The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is back for 2022! 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 thousands of local biodiversity lovers by making observations from April 29 - May 2 and/or helping to identify observations from May 3 - May 8, 2022. We will be documenting biodiversity within the I-495 corridor, out to Stellwagen Bank, and include Cape Cod and islands. We are reaching out today to you as an organization who has participated before, expressed interest before, or because someone suggested you may be interested. Are you ready to join as a participating organization? If so, please register your organization with us by completing this google form by March 1st (earlier is better!) to let us know you are participating. Here are a few examples of how you can become a participating organizations in the 2022 CNC in the Boston Area: Spread the word! Send out information about the CNC to your member or volunteer lists. Plan an event or incorporate the CNC into your existing events. Encourage involvement virtually or in COVID-safe ways respecting public health guidelines. Help observe and/or identify species, capturing images during the observation period (April 29 - May 2) and/or identifying them (May 3 - May 8). We hope to continue to build our identifier community this year as the more observations we identify to species level, the bigger our tally! Use the data collected by the CNC to help with your conservation, management or research efforts. Let us know! We know researchers, educators, and community members use this information if you do - please let us know. For an example of our local data being used see the Your Data in Action video from Dr. Corey Callaghan which highlights CNC Boston data. If you’re an educator (formal or informal - all levels K12+) let us help you get youth involved with our Education Toolkit! This includes NGSS-aligned pre-, during, and post-event materials. College educators check out this recent paper which features Dr. Hitchcock’s use of iNaturalist with students at Brandeis University and how the CNC complement learning!
While the global pandemic is influencing our approach to documenting urban biodiversity, together we have observed a lot of species over the past two years! We are grateful to our regional community of iNat’ters who take time to connect with one another through their shared interest in nature. Thanks to the collective efforts documenting biodiversity ‘where you are’ in 2020 - 1,076 observers recorded 15,361 observations, including 1,636 species. In 2021 - 1,867 observers recorded 24,575 observations, including 2,055 species. Despite the pandemic, more people participated in 2021 than in 2019, and we documented more than 600 additional species in 2021 than in 2019. Perhaps more importantly, more than 1,800 members of our local community spent time intentionally connecting with and observing our natural world. For 2022, we will build on the success of a place-based focus to document biodiversity. We 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. However you participate, we want to support your efforts. We have flyers, iNaturalist how-to handouts and trainings, science quests to delve deeper, and an Education Toolkit to help you engage others. We have a website (2022 updates are coming, but there are still lots of good resources there now). Join the 2022 Boston Area iNaturalist project today and stay tuned for more information. If you have any concerns or suggestions for this year, please contact us. We look forward to hearing from and working with you! Please fill out the google form to register as a participating organization as soon as you can! Feel free to reach out directly to me with questions. Otherwise be well, keep an eye on the natural world, and share your observations on iNat! |
