Joined: May 20, 2016 Last Active: Sep 6, 2024 iNaturalist
My name is George Gehrig, and I'm the organizer for the City Nature Challenge: Bonner County (CNCBC). I'm absolutely in love with the Pacific Northwest, and want to help identify, protect and preserve the amazing biodiversity in the region.
To that end, I've created an ecoregional, transboundary mini competition to supplement the spring time, international City Nature Challenge (CNC), called the Northern Rocky Mountain Biodiversity Challenge (NRMBC) that encompasses 106 jurisdictions* that intersect (in whole or part) with the Yellowstone to Yukon ecoregion. It will be held in both the summer and fall, giving people opportunities to notice seasonal changes, and for organizations to act collaboratively.
With both the CNC and NRMBC, a goal is to challenge other sites to see which one can get the most people per capita to make at least one observation using iNaturalist (or Seek). The resulting calculation is being termed the Enivronmental Engagement Index (EEI), and could possibly serve as a proxy for ecosystem/ecoregion engagement (or blindness).
Hopefully, the NRMBC can be a model for ecoregional challenges everywhere. One day maybe there can be a regional art and music competition can be created to come up with a logo and theme song. And, hopefully, a Story Map and documentary can be produced.
*I'd love to recruit people in each jurisdiction to create and promote NRMBCs (if no one does, I will continue to do so). I'd also like to recruit people in each jurisdiction to be part of a wider project to compare and contrast comprehensive plans. The land use documents have big impacts on habitat, and ultimately species.
If you're interested in either project, please send an email to geogehrig@gmail.com.