An invitation to participate in the HRM City Nature Challenge 2019
Hi Everyone!
This post is to let you all know that Halifax is registered to participate in the City Nature Challenge (http://citynaturechallenge.org/about/). This international citizen science event started in 2016 and is happening again in 2019. The exact dates are April 26-29, 2019.
You can see the expanding list of participants here: http://citynaturechallenge.org/2019-city-list/ We expect the competition to be fierce with so many cities joining in this year!
Our objective in setting up the local CNC event is simple – we want everyone to come out and explore and in the process have fun and share observations.
You’ve been tagged in this journal post (or in the comments) because you’re either: (1) a top observer from Canada150 iNaturalist projects, and/or (2) an iNat observer in the Halifax Area over the last year or so. We’re really hoping you’ll participate in this year’s Halifax Regional Municipality City Nature Challenge – while we know getting observations from as many people as we can is important, we also know that it’s top iNat observers like you that will really push us ahead in the number of observations made and especially the number of species found in the Nova Scotia!
The easiest way to join in is to just make as many observations of as many species as possible in any of the sixteen districts in HRM during April 26-29. Helping with IDs will also increase our species number, so that’s a great way to help out as well. And of course, spread the word!
If you haven’t already done so please go to the following site and request to join the City Nature Challenge 2019: Halifax Regional Municipality iNaturalist project: https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-2019-halifax-regional-municipality News items will be posted to this project page and if you have joined then you should be automatically notified.
The details: the CNC runs from 12:00AM on Apr. 26 to 11:59PM on Apr. 29 at 11:59 pm, 2019. All observations from all areas in HRM (urban and rural) count. CNC will announce results on Friday, May 6th, so try to get all your observations uploaded by then! Also, the more observations we can get identified down to species by then, the higher our species number will be.
The CNC will create a leaderboard page once the challenge commences in April - it will be dynamic and will shuffle the order of the cities based on who has made the most observations.
Locally we’ve been brainstorming about places around HRM that would be really great to have people explore during the City Nature Challenge – If you have favourite places please drop us a line and we will add them to our list.
If your organization will be holding an event in the April 26-29 window that people could come to and make iNaturalist observations for the City Nature Challenge, please let us know and we’ll add it to our CNC project page as a news item.
Please feel free to brainstorm other ideas, ask questions, etc. in the comments – and definitely add others to this journal post via tagging them in the comments!