The City Nature Challenge is an international competition between cities to document wildlife. It began in 2016 as a friendly competition between San Francisco and L.A. and quickly grew to 159 cities across 6 continents in 2019. Last year alone, City Nature Challenge had 35,000 participants that made nearly 1 million wildlife observations and documented over 1,000 rare, threatened, and endangered species. It is organized by California Academy of Sciences and Natural History Museum Los Angeles County.

iNaturalist is a free, fun, and easy app and website that allows anyone to post observations of wildlife. Researchers from around the world can access the data you share to inform land management decisions and more. You can add your observations to projects you are interested in, follow other iNaturalist users, and search for other observations as well. iNaturalist has an incredible feature that will automatically suggest identifications for your wildlife observations, which can be a great learning tool.

The greatest thing about City Nature Challenge is that ANYONE can participate! As long as your observations are from Winnebago, Boone, Ogle, Stephenson, and DeKalb Counties!

Participation is easy! First, make an iNaturalist account on their website or the free app available for all phone types. Then get outside and start posting observations between April 29-May 2 2022! If you would like some help with learning how to post on iNaturalist, please check out this video tutorial. We would like your help identifying observations posted to our iNaturalist project as well.

We love to partner with local organizations, governments, and businesses to help support the Rock River Valley City Nature Challenge. You can help us by promoting our project, hosting a bio-blitz, hosting a training, or helping identify posts on iNaturalist. Please contact Liz Wiener at liz@seversondells.org  or 815-335-2915 for more information!

Yes! We have a lot of resources for teachers and educators to make City Nature Challenge a fantastic hands-on learning opportunity for all. Contact liz@seversondells.org to create a meaningful and low-stress experience for your class.

iNaturalist is free, fun, and easy to use! The below tutorials are great resources.