Nottingham joins global City Nature Challenge this weekend
Nottingham residents are invited to record wildlife across the city as the City Nature Challenge returns. Organisers hope to beat last year’s total of nearly 1,000 species identified.
Morning briefing Nottingham
Temperature
3° to 18°C
Rain
Dry today
Wind
Gusts 13 mph
Sunset
20:19
Ride details Good to ride
Recommended gear
- Gloves
- Light layers
Best times to ride
Breezy today
- 06 4°
- 09 5°
- 12 11°
- 15 17°
- 18 18°
- 21 13°
The City Nature Challenge began at midnight this morning and runs throughout the weekend. This is the seventh year that Nottingham City will catalogue its fauna. This year the organisers hope to increase the variety of species found compared to last year.
The Challenge is a citizen science project that aims to collect the numbers of all the natural life that can be found in the wild around us. Participants are tasked with taking photos of all creatures from insects to mammals, and then submitting those photos to the website or app, to be collated and classified by other volunteers next weekend.
The project is actually a global one, with over 650 cities around the world taking part. It was originally started as a friendly competition to see who could collect the most data between the California Academy of Sciences and Natural History Museum Los Angeles County, in the USA.
Sheffield is also taking part this year, and the Briefing fully endorses a friendly rivalry between Nottingham City and Sheffield - even though the Elite hockey season is over.
Last year, Nottingham City participants submitted 3,686 observations, finding 919 species. The organisers have expressed an eagerness to increase the number of species this year. Worldwide, 3.3 million observations found over 73,000 species.
The Bristol Natural History Consortium said: "We can only protect nature if we know it’s there."
To take part, you can join on the iNaturalist UK website where more details on how to take photos, upload them, and tag them are given. You do not need to know the species you're recording. That's a job for next weekend, when more volunteers gather to label each finding.
Shane P
Sherwood Forest is home to a number of British beetles, and so may be a good place to find rarer creatures.
