City Nature Challenge 2019: Boston Area's Boletim

Hi Boston Area!

The City Nature Challenge (CNC) is happening again in 2019 and we need your help! The CNC is a global effort to document urban biodiversity and this year there are about 100 cities participating. The 2019 CNC: Boston Area will once again focus within the I-495 corridor and out to Stellwagen Bank to document our local biodiversity. You and your organization can help boost the Boston Area to the top of the leaderboard by making observations from April 26 - 29 and/or helping to identify observations from April 30 - May 5, 2019. Please fill out this google form as soon as you can to let us know your interests and how you might help support the 2019 CNC: Boston Area.

Thanks to partner efforts in 2018, we recorded 16,551 observations of 1,410 species in the Boston Area! For 2019, we aim to increase participation, improve the quality of observations and promote exploration of diverse habitats. We will continue to use iNaturalist to record observations and tally results. ALL species count! Get more updates through our monthly newsletter.

The City Nature Challenge is a great introduction to citizen science and urban biodiversity. If you or your organization is interested in joining the 2019 CNC, please complete this google form by January 18th (earlier is better!). This will help us coordinate with you, let us know who your audience is, how you want to be involved (see below) and help us plan a partner meet-up/training session. However, you participate we want to support your efforts. We have flyers, iNaturalist how-to handouts and trainings, science quests to delve deeper, and an Education Toolkit to help you engage others. We have a website and will also have social media, an event calendar, and list of places to visit to help drive participants to your site. This year we have started a CNC: Boston Area Forum for questions, event updates, and more. Please feel free to recommend additional contacts, or forward this to others who may want to participate.

Here are a few examples of how you can participate in the 2019 CNC in the Boston Area:

• Spread the word! Send out information about the CNC to your member or volunteer lists.
• Incorporate the CNC into your existing events. Hikes, restoration events, festivals - all of these can be great opportunities for making observations. Let us know the details and we’ll add it to the calendar of events on our website.
• Plan an event specifically for people to make iNaturalist observations such as a short bioblitz or nature documentation hike.
• Have your site listed as a place to go to make observations. We can help promote your location by listing it on our website.
• Help make IDs during the observation (April 26-29) and the identification periods (April 30 - May 5). The more observations we identify to species level, the bigger our tally!
• Make use of the data collected by the CNC to help your conservation, management or research efforts.
• If you’re an educator (formal or informal) let us help you get youth involved with our Education Toolkit! This includes NGSS-aligned pre-, during, and post-event materials.

We look forward to hearing from and working with you! Please fill out the google form as soon as you can!

On behalf of the Boston Area City Nature Challenge Steering Committee,
Zoe Foster
zfoster@eol.org

Eric Baitchman, Zoo New England
Tracy Barbaro, Encyclopedia of Life
Aimee Bonanno, New England Ocean Science Education Collaborative
Peter Burn, Suffolk University
Diana Eddowes, Earthwatch Institute
Colleen Hitchcock, Brandeis University
Erin Kelly, Mass Audubon
Cynthia Mead, Zoo New England
Rob Stevenson, University of Massachusetts Boston
Marie Studer, Encyclopedia of Life, mstuder@eol.org