Claire O'Neill
Hello CNC Boston Area Biodiversity Observers!
From April 30 - May 9, 2021 join us for the 2020 City Nature Challenge!
The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is back for 2021! The Boston Area will be once again participating in the global effort to document urban biodiversity. You, your family, and your organization can work together with our local biodiversity observers by making observations from April 30 - May 3 and/or helping to identify observations from May 4 - May 9, 2021. We will once again be documenting biodiversity within the I-495 corridor, out to Stellwagen Bank, and include Cape Cod and islands.
While theglobal pandemic in 2020 did lead us to refocus our approach to documenting urban biodiversity - together we sure did see a lot of species! We are so very grateful to our community of iNat’ters who take the time to connect with one another through our interest in nature. Thanks to your efforts documenting biodiversity ‘where you are’ in 2020 - we recorded 15,347 observations of 1,702 species by 1,069 observers. While the total number of observations went down from 2019, we documented about 200 additional species and still had over 1,000 members of our local community connecting to nature.
For 2021, we will build on the success of a place-based focus to document biodiversity and encourage you to keep it local and safe! Go slow and steady to explore in detail the biodiversity near you. We will continue to use iNaturalist to record observations and tally results.
Join the iNaturalist project page today to keep up to date!
Be well, keep an eye on the natural world, and share your observations on iNat!
ⓘ About the Boston Area Challenge and its Organization
The Boston Area CNC is organized by Brandeis University Environmental Studies Program, Earthwise Aware, UMass-Boston, Earthwatch Institute, MassBays National Estuary Partnership, Suffolk University: Boston, and Zoo New England.
If you or organization would like to get involved please reach out to us at bostoncncgmail.com or feel free to connect directly to any member of the steering committee (included below). Our official call for participating organizations will come soon.
□ The 2021 CNC Steering Committee:
◍ Colleen Hitchcock, Brandeis University
◍ Claire O’Neill, Earthwise Aware
◍ Rob Stevenson, University of Massachusetts Boston
◍ Eliza Forman and John Anderson, Zoo New England
◍ Peter Burn, Suffolk University
◍ Pam DiBona, MassBays National Estuary Partnership
◍ Stan Rullman and Mark Chandler, Earthwatch Institute
