Chicagoans will soon have the opportunity to tune into the natural world for the sake of friendly competition with the return of the City Nature Challenge, a global mobilization of wildlife lovers that requires little more than looking out for species such as bristly buttercup, eastern cottontails and maybe a piping plover or two.
The challenge begins April 29 in the Chicago region and runs through May 2, with the following week set aside for identification of the findings and final results to be announced May 9.
Participation requires submitting a photo of a plant, animal or fungi to the citizen science platform iNaturalist during the competition period. As long as the organism is wild — be it a bug inside your home or a beaver in a stream — the submission will contribute to the challenge.
Last year’s challenge broke records, with over 1,000 participants in the Chicago region recording more than 1,500 species through nearly 12,500 observations. That was a jump from 2020, when about 550 people helped identify more than 800 species with nearly 4,300 observations.
The most common species spotted last year included prairie trillium, red-winged blackbirds and common blue violet.
The challenge “effectively connects members of the public from all walks of life with scientists and community leaders in real time,” a news release about this year’s challenge said. “Large pools of data built through apps like iNaturalist in conjunction with natural history museums, and other scientific organizations, help leaders make informed conservation decisions that allow both human and natural communities to thrive.”
Citizen science allows everyday participants to contribute to environmental research and answer questions about local biodiversity. A Field Museum project that looked at data from the Chicago Wilderness alliance region, which includes more than 7 million acres from southern Wisconsin up to Michigan, found iNaturalist has seen exponential observation growth in the last decade.
Like citizen science efforts, the City Nature Challenge, started in 2016 between Los Angeles and San Francisco, has grown. Last year, more than 1.2 million observations were made by more than 52,000 people around the world for upward of 45,000 species identified. This year, Chicago will be just one of hundreds of cities expected to participate.
Included in the boundaries of the Chicago region will be observations logged in more than a dozen counties, the majority in Illinois and northwest Indiana.
The local challenge is led by conservation organizations and agencies including the Chicago Park District, Chicago Wilderness, Shedd Aquarium and Chicago Botanic Garden.
For those seeking some structure, there are events planned around the challenge.
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Lincoln Park Zoo will offer a virtual training on identifying neighborhood plants and animals. In-person events in Cook County include birding at the North Park Village Nature Center and Marian R. Byrnes Park, a cleanup at 63rd Street Beach and a challenge gathering at Northerly Island.
More information and iNaturalist resources are available on the challenge website.