For the second time, Silver City is participating in the City Nature Challenge. City Nature Challenge is a global, four-day community science project with a goal to document biodiversity in and around urban areas. This year, the global event will run from Friday, April 24th to Monday, April 27th. Anyone can participate by using the iNaturalist app or website platform, which interfaces with museum and biodiversity databases, to log photographs or sound recordings of wildlife. Participants can find, photograph, and identify species while exploring their neighborhoods and natural areas on their own or join daily guided hikes and tours led by local naturalists. This year, three partner organizations are hosting Silver City's City Nature Challenge event: Bird Alliance of Southwestern New Mexico, Amphibian and Reptile Conservancy, and the Silver City Watershed Keepers.
City Nature Challenge began as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco in 2016. The California Academy of Sciences in San Francisco and the Natural History Museums of Los Angeles County have continued to organize the event ever since. Over the past 11 years, the Challenge has grown from just 1,000 observers in those two cities to the largest community science project in the world. Last year, nearly 103,000 people participated, logging over 3.3 million observations of 73,765 species. This event has led to the discovery of new species and re-discovery of species thought to be extinct. Researchers use City Nature Challenge data to map species distributions and gauge how well cities are preserving their natural spaces. 890 studies were published using iNaturalist data in 2023 alone. An observation made during Silver City's 2025 City Nature Challenge - a bullfrog and a Chiricahua leopard frog mating - is actually being used in an upcoming scientific publication.
The City Nature Challenge is open to everyone, from expert naturalists to budding outdoor enthusiasts. You only need to submit photos of wildlife through the iNaturalist app or website to participate. Even if you can't identify your species, experts on the iNaturalist platform will work together to identify your photo for you. Every observation helps build a biodiversity database that helps us understand and protect our local species. City Nature Challenge emphasizes that our built environment is full of wildlife and encourages participants to view themselves as a part of, not apart from, nature.
Contributions from New Mexico cities and towns hit record highs in 2025 and we're hoping to continue this trend in 2026. Albuquerque's City Nature Challenge, which included Bernalillo, Sandoval, and Valencia counties, recorded over 15,434 observations of 1,703 species. The Santa Fe area City Nature Challenge, which included Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and Rio Arriba counties, more than doubled its totals compared to 2024, with 2089 observations of 616 species.
Here in Grant County, the Silver City Watershed Keepers program was proud to coordinate the region's first-ever participation in the City Nature Challenge in 2025. 34 local citizen scientists submitted observations to the iNaturalist platform, 30 people attended in-person hikes and naturalist events, and 158 total iNaturalist users helped identify species in the app. In total, we uploaded 857 photos and sound recordings of 384 unique species, ranking Silver City #13 in the world among CNC regions of similar population size. For a first-year effort, these results were impressive and reflect both our community's love of nature and the rich ecological diversity of our region. Each of those 384 species tells a story of habitat, of adaptation, and of the complex web of life that sustains our local ecosystems. The most common species observed during Silver City's 2025 City Nature Challenge was the canyon tree frog. We submitted 19 observations of this rare (and cute!) species, all from an organized hike along the Cherry Creek Trail which we'll be revisiting this year. Boxelder trees, Wilson's warblers, and ornate tree lizards were the next three most commonly observed species.
In 2026, our three joint-organizers aim to increase the reach of our second-year event. We are already scheduled to host nearly twice the number of public events, allowing more people in Silver City and the surrounding towns to participate. Since this spring is so much wetter than that of 2025, we also hope to capture more biodiversity. Since more species of flowering plants, fungi, and insects will be out and we'll be hosting events in more towns, we aim to document 500 species and make over 1,200 iNaturalist observations this year.
Taking part in the City Nature Challenge is easy! The iNaturalist app is free and easy to download to any smart device. Participants simply find a wild organism, take a photo or sound recording, and upload. All iNaturalist observations made in Grant County from April 24-27 will be counted toward our project goals. Wildlife can be found inside the participants' homes, around their neighborhoods, in backyards, or anywhere. Any wild plant, animal, fungi, or other evidence of life (scat, fur, tracks, skulls, shells, etc.) can count. The iNaturalist app includes a huge database of photos that can help you attempt an initial identification. Once posted, an online community of naturalists will work to confirm the species identification and you'll be able to see how many species you've contributed!
Our organizing partners have daily events planned all across Grant County. We will help guide participants to cool places, identify species, and help upload observations. After the event (April 28-May 10), iNaturalist users can help confirm species identifications before the global organizers confirm the official event count. To learn more about City Nature Challenge - Silver City, visit our Project Page on iNaturalist at
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-silver-city-area . That page includes a live count-down to the event, a description of the organized outings, and will display our species tally and photos being posted from around the county during the City Nature Challenge. Community members can start practicing using the app now or attend our tutorial event at the Silver City Library on April 17 from 2-4pm to get hands-on practice before the event starts.
