What is City Nature Challenge?

City Nature Challenge is an epic, global citizen science project to collect information about our local wildlife, which will be used to inform local and national conservation work. The Living Coast has taken part in this challenge for the last 2 years with some fascinating discoveries 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.

2021 results

How to take part?

UK cities are collaborating with 400+ cities across the world to find and record as much wildlife as possible to help track how nature is bouncing back this spring!

The wildlife records are logged using the free and simple iNaturalist platform, which can be used on a mobile app or on a computer.

When is City Nature Challenge 2022?

On Friday 29th April – Monday 2nd May cities across the world will be recording data together. You can spend as much or as little time taking part as you like!

Between the 3rd – 8th May the iNaturalist community will identify and verify the wildlife records (this means that you can upload records that you are not confident about identifying).

Who can take part?

Everyone can take part! Wildlife records collected within the 14 UK city regions will be part of the global challenge. If you are based outside of one of the competing cities, you can still take part by adding wildlife records to the UK City Nature Challenge map.

Learning objectives

Participants will:

• Observe and identify living things
• Discover what creatures live in and
• around their schools/homes
• Help to protect nature by recording wildlife

How to take part:

Health and safety considerations

• An iNaturalist account can be created by young people aged 13+. For younger children the account should be created by a parent or guardian.
• You can also create a class, school, or group account.
• You can set your location visibility to ‘obscured’ if you want to hide your exact location.
• Teachers and group leaders should complete a risk assessment based on their chosen site and the needs of their students. For further information visit: https://www.hse.gov.uk/

Activity ideas, tools and resources

Guides, videos and activity sheets from partner organisations:

• BBC: Visit the BBC Springwatch site for wildlife clips and videos
• Forestry England: wildlife spotter activity sheet
• The Wildlife Trusts: Wildlife Watch activity sheets
• Woodland Trust: What is a minibeast?
• Woodland Trust: Tree ID guides
• WWT: Garden Bird Spotter Sheet
• WWT: Guide to pond dipping and pond species

Other resources:

• Visit the NHC website to download a KS1, KS2 or KS3 City Nature Challenge lesson plan here.
• Visit the City Nature Challenge Education Toolkit, created by the US Challenge organisers, for resources and activity ideas for different age groups.
• Why not create your own City Nature Challenge competition between classes, schools or youth groups? This can be done by setting up your own iNaturalist project and inviting others to contribute. Your wildlife records made 29th April – 2nd May will still be included in the City Nature Challenge data.
• Look out for free iNaturalist training sessions – info to follow.

Get in touch

We’d love to hear about your City Nature Challenge activities and findings! Share your photos using the hashtag #CNCUK.

Discover more on our City Nature Challenge project page here