City Nature Challenge 2024

Join Texas Parks & Wildlife, Texas Master Naturalists, the Audubon Society, The Nature Conservancy and others in a fun challenge to see which city can document the most species. It is easy to participate by making observations on your own using iNaturalist.

I hope many of you are excited about this year’s iNaturalist bioblitz. Here is a step by step guide:

1. Login to your iNaturalist account (best done on your computer for these first few steps). If you don’t have an account, sign up for one now.
2. On another browser tab, click on this link:

https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/texas_nature_trackers/naturechallenge/ 

3. Scroll down to the list of Participating Cities and click on Houston/Galveston. That will take you to your iNaturalist dashboard and you can click JOIN this project. Scroll down to see the map (much of our chapter territory is included) and to confirm you want to join this project. 

4. Go back to the link shown in step 2. Scroll down to where it says Visit City Nature Challenge Global Project 2024 and click on that. That will take you to your iNaturalist dashboard and you can click JOIN this project. Scroll down to confirm you want to join the Global project. 

5. That’s it! Now your observations made in iNaturalist anytime during those 4 days will be “counted” as part of the challenge. If you are in the area covered by the Houston project, you will help that “city” get some bragging rights. If you are outside that area, your observations are credited to the Global project and can still be logged as citizen science.

Tune up your iNaturalist app, charge your smartphone and set aside some times during those 4 days to “observe” what’s around you.  

Now, here are some TIPS FOR RECORDING YOUR HOURS IN VMS:

* Every time you observe and submit your nature observations, make a note of your time (remember 15 minute minimum for each observation period). 

*That means if you observed for 15 minutes then took another 5 minutes to share your observations, that’s 20 minutes to make a note of. 

* If you go to a particular location specifically to do your observations, for example, going to a local park, you may also add in reasonable travel time.

* At the end of the 4 days (midnight on Monday), or whenever you know you won’t be making any more observations, add up your times.

* On Tuesday, log into VMS and choose Citizen Science – other.  

* Since this is one of the “field research” opportunities, you can put in begin and end dates so enter April 26 and April 29.

* Enter the TOTAL number of hours (to the nearest quarter hour) you spent over the 4 days. 

* In Description, make sure you put Texas Trackers City Nature Challenge 2024 with iNaturalist.

That’s it! 

 To learn more about the City Nature Challenge, click here:  https://tpwd.texas.gov/huntwild/wild/wildlife_diversity/texas_nature_trackers/naturechallenge/