be announced on the CNC website Monday, May 6.
Weeden said the best place to start your research is in your own backyard, but the possibilities to contribute are endless.
“You can have bugs in your backyard to take pictures of. You can find a common weed that probably has a really cool name to take scientific pictures of. You can go to your local park. You can go on a walk with friends and take pictures of stuff you see on the sidewalk,” Weeden said. “There is wildlife everywhere.”
