The San Antonio Metro area looks to defend its 2024 title as City Nature Challenge national champion this weekend, with Boerne being a major player in the metro’s winning observations total last year.
City Nature Challenge is an annual global event encouraging people to observe and document the biodiversity present in their urban environments using the “iNaturalist” app.
In 2024, 690 cities across 51 countries participated in the event, first held in 2016.
Suanne Pyle, City Nature Challenge co-coordinator for Kendall County with Laura Bray, said the San Antonio Metro area, which includes Kendall County, logged 1,400 participants in the four-day Challenge, who made just over 65,000 observations of 3,738 different species — tops in the U.S. and third internationally.
Pyle, with four years of Challenge observation under her belt, will be going out for her fifth as the fourday observation period runs Friday (April 25) through Monday (April 28).
“Last year, I made about 300 observations,” Pyle said. “You’re making observations of nature. That’s a lot of plants, birds, insects, reptiles — anything that is nature and living.”
The organism that logged the most San Antonio area observations last year was the salt marsh moth.
“If you had 10 people in your group, they could each shoot the same picture, and log the same observation,” she said. “A million people could take a photo of the same animal or organism, if they wanted to.”
When talking about nature observations, people naturally think birds, Pyle said. “But birds were probably only about 200 of those (species observations). That’s a lot of plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians ... probably 2,000 of the 3,700 observations were plants.”
The only Challenge caveat, she said, “is it has to be wild; it can’t be anything planted, or captive.”
The event began as a competition, she said, “because some people are motivated by competition. But the main reason ... is to get (people) out there and have them notice the things around them. We’re just surrounded by so many aspects of nature, and so many species.”
Secondly, the data gathered is used by scientists to study regional findings, or to compare data from one region with another. “There’s a lot of work being done (scientifically) that uses data gathered by citizens,” she added.
Loading the iNaturalist app is quick and easy, she said, calling it an “extremely user-friendly app.” iNaturalist enables users to observe, record and share observations of plants, animals, fungi and other organisms that occur naturally in the world.
Three organized “walks” are set for Kendall County participants who want to meet up and join the Challenge:
— Saturday, 9-11 a.m. at the Patrick Heath Public Library.
— Saturday, 9 a.m.-2 p.m. at the Cibolo Nature Center.
— Monday, 9:30-11:30 a.m. at the Joshua Springs Preserve.
“The more people we can get off the couch and get outside, becoming active participants, the better,” she said.
“It’s a lot of fun, really. When you go by yourself you can focus more. But when you go out as a group, it’s fun to learn and share observances with each other,” she said.
To find out more about — or to join — the City Nature Challenge, call Pyle at 361-563-6059; Bray at 210884-6843; or go to https:// cnc-sa.org.
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