With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting, the entire world had to adapt how we participated in this year’s City Nature Challenge. This year we focused on a global collaboration instead of a competition, and physical distancing over public events. We are amazed at the creativity and resilience that we saw – and 2020’s City Nature Challenge results show just how important it was both globally and in the Pittsburgh region.
City Nature Challenge Results
This year, over 40,000 people around the world came together virtually to participate in the City Nature Challenge. Collectively we shared over 800,000 observations of nature near our homes, and documented 135,435 different species of fungi, plants, and animals. Want to see what was found in any of the more than 200 cities that participated? You can explore at this link.
Pittsburgh’s numbers are incredible too. At the end of the challenge, the Pittsburgh region ended up having 487 observers, 8,281 observations, and 1,225 different species. We almost doubled the number of observers from last year!
The identification phase was a success as well with 419 users helping identify 13,446 different observations. You can explore all the Pittsburgh Region’s observations from this year at this link.
Don’t Stop Observing!
We can’t put into words how thankful we are for everyone’s resilience and hard work. The results from this year’s City Nature Challenge prove that even though we have to distance from each other right now, we can still come together to accomplish something awesome.
The City Nature Challenge may be over, but the observations don’t have to end here. Nature is around you 24/7 and waiting to be observed. You can use the iNaturalist app anytime to share what you find!
We’d love to see your observations. Email them to nature360@carnegiemnh.org or tag us on social media @CarnegieMNH.
Get more nature activity ideas from Nature Lab!
