City Nature Challenge

Runs from Friday, April 28 – Monday, May 1, 2023

Help the Seattle-Tacoma Metropolitan Area (including Everett, Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma and any place within Snohomish, King and Pierce counties!) show the world how biodiverse our region is by making observations of local species during City Nature Challenge!

City Nature Challenge will take place in two parts

You can support this effort by being an observer, helping others identify their observations, or better yet - both!

We encourage everyone to find and document what lives in our own homes, out our windows, on our windowsills and in our backyards, if not in our broader neighborhoods and cities. This can be done by yourself or with your family. You can also participate "online only" by looking through and helping to identify other people's observations!

 

Be an Observer

1. Download the free iNaturalist app to your Android or iPhone (lots of helpful how-to videos on the iNaturalist website)
• Download the iNaturalist app from the Google Play store
• Download the iNaturalist app from the App Store
2. Join the 2023 City Nature Challenge: Seattle-Tacoma Metropolitan Area iNaturalist project
3. Take photos of wild plants, animals and fungi in the Seattle Metro Area
• This can be inside your house, in your backyard, out your window or in your neighborhood. Please no photos of pets or cultivated plants, but see what "wild" species you can find nearby!
4. Upload your photos to iNaturalist - from your mobile device or via your computer

 

Help Identify Observations

1. Download the free iNaturalist app to your Android or iPhone
2. Join the 2023 City Nature Challenge: Seattle-Tacoma Metropolitan Area iNaturalist project
3. Identify observations to species level. Try searching iNaturalist for observations without identifications or for observations that still need to get down to species.

 

Education Toolkit

Are you a teacher or an educator? Here's a toolkit just for you!

Learn more

 

The Empathy Collaborative is a three-year project working in partnership with south Seattle communities and Antioch University Seattle to co-design opportunities for youth and families. The purpose of this work is to build long term, authentic relationships by designing programming that is responsive to community interest and priorities and reduce traditional barriers to participation in empathy-based programs.

Through a collaboration with the Empathy Collaborative Project and feedback provided by south Seattle communities, the City Nature Challenge now offers supporting resources in Chinese, Russian, Somali, Spanish, and Vietnamese. This “How To Participate Handout” can be distributed digitally and or printed and displayed on signboards or at community events.

Download the handout

Additional Languages:

How to Participate Handout in Chinese
How to Participate Handout in Russian
How to Participate Handout in Somali
How to Participate Handout in Spanish
How to Participate Handout in Vietnamese

 

Curious about ways to participate and help others to participate in City Nature Challenge?

Join us for virtual and in-person sessions to learn how you can observe nearby nature and share your observations during the annual City Nature Challenge!

 

VIEW EVENTS

 

Seattle-Tacoma CNC Planning Committee: Woodland Park Zoo, Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, Seattle Parks, Washington Department of Fish & Wildlife's Habitat@Home Program, Green Tukwila/City of Tukwila. City Nature Challenge is co-organized by San Francisco's California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.