City Nature Challenge 2025 results are in!

[anaka...@gmail.com]

Congratulations to all of you who participated in the challenge this year. This was the DC metro area’s 9th year and our best yet! Thank you to all the organizers, naturalists, educators, volunteers and community scientists that made 2025 such a success.

This is how we ranked:

Join us for our City Nature Challenge Celebration on Tues, May 20th at 7pm. We'll gather on Zoom to share our results, stories and favorite observations. Help us gather photos and stories here. Register here for the Zoom link.

If you have any CNC observations or photos of people you'd like to share with us, you can add them here. Please include your name and location in the folder name: (Ex: Ana Ka’ahanui_Ft. Dupont DC) We may use them to promote CNC in the future!

Mark your calendars for next year’s CNC: April 24-27, 2025.

Here is more info from the global organizers:

The results are in!

• 102,945 people joined in and made

• 3,310,131 observations of

• more than 73,765 different species all around the world

• with help from 23,196 identifiers!

That’s amazing! A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped out — whether you made observations, hosted an event, or helped identify species, we truly appreciate your efforts.

Special thanks to the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the California Academy of Sciences, and the many local organizers who helped bring the City Nature Challenge to more than 650 cities worldwide. Together, we broke records!

 Here are a few highlights from this year:

• For the first time ever, over 100,000 people took part!

• We passed 3 million observations during the challenge — compared to 2.4 million last year!

• In just one day, 1 million observations were uploaded to iNaturalist (it took nearly 7 years to reach that number when iNaturalist first started!)

• More than 50,000 species were recorded in a single day — about 1 in every 40 known species on Earth!

All of this data is important. It helps scientists learn more about plants and animals living near us, and it supports efforts to protect nature and save species around the world. 

There were some amazing discoveries this year! Check out this infographic from the City Nature Challenge team to see some of the coolest finds.

Warmly,
Alison Young
Director of Outreach Programs
On behalf of the CNC & iNat teams

 

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