Calling all citizen scientists and nature enthusiasts! The City of Kingston is participating in the annual City Nature Challenge, and we need you to help put us on the map.

We participated in the City Nature Challenge last year for the first time, and we got some great results! Kingston participants logged 821 observations over four days, for a total of 325 species of wild flora and fauna identified in our city. So we have a challenge for YOU: can we beat our own record this year?

What is the City Nature Challenge?

The first City Nature Challenge was held between Los Angeles and San Francisco as a friendly competition to see which city could document the most species of wild plants and animals in a short period of time.

The purpose of the challenge was to better understand urban biodiversity, but it has become so much more. What was once a friendly competition between two cities has grown to a national, then international event where scientists and community members unite, working together to find and document nature. The challenge invites us to explore our neighbourhoods and the wider community, get to know local parks and greenspaces, discover places we haven’t been before and learn more about the plants and animals we share our community with.

Several academic papers have even come out of this event — proof that efforts to support urban diversity are bearing fruit!

How to participate in the City Nature Challenge

The City Nature Challenge is being facilitated through the iNaturalist platform. You can use the iNaturalist app on your phone, tablet or desktop computer. To participate in the challenge, all you have to do is get outside, take pictures or record sounds of any animals or wild plants you come across and upload them to iNaturalist between April 26 – 29.

All observations uploaded in Kingston during the challenge will automatically be included in the final species count. It’s that easy!

iNaturalist has some great instructions on how to upload your observations, but here are some great tips for making sure your observations are properly recorded:

1. Make sure your phone’s location services are turned on for your camera and for iNaturalist— usually accessed through the security settings on your phone.
2. Head outside, open up the iNaturalist app and find an organism you’d like to make an observation of.
3. Plants are a good place to start since they won’t run away from you! While you can make observations of anything, try to look for organisms that are wild—so plants growing on their own without human help or non-domesticated animals like insects or birds.
4. Tap the button to make a new observation and choose “Take Photo” when the options pop up.
5. Take your first photo. You’ll have the option to re-take the photo until you’re satisfied.
6. Once you have a photo you like, you’ll be taken back to the observation screen. Notice that iNaturalist will have automatically populated the date and time as well as your current location.
7. From the observation screen, you can add more photos to the observation, for example, if you’d like to get a close-up of the flower or plant.
8. Once you’re satisfied with your photos, tap the box that says “What did you see? View suggestions.” If you have a network or wi-fi connection, this will link you to the computer vision on iNaturalist, which will try to suggest possible identifications based on your photograph and your location.
9. The “Top Suggestions” should say that the species are “Visually Similar/Seen Nearby” – these are good choices to pick from. You can pick a suggestion from iNaturalist, or you can type in your own identification using the search bar, at any level of detail you know (e.g., “California poppy” or “Plants” are both fine to use as an ID!)
10. Once you’ve added an identification, you’ll be taken back to the observation screen where you should save the observation. Once you save it, it will be uploaded to iNaturalist where the community can work together to confirm or refine the identification.

And of course it goes without saying, please be safe when you’re out and about. Don’t take unnecessary risks to get a desired shot of a plant or animal and always be aware of your surroundings.

Documenting local wildlife is more important than ever as we see the effects of climate and environmental changes on biodiversity. The City Nature Challenge is one way that we as a community can take action. I look forward to joining you again this year as we discover nature in our own backyards and beyond!