What is City Nature Challenge?

City Nature Challenge is a global citizen science project to collect information about our local wildlife which is used to inform local and national conservation work. The Living Coast took part for the third year as part of the Brighton & Eastern Downs region which extends beyond the biosphere boundary, an 800 km2 area that spans from the River Arun to Eastbourne and includes the South Downs National Park.

2022 results

In 2021 the challenge saw 52k participants make 1270,767 and this years observations totalling 1694,877 from over 67k individuals. 

Locally, 14 UK city regions took part in adding wildlife records to the UK City Nature Challenge map.

Almost 70k observations were made in the UK, an increase of over 20% on last years results. 3,972 UK citizen scientists participated this year compared to 3523 in 2021.   

33% increase in local participation

The Brighton & Eastern Downs results showed a 33% increase in community participation placing us 4th on the leader board of the 14 UK cities taking part. A huge achievement everyone taking the challenge should be proud of as collectively they observed the most species of all UK cities – a staggering 1,333!

Local result highlights:

• Over 7000 local observations in total (over 1000 more than 2021)
• 179 observers (33% increase from 2021)
• Over 1300 species (27% increase from 2021)
• Most observed species of ground ivy and common hawthorn same for 2021 & 2022

Thank you and see you in 2023

Thank you to every one of you who took part including The Living Coast board members, three of whom were in the top 20 observers!

We hope this year’s challenge has inspired more people to engage with nature on their doorstep and to use the iNaturalist app. You can enjoy observing and engaging with others using this great tool to identify and log nature all year round in our biosphere and beyond. If you’d like to explore some more of this year’s local observations take a look at the 2022 City Nature Challenge project page here and search #CityNatureChallenge on social media. We’ve really enjoyed seeing observations from cities across the globe.