The City Nature Challenge is an annual competition among cities all over the world to see how many wild species their citizens can spot over four days: Friday 26 April to Monday 29 April. This is the second year that Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are taking part. Rory Middleton, Ecological Data Manager for SER, said: āWeāre excited for this yearās challenge. In our debut last year, the county placed eighth out of the 11 UK places that took part, and 114th out of the 492 places worldwide that took part. It was a great start, but we hope Staffordshire can break its record this year. āTo take part youāll need to either download the free iNaturalist app on your phone or tablet, or use the website to record sightings. For a record to count youāll need to snap a photo of what youāve found and upload it to iNaturalist. You can use the app to identify what youāve found or use the in-built search function to select the species if you know what youāve seen. āNot only is this a fun way to get involved in recording nature ā the information gathered will give us vital data for our county and help us work to protect it. Observations recorded during the challenge will help us map changes in the distribution and population of Staffordshireās wildlife.ā Ā |
More information about how to take part, and an iNaturalist instruction video, can be found here: