Two woman surveying nature by Matthew Roberts
Staffordshire City Nature Challenge
City Nature Challenge 2024 was a huge success!
What exactly is City Nature Challenge?
The City Nature Challenge is an annual competition between locations all over the world to see how many wild species their citizens can spot over the space of four days. 2024 is the second year Staffordshire has taken part, and it was a massive success with the county coming in 3rd place of all the competing locations in the UK. Over the four-day challenge, 155 people participated, and made a total of 9968 observations of 1212 different species!
2023 marked our debut to the challenge. We ranked 9th in the UK, with 138 people making more than 3,900 observations of over 800 species. So we've seen some growth in 2024, and want to do even better in April 2025! Mark your calendars for next year and help us break our record.
Our involvement is organised thanks to our colleagues at Staffordshire Ecological Records (SER).
As well as an activity that gets us to see and engage with the wonderful wildlife in our towns, cities, and countryside it also provides organisations like SER and Staffordshire Wildlife Trust vital information that can help protect wildlife across the county. Species observations generated during the City Nature Challenge will help us map changes in the distribution and population of our wildlife.
Keep an eye on our social media channels and this webpage for more information closer to the day.
Model: David Morrison. Description: London peregrine expert watching peregrine falcons (Falco peregrinus) on the houses of parliament, central london, summer. Author: Bertie Gregory - Bertie Gregory/2020VISION
Two woman surveying nature by Matthew Roberts
Survey 2 - Kevin Caster
How Can I Take Part?
The 2024 City Nature Challenge is now closed. You can always prep for next year though! Records of wildlife spotted in Staffordshire from 26 – 29 April 2024 counted towards our total and moved us up the live global leader board.
The easiest way to make your records count is to use the free iNaturalist app or website. Simply take a photo of a wild plant or animal, and the app's inbuilt software will help you to identify it!
Resources
SIMPLE HOW TO TAKE PART GUIDE
Survey 2 - Kevin Caster
Step-by-step iNaturalist Guide
WOODLAND TRUST NATURE DETECTIVES
Ben Hall/2020VISION
INVERTEBRATE IDENTIFICATION GUIDE
THE GREAT MINI BEAST HUNT
If you are part of a local community group and are interested in organise your own City Nature Challenge event, please let us know as we would love to hear about it! Our Local Groups have organised some events to help you get started with iNaturalist, you can find them here.
2. Help us to identify what’s been seen (30 April to 5 May)
Another way you might like to take part is to help others to identify what they’ve seen. Once a photo is uploaded onto iNaturalist anyone can then help to identify what it is. This can be a great way of helping to develop your own identification skills, but remember, it’s not always possible to identify a species from a photo! The more photos we have confidently identified to species, the better!
We have until 5 May to upload our records to iNaturalist and to help identify them.
As records are uploaded they will appear on our iNaturalist project page.
WHEN ARE THE RESULTS ANNOUNCED?
The results are announced in May.
The records are collated in the iNaturalist Recording System and the leader board is updated in real time!
Cities are ranked according to:
• Number of Observations
• Number of Species
• Number of Observers
The City Nature Challenge is organised globally by: California Academy of Sciences and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum.
If you have any questions about the Staffordshire Nature Challenge, please drop an email to the team:
info@staffs-ecology.org.uk
We'll be sending out some updates and reminders on the City Nature Challenge nearer to the time. If you would like to receive these updates follow us on Facebook and Twitter