CITY NATURE CHALLENGE
The City Nature Challenge was invented by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and California Academy of Sciences. It is an international effort for people to find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe. It’s a bioblitz-style competition where cities are in a contest against each other to see who can make the most observations of nature, who can find the most species, and who can engage the most people. Knowing what species are in our city and where they are helps us study and protect them, but the ONLY way to do that is by all of us working together to find and document the nature in our area.
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Started in 2016 for the first-ever Citizen Science Day, the first City Nature Challenge was an eight-day competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, engaging residents and visitors in documenting nature to better understand urban biodiversity. Over 20,000 observations were made by more than 1000 people in a one-week period, cataloging approximately 1600 species in each location, including new records for both areas. During the 2016 CNC, we heard so much excitement and interest from people in other cities that we decided we couldn’t keep to the fun just to ourselves. In 2017 the City Nature Challenge went national, and in 2018, the CNC is now an international event! The Klang Valley is the first Malaysian (and Southeast Asian) urban metro area to participate in the CNC!
Watch the official City Nature Challenge video:
KLANG VALLEY CITY NATURE CHALLENGE
Co-organised by the Rimba Project with Water Warriors, the KV CNC aims to reconnect urban communities to nature, and to advocate for urban wildlife and biodiversity conservation. Join us in this fun, international challenge to document the most species during 27-30 April 2018.
Figure 1. The KV CNC is not site-specific: any observation made in the KV’s 10 local authority areas (above) during the four-day challenge may be included in this project.
WHY PARTICIPATE?
1. The KV CNC will help establish a publically-accessible biodiversity baseline.
Biodiversity loss is one of the most urgent environmental issues today. Nations and communities worldwide face the challenge of keeping accurate and consistently up-to-date records of wildlife. Meanwhile, there is nature and wildlife (both plants and animals) all around us, even in our cities! Knowing what species exist in our cities and where they are helps us conserve and protect them.
However, there are two problems:
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· Documentation efforts are few and far between. We lack baseline data for urban biodiversity: it is not something that is regularly documented unless as part of commissioned environmental impact assessments (EIAs) for development projects, or as scientific studies undertaken on a case-by-case basis.
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· These studies are seldom, if ever, made available to the public.
2. The KV CNC will involve the public in this very act of collecting data.
The KV CNC will mobilise not only scientific communities and enthusiasts, but also community groups and the general public, working together to discover and document the city’s wildlife. We will use a citizen science approach to increase awareness and participation across all levels of expertise and experience. The more frequently you do it, the better you will become as an urban nature scientist: in short, practice makes perfect! Through this event, you will not only learn more about your local nature, but also make the city a better place for yourself and other species!
HOW IT WORKS: iNaturalist APP
You can participate in your own backyard, in your local park, on a school or university field trip, or on a hike or excursion with nature enthusiasts—as long as it is within the Klang Valley!
Figure 2. The straightforward process of making an observation in iNaturalist: take a picture of a plant or animal (or record a sound), and identify the species and location.
Figure 3. iNaturalist’s user-friendly interface (Android app view). Remember Pokémon Go? Similar concept, except here you actually make a difference in the real world!
WHAT TO UPLOAD: iNaturalist App
You may use your phone (recommended so that the GPS location will be accurate) to upload photos of animals or plants. You may also use your computer to upload a recorded bird call later.
Figure 4. Guide on what to upload.
You may take a few photos for a single observation. This will help other people to identify your observations. Notice that for plants, you need to take photos of the flower, fruit, close up of leaf and trunk's pattern.
Figure 5 & 6. Examples of photos uploaded for animals and plants.
Here's a step-by-step guide on how to use the iNaturalist app:
JOIN US!
We invite you and your organisation to partner with us in one of the following ways:
1. Participate as an individual or as part of a group, community or organisation. Join us, whether only for 15 minutes in your garden, or for a full day (or two!) at a designated site. If required, we are happy to provide the necessary training and capacity building. Let us know if you are interested in principle; we will then work out finer details.
2. Advise. If you have some expertise in botany or zoology, or if you have experience with bioblitz, iNaturalist, citizen science and/or environmental education, we invite you to join us as an adviser. You can be onsite (as a facilitator during the event) or offsite (as an online curator on iNaturalist), or both! Help us build capacity and verify data.
3. Publicise. We need writers, photographers, illustrators and designers to help us create media and content to spread the word and raise awareness. Do also extend this invitation to colleagues, associates, friends and family!