City Nature Challenge 2024: City of Barrie's Journal

We did it! The 9th annual City Nature Challenge is done! Thank you so much for all your time, effort, and hard work in making this event as successful as it is – we literally could not do it without you!

Here are the collective results:
Observations: 2,436,844
Species: 65,682+ (including more than 3,940+ rare/endangered/threatened species)
Observers: 83,528
Most-observed species globally: Mallard duck (Anas platyrhynchos)
Cities: 690
Countries: 51

Our final results for Barrie:
Total observations: 219
Total species: 147
Total observers: 23

If you are interested in more information about the CNC results or helping out at a planning level please reach out to Stephanie.Wideman@barrie.ca

Next year’s City Nature Challenge is the 10 year anniversary, and the theme will be “Bring the Globe Together for Biodiversity: April 25-28, 2025 – put it on your calendar!

Thank you for joining us in the City Nature Challenge! Your participation has made a significant impact in documenting our local biodiversity and fostering a deeper connection to nature in our community.
Together, we've explored over 150 different species this year, and now comes the fun part of identifying and verifying what has been collected. We have until Monday May 6th at 9:00 am to upload and identify observations for the City Nature Challenge with the results being shared later that day.

IT IS IMPORTANT TO MARK OBSERVATIONS THAT ARE NOT WILD AS CAPTIVE/CULTIVATED. Click here to learn how!

Failure to do so will skew the area’s data and make it difficult or impossible to use for research and policy planning! This includes pets, animals in a zoo/aquarium, plants in your garden, potted plants, plants at a botanical garden, etc.

So get in there and help others to verify and identify their pictures 😊
Your contributions have helped to enhance scientific understanding and conservation efforts, and we couldn't have done it without you. Let's continue to explore and appreciate the wonders of nature all around us.

Thank you for being a part of this incredible journey and I look forward to our final results.

Welcome to the City Nature Challenge in Barrie!

The City of Barrie will be entering into its second year of the annual four-day global bio-blitz, looking to improve on last year's results of placing fourth in Ontario. This collaborative-meets-friendly competition engages communities to work together towards a common goal and to see which cities can gather the most observations of nature, find the most species, and involve the greatest number of people in the event. In 2023, 482 cities participated, with more than 66,400 people making 1.9 million observations of urban wildlife and nature. Forty Canadian cities are participating in this year’s CNC event

April 26- April 29: Take photos of wild plants and animal species in your backyards, neighbourhood park and open natural areas within the City of Barrie city limits, and upload them into iNaturalist.

April 30-May 5th: Join the community on iNaturalist.ca by identifying your photos and those of others who participate on the City Nature Challenge-City of Barrie project page. Check back as we record all the biodiversity found with the results announced on May 6th, 2024.

We want to capture a snapshot of our ecosystem through your inventory of photos. Our area has many native, wild organisms as well as many invasive and weedy species. Captive or cultivated organism such as planted trees, houseplants or pets should be marked using the captive/cultivated option, but we encourage participants to focus primarily on wild plants and animals. So just remember:

• No People
• No Pets
• No Plants planted by people (e.g. landscaping, gardens or potted plants)

The goals of the CNC are to:
• Connect people in urban areas to their local natural environment,
• Connect people to each other while building community in person and online around local nature,
• Collect urban biodiversity data available to use for science, management, and conservation,
• Grow volunteer biodiversity documentation/citizen science globally, and
• Have fun through friendly competition and global collaboration.

New to iNaturalist?

Check out the links below. Read or watch how to use the iNaturalist mobile app. Once you are familiar with the app you can read how to upload and identify on the iNaturalist webpage.

iNaturalist App Video:
https://vimeo.com/162581545

iNaturalist App PDF:

https://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/downloads/booklets-handouts/iNaturalist-App-How-to.pdf

iNaturalist Web Uploading:

https://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/downloads/booklets-handouts/iNaturalist-Web-How-to.pdf

iNaturalist Web Identifying:

https://cwf-fcf.org/en/resources/downloads/booklets-handouts/iNaturalist-Identify-How-to-Web.pdf

Check out the City Nature Challenge Website:

https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/