Mark your calendars for April 27 - 30! We need your observations!

Calling all naturalists in and around Houston! We need YOU! This year's City Nature Challenge is on April 27 - 30, so you can go anywhere within the range (as seen in the above map on the project page) and make observations that will count this year. This is a competition among 65 cities in 15 different countries around the world. Can Texas compete? We think so! But we need your help. Any and all observations count, but the most valuable observations are made on public property (parks, right-of-ways, preserves, etc...) and are of wild (non-cultivated/not captive) organisms. Other observations count, of course, but the wild organisms found on public property can influence management and policy. Wherever you are, observe some things on April 27 - 30! Observations have to be uploaded before May 4 to count as well.

There is a global website here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/ Hopefully we'll have a TX website as well -- stay tuned!

Tagging some of the big users around Houston -- please tag others that you think would also want to participate. It's also quite fun to get together with others and deeply explore an area -- connect with some of the other naturalists in the area! :)

Posted on January 21, 2018 06:44 PM by sambiology sambiology

Comments

@sambiology side bet Cyperaceae tally?

Posted by anewman about 6 years ago

@sambiology I am so In!!!

Posted by rjnjr about 6 years ago

I cant make it sorry

Posted by zoology123 about 6 years ago

Thanks for posting this @sambiology, I was talking to someone the other day and we were wondering if this was going to be done once again. I will attempt to get some others involved.

We'll work to make Houston look even better than last year.

Posted by scottbuckel about 6 years ago

Houston folks, a few of us are starting to plan events during the Cities Challenge to ensure good coverage of all taxa and ecosystems within our area. Big misses last year were Moth/insect biodiversity, anything coastal (fishes, bivalves, gastropods, crustaceans, dune/salt marsh plants, etc.), fungi, freshwater fishes, and I was surprised we only had 180 bird species since we were in peak of spring migration. Please encourage specialist friends to get out after those hard to ID taxa (especially entomologist types!). I am working with a few others to make sure we document the diversity of our rare floristic communities, e.g. blackland prairie, saline barrens, fern bogs, East TX slope forest, etc. If anyone knows of acidic boggy communities in Liberty County, those would be killer.

Posted by anewman about 6 years ago

You can count on me! :D

Posted by artemis224 about 6 years ago

@anewman this year should be much better for avian migrants, last year there was almost nothing moving through that weekend.

If you get some things planned let me know, it is always fun to do things with other naturalists.

Posted by scottbuckel about 6 years ago

Got a conference call tomorrow with a few others to talk about lining up some events. I think I'll mostly run and gun the outskirts of our count area picking up weird stuff most might not target.

I might try to make it to a moth event if we get one set up (though I would provide no benefit to identification). @scottbuckel make High Island, Lafittes Cover, Quintana and marshes/ricefields your home during the Cities Challenge!

Posted by anewman about 6 years ago

@anewman those places and a couple of others will be my home range for those days. I would be interested in a moth event, just to see the moths and get a few photos. I have these days on both of my calendars. I'm thinking this should be fun and I will probably see a few things that I have not seen or reported in the past. Lets hope for a cold front to hit during those days and the bird count could be very high.

I'm going to try to get some of my Master Naturalist friends involved, I did get a few to report a few observations last year, maybe I can get more this year.

Posted by scottbuckel about 6 years ago

Thanks, @sambiology. I'm in this year and marking my calendar now!

Posted by birdbug62 about 6 years ago

Count me in. I'm going to try to encourage some kind of bioblitz at Exploration Green.

Posted by sonorabee about 6 years ago

I know there is a map posted. Do its boundaries coincide with county lines? Could you NAME the counties that are included, please?

Posted by paulines almost 6 years ago

Mark your calendar for next year's City Nature Challenge!!!!
April 26-29, 2019!

Stay tuned for more details, but make sure you mark those dates on your calendar! :)

Posted by sambiology over 5 years ago

@sambiology Thanks Sam! I'm in.

Posted by birdbug62 over 5 years ago

Add a Comment

Sign In or Sign Up to add comments