Join Texas Parks and Wildlife, Texas Master Naturalists, the Audubon Society, and many others in a fun challenge to see which city can document the most species during April 27 - 30. It is easy to participate by joining an event or making observations on your own using the iNaturalist app. With the iNaturalist app, you just take a picture of a plant or animal, and the community will help identify which species it is. Any observation in the greater metropolitan area of Houston will count during the four day challenge. You can participate by exploring the life in your backyard, in your local park, or on a field trip with your local naturalist group. You can also help with IDs for other people's observations to increase our species count, come to a bioblitz, or even hold your own event!
More than 75 cities on six continents are asking residents of and visitors to these urban areas to explore nature all around them and document the species they find - see the full list of cities here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/. Results will be announced Friday, May 4, so be sure to upload your observations by then!
Last year over 126,000 observations were logged in 5 days by over 4000 citizen scientists, representing more than 8500 species in the United States! That works out to one observation about every 3 seconds of the City Nature Challenge! What will we find this year, when we look all over the world? The City Nature Challenge is organized by Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences.