Ōtautahi/Christchurch
Started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities. Run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), the CNC is an annual four-day global bioblitz at the end of April, where cities are in a collaboration-meets-friendly competition to see what can be accomplished when we all work toward a common goal.
Observations for the 2025 global City Nature Challenge competition need to be made between the start of Friday 25 April and the end of Mon 28 April. After that, everyone with some nature expertise will get stuck in identifying the species, up to 4 May, with the global results being announced on 5 May. Awards night is on Tuesday 6 May. To participate, sign-up as a member on the project page to receive updates – Otautahi/Christchurch City Nature Challenge Project Page .
The programme of events is now live and can be found on the following website, (with more to come): ccc.govt.nz/citynaturechallenge.
For those new to the iNaturalistNZ app there is a ‘How to’ 101 workshop on 12 April. There is also a 102 workshop offering for those regular users who would like to step up to the next level!
You are encouraged to get out and about, photograph and upload anything interesting you see during the four days of the challenge and see if Christchurch can beat last year’s record of 20,310 observations! Observations in this project of as many species as possible can include all taxa except domestic dog, domestic cat and human. Observations are to be uploaded to iNaturalist.NZ. Observations can be from anywhere in the Christchurch District (including the central city, suburbs, and Banks Peninsula – see map below).
You can find other participating New Zealand cities at the Projects · iNaturalist NZ page.
A short documentary on last year’s challenge can be found on Loading DOCs. For more information, email Sarah.Mankelow@ccc.govt.nz. Go Global and see what is being found in cities around the world, and how NZ cities are doing in the global competition, at the global City Nature Challenge 2025 page.
