Take part in the City Nature Challenge 2022

Attention all budding naturalists! Get involved with the City Nature Challenge, an international campaign to discover and record as much wildlife as possible over the Spring Bank Holiday weekend. Just download and use the iNaturalist app.

What is the City Nature Challenge?

The City Nature Challenge is an exciting global citizen science event to discover and record as much wildlife as possible, using the free iNaturalist app, whilst helping people connect with the nature on their doorstep. It started as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2016, and has expanded in scale year upon year. Last year, worldwide, more than 1,270,000 observations of 45,300 species were uploaded to iNaturalist by nearly 53,000 people worldwide.

This year, the Brighton & Eastern Downs region will be taking part in the global City Nature Challenge alongside 400+ city regions worldwide, including 14 across the UK. To make things really interesting, we’ll be in competition with the University of Sussex so get involved and help showcase the amazing nature we have in this region. Anyone can take part between 29 April and 2 May – young and old, experienced naturalists and curious beginners.

Where and how to get involved

You can record your nature sightings from Pulborough in the west across the South Downs east to reaching the outskirts of Eastbourne.

• Search your local park, garden, school ground, nature reserve, beach – there are endless possibilities!
• Observations can be made of wildlife on land, in freshwater, or in the sea!
• We encourage you to only upload wild and non-captive sightings. Please, no photos of people, pets, or potted-plants!
• You don’t have to be an expert, as the iNaturalist app will give you some handy suggestions of what it thinks you’ve seen and the iNaturalist online community will help you to learn more about the wildlife around you.
• See our Step-by-Step guide (PDF) and flyer (PDF) for more information.

Join our experts for a live event 29 March from 4pm (on Microsoft Teams)

If you have questions about the City Nature Challenge then why not meet the local representing organisers, Dr Rachel White and Maureen Berg. Join via the Microsoft Teams session on Tuesday 29 March from 4:00pm in the City Nature Challenge 2022 channel using the joining code: aq2o52e