Watching us compete against past CNC events in Ōtautahi-Christchurch

We're off to a great start, and hot on the heels of Wellington. It's fantastic to see so many people out and about across Ōtautahi-Christchurch making observations!

I just made a new project on iNaturalist NZ that brings together all of the Hoake ki te Taiao-City Nature Challenge events at Ōtautahi-Christchurch, New Zealand. You can look there to see how our totals are going compared with past events.

https://inaturalist.nz/projects/city-nature-challenge-otautahi-christchurch-all-years

Our first CNC event was in 2019, and we were the first city from Australasia to enter. In that event we focused on getting experts out to all of the habitats across the Christchurch District to get a big species total. It worked, and we got 2,062 species and were 10th in the world in 2019.

2024's event has been planned differently. This year we've been about making activities that we hope will get lots of people out exploring our city's nature. That looks like it's working, as by the end of day 2 we've never had this many people uploading observations.

If you looked at that project comparing us with past events, you'll have seen that we're still early in the competition. The 2019 event ended up with 17,580 observations, and we're only at 5,578 at the moment this year. That's because there are a lot more observations to come. Remember that you've got a week after the four days are over to upload the rest of your photos and help everyone with their identifications. We're a long way from our final tally.

I did a search on each of those past projects to see where they were at by the end of the second day. Check it out:

CNC 2019: 5,405 observations of 1,264 species by 155 observers

CNC 2020: 1,604 observations of 624 species by 85 observers

CNC 2021: 2,882 observations of 884 species by 80 observers

CNC 2022: 1,574 observations of 691 species by 80 observers

CNC 2023: 2,506 observations of 757 species by 110 observers

CNC 2024: 5,640 observations of 1,205 species by 214 observers

So, 2024 is shaping up really well! We've never had this many people observing by the end of day 2, nor observations, and we're within a whisker of the species from our big 2019 event. 2024 could end up being our biggest challenge result yet!

Keep on spreading the word and photographing species and getting outside having fun looking for wild species (after a good night's sleep).

Posted on 27 de abril de 2024, 07:14 AM by jon_sullivan