Once again, the Denver Botanic Gardens are gearing up for the Denver-Boulder City Nature Challenge—part of a global competition among cities to document biodiversity using iNaturalist, a community science platform.

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is an incredible way to foster connections within the local community to nature, improve trust in science, and contribute to our scientific understanding of our local flora and fauna!

This event takes place in two parts:

April 26 to 29: Make observations of wild plants, fungi, animals, insects, etc.

April 30 to May 5: Upload your observations and identify.

Here is a link to the Denver Botanic Gardens webpage for information about the Denver-Boulder City Nature Challenge.

This will have information about different hikes and trainings in the area, in addition to resources that may be helpful for learning about CNC and iNaturalist.

Anyone, anywhere, with a smartphone (or a camera and internet access) can participate in this community science project!

The organizers of the global City Nature Challenge have amazing tools on their website that you can use to help spread the word including an educational toolkit, stats from previous events, and information on how these observations impact scientific research: https://citynaturechallenge.org/

Planning committee partners this year include Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver Parks and Rec, The Nature Conservancy, High Line Canal Conservancy, and Denver Audubon.