City Nature Challenge 2023

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is a large citizen science event covering cities around the globe. It was first held in 2016 by the California Academy of Sciences and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. This is a competition that brings cities from around the world together. Citizens of participating cities record local wildlife with the free app iNaturalist. After species identification, the city that records the greatest number of species will win the competition. Data collected during the competition would contribute to the global biodiversity database and assist scientists in ecological research.

City Nature Challenge competition is held from 28th April to 1st May 2023. Together with Mr. Shaun Martin, OWLHK is the main coordinator for this great event on voluntary basis!

How to participate

Download the free iNaturalist mobile app and register an account.
Within the competition period, explore wild animals and plants in the Hong Kong area and take good quality photos.
Upload the photos of wildlife to iNaturalist and fill in information such as location and date. (Observation records made from 28th April to 1st May 2023 will be automatically included in the Hong Kong CNC project.)
Species identification: wildlife, including native and non-native species in Hong Kong.
The observation records will be identified from 2nd May to 7th May 2023 and the results will be announced on 8th May 2023.
Let’s take part in the competition and strive for the championship for Hong Kong!

For more information, please visit the Hong Kong City Nature Challenge website.

Notes

Please do not submit photos of selfies, pets, indoor or outdoor potted plants, as it may affect the authenticity and accuracy of the database.
Protect and preserve nature, please try to reduce your interference with the environment, animals and plants during the competition.

iNaturalist User Guideline

Results for Hong Kong Region

Thanks to the efforts of all observers and identifiers participating in the event, Hong Kong has made some great achievements in obtaining a high ranking out of the 482 participating cities worldwide!

In particular, Hong Kong recorded a total of 4,469 different species. A total of 689 public observers contributed 39,071 observation records, with nearly 40% of the records reaching the "research level". The records provide high-quality data for local ecological database. Even more, the numbers of "observations submitted" and "species recorded" broke previous records in the Hong Kong region!

In only four days, our local observers have recorded more than 4,000 species, ranking the second globally! We do have rich ecology and biodiversity in Hong Kong.

Being part of City Nature Challenge, we would like to raise general public’s awareness and understanding of local biodiversity. Even this year’s event is over, we can still provide quality records to the online platform iNaturalist, contributing to local biodiversity database.

We look forward to having more people participating in this biodiversity-event next year! Let’s aim to reach the top with great records!

Bioblitz Activities Recap

As part of the celebration for OWLHK's seventh anniversary and in respond to this year's City Nature Challenge, we held a sharing session and different themed Bioblitz activities around the competition period. Local citizens would have a better understanding about the event and, in turn, more people joining. Local ecological experts were invited to go wildlife searching with the participants in the competition period.

This series of activities have 143 citizens participated, contributing to over 1,900 observation records to the local record. Even more surprisingly, one of our tutors has even found a spider that was never been recorded locally! What a gift to the local wildlife record! There is much out in the wild to discover here.

[Online Sharing Session]

Contents

Introduction to the City Nature Challenge
Forever Wanted: Citizen Scientists We need you in the community!
Sharing of experience by City Nature Challenge participant

[Bioblitz activities]

Themes: Birds, Spiders, Plants, Amphibians and Reptiles, Dragonflies, Ants and Insects