City Nature Challenge done and dusted for 2021, what’s next?

This year marked the 6th annual international City Nature Challenge (in celebration of Citizen Science month) to motivate people to spend time outside over a 4-day weekend to document wildlife in and around urban areas in the biodiversity social-media platform iNaturalist.

Organised by the founders of iNaturalist, the California Academy of Sciences and Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) was once again a celebration of nature for amateur naturalists rather than a competition due to the COVID-19 pandemic. 

A screenshot showing observations taken at Old Fort Road Park in Central Durban

Image: Hilton Maclarty

iNaturalist is a delightful platform where anybody you can take a picture of something growing in their property or in a nearby open space, and upload it, and in a few hours or a day some live person can tell you what it is. From first observations, places, projects, places, identification guides, pictorial libraries to an online community waiting to share their knowledge iNaturalist’s Artificial Intelligence reveals the web of life and the connections between places and specific regions.

Despite the Challenge focusing on the collaborative aspect of people around the globe connecting to and documenting nature in whatever way they were able, the elements of competition persisted with Cape Town (participating for the third time) once again topping the leaderboard for most observations – a whopping 71,000 observations with only two cities managing more than half this.

This year the number of participating cities almost doubled with 419 cities across 44 countries participating. The Challenge finally topped one million observations in 4 days with nearly 1.3 million observations of over 45,300 species (including more than 2,100 species of conservation concern) by 52,777 people. Quite an impressive outcome!

Apart from Cape Town, four other South African cities (Garden Route, Nelson Mandela Bay, eThekwini and Tshwane) participated in the City Nature Challenge for the first time, without severe lockdown restrictions. We are beyond excited that Garden Route feature in the Top 10 while eThekwini and Tshwane were neck to neck throughout the Challenge and featured in the Top 50 most observations per city. Nelson Mandela Bay managed over 2 500 observations (with almost 60% identified to species) among just 21 observers.

South African Cities Leaderboard

The tiny eThekwini organising committee is appreciative of all the time and hard work that the 125 observers have put into getting our city on the map and making the CNC happen. As well as the 284 identifiers who worked tirelessly to identify the almost 7 500 observations which resulted in 1 640 species documented over the 4-day Challenge. This colossal effort ensured eThekwini featured in the Top 25 cities globally in terms of species. We may not have sufficient trained botanists and entomologists, but we are privileged to have knowledgeable citizen scientists who are able to assist with identifying a lot of the botanical observations out of season.

Suncana Bradley, a Croatian living in South Africa, joined the iNaturalist community in 2017 and has contributed over 5 000 observations and assisted with just over 2 500 identifications. Her passion for conservation, especially rearing caterpillars, relieves stress while helping her think outside the box and thrive in her career. Suncana’s contribution tripled from CNC 2020 to CNC 2021 whereby her observations totalled 440 recording 169 different species. She does attest to having several observations from her garden since she is ‘pretty much living in a forest’. Watch the video created by Jellyfish that details Suncana’s interest in nature.

Kloof Conservancy’s very own Paolo Candotti was a close contender for Top observer in the CNC 2021 with 432 observations recording 147 species. Paolo claims to not having expert knowledge on neither flora nor fauna but is drawn towards recording the biodiversity in his neighbourhood. Interestingly, last year during hard lockdown Paolo topped the leaderboard with 339 observations and a total of 178 species recorded. It does help living along a greenbelt and having Krantzkloof Nature Reserve in close vicinity.

Young nature conservationist and environmental educator, as well as eThekwini municipality’s Top 10 Observers, Presha Soogrim grew up on the outskirts of Durban and enjoys looking for animals wherever she goes. Presha originally joined iNaturalist to better learn the names of organisms and is amazed by the number of people who have helped her with identifications. Presha contributed the highest number of species (257) during the CNC 2021 while toping the charts of mammal, amphibians and reptiles.

Alison Young plays an active role in a variety of botanical citizen science groups – Botanical Society KZN Inland Branch, Custodians of Rare & Endangered Wildflowers (CREW) Programme Midlands group, and the PMB node of the Bonsai, Orchid and Cycad societies – while running the University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) Botanical Gardens. Despite residing outside of eThekwini municipality, Alison had organised a bioblitz at sites on the west of Ethekwini. Having contributed just over 100 observations of 104 species, Alison spent most of the post-CNC observation period scrolling through observations (made by new users uploading their first-ever observations) to offer identifications and encourage nature newcomers. Her 649 identifications top the eThekwini Identifier leaderboard.

eThekwini Leaderboard

The City Nature Challenge is a wonderful opportunity for eThekwini residents to enjoy the natural spaces across our city. New Germany Nature Reserve had the most participation during the Challenge, closely followed by Nkonka Valley in Kloof. Krantzkloof Nature Reserve yielded the highest observations from all reserves in the city while Umhlanga Lagoon Nature Reserve was abuzz with Durban North residents participating in the Reserve’s bioblitz. Parks are managed in almost every suburb across our city yet very few received attention during the CNC.

Citizen Scientists at work

Photo: Mike Coppinger

iNaturalist groups organisms into Birds, Amphibians, Reptiles, Mammals, Ray-finned fishes, Mollusks, Arachnids, Insects, Plants, Fungi and Protozoans. Despite the City Nature Challenge being held out of our flowering season, 4500 of the almost 7500 observations were of plants of which Strelitzia nicolai was the most observed of the almost 1000 species recorded!

The Strelitzia is a favourite is no surprise as it is honoured on KZN’s coat of arms. The event also delivered some surprises and species which had not been recorded for many years were “rediscovered”! Amongst the 1000 pollinator observations, butterflies were the most recorded insects with 4 species of Acraea and 2 species of Junonia being the most photogenic thus featuring in the Top 10 most recorded insects.

Evidently, the birding community were sparse during the Challenge though 320 observations comprised a mix of beautiful images and bird calls. Over 200 Fungi and Lichens observations were made with only 55 species identified as there are plenty more that can’t be identified to species level due to clarity of images.

Mammal observations comprised just over 50 of the total observations in eThekwini’s City Nature Challenge. It’s no brainer that the Vervet Monkey tops the list with 12 observations!

Spiders are usually the easiest invertebrates to observe though barely 40 contributors took to observing this fascinating group. There were more observations of mollusks than amphibians and reptiles combined.

It is startling that our marine environment has not featured in the City Nature Challenge. Even though we have engaged with a few diving organisations, more effort is required to showcase the Aliwal Shoal marine reserve which does fall within eThekwini.

Eulophia horsfalii – one of the “rediscovered” species thanks to the City Nature Challenge

Photo: Eliza Alberts

Are you feeling like you have lost out on the excitement of the City Nature Challenge?

Don’t despair! Our next challenge is the Great Southern Bioblitz (GSB) happening on 22-25 October whereby we will be hosting bioblitzes in several nature reserves around our city.

We look forward to your participation by joining the iNaturalist community in addition to the eThekwini GSB project in particular and getting your community involved.

We are also geared towards motivating the estates across our city to participate and join the iNaturalist estates within eThekwini project.

Here are some tips to encourage you to participate in the annual CNC and GSB Challenges:

1. Sign up to iNaturalist – we do host courses and have a variety of videos available to assist
2. Organise or join a Bioblitz
3. Build participation by sharing the excitement with those around you
4. Showcase your neighbourhood and create challenges with surrounding neighbourhoods/ schools/estates
5. Enjoy the bioblitz and celebrate your achievements
6. Remember clear photographs of as many angles of the organism as well as the habitat helps with an identification. Start practicing with your mobile camera now by contributing to iNaturalist prior to the Challenges.

South Africa is one of the 10 most biodiverse countries in the world, but clearly our cities also teem with wildlife. While we may have excelled in the number of observations and species documented, a large proportion of South Africans have not yet been mobilised thus clearly an area we should be able to improve on. We would like to plead with our city’s students pursuing a career in the biodiversity sector to join the iNaturalist community and engage with the vast amount of experts across all taxonomic groups. Our goal is for both the City Nature Challenge and Great Southern Bioblitz to encourage more participation and for our population to become aware and keen on our biodiversity.

About the author

Suvarna Parbhoo Mohan manages the Custodians of Rare and Endangered Wildflowers (CREW) programme. Suvarna enjoys networking with a variety of people and exploring botanically and culturally interesting places. She focusses on growing the network of foundational biodiversity citizen scientists, mentoring students into the plant conservation sector and Chair’s the Botanical Society KZN Coastal Branch. Thereby linking citizens with conservation agencies to ensure that “on the ground conservation” happens. When she isn’t out on fieldtrips, she’s enjoying her dogs, spends time working in her food garden, crafting, and exploring South Africa’s rich heritage. To join the search for threatened plants, contact Suvarna on s.parbhoo@sanbi.org.com or via iNaturalist @suvarna.