Countdown to the City Nature Challenge 2021: Welcome to the Project!

Hello, and welcome to the the City Nature Challenge 2021: Lower Rio Grande Valley!

This year we are joining over 350 other urban areas around the world as we search for and document the plants, animals, and other organisms that share the places we live, work, and play. As in 2020, the challenge is about embracing the healing power of nature and celebrating the tens of thousands of people around the world, searching and documenting their local biodiversity, together in this event.

We had a great CNC in 2020, with 150 observers making nearly 7,500 total observations! We documented more than 1,600 species and got help with identifications from over 400 iNaturalist users. You can see the full results here (https://cuefornature.wordpress.com/2020/05/30/cnc2020results/). This year we'd love to continue to grow the number of folks using iNaturalist in the area, because it's such a great way to learn and care about the Valley's biodiversity. Plus, it helps generate some cool biodiversity data!

The observation period opens on April 30th at 12:00 AM CST and runs through May 3rd at 11:59 PM CST. Only observations made during this timeframe are counted towards our final results! However, you can upload your observations through May 9th. This means we can all spend more of our time observing and documenting life during the observation period and use those extra days of May 4 - May 9 to upload and identify our observations.

We are encouraging participants to make observations of wild organisms as much as possible, but its perfectly acceptable to add observations of captive/cultivated plants and animals; just make sure to mark them as such on your observations! For more information or if you have any questions, feel free to check out the CNC FAQ page (https://citynaturechallenge.org/cnc-faqs-page/) or comment here.

We hope you have a great and relaxing time during the City Nature Challenge 2021: Lower Rio Grande Valley - there's a lot of life out there for us to explore and enjoy!

Posted on April 1, 2021 07:47 PM by bcfl14