City Nature Challenge Bioblitz Citizen Scientists Wanted!

For the first time the Finger Lakes region will be participating in  the City Nature Challenge, a global biodiversity event sponsored by  the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of  Los Angeles.  The CNC is a bioblitz in which 450 cities on six  continents are participating.  Our local event is being organized by  the Paleontological Research Institution.  The original CNC was a  competition between cities to see who could recruit the most observers  and identify the most species, however, the pandemic-era activities  are now much more collaborative.  We will join with observers around  the world to document the biodiversity of our region, April 30 – May  3, 2021.  The geographic area that we have designated is actually quite large,  encompassing the watersheds of both Seneca Lake and Cayuga Lake, and  extending east to the city of Cortland.  We are looking at both  terrestrial and aquatic species.  We will use the iNaturalist platform  to document our observations; 

https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-ithaca-ny 

We hope that you (and colleagues, friends, and families) will be able  to participate in our region’s first City Nature Challenge.  You can  join us from wherever you are in the area. If you make observations in  our region using iNaturalist during the CNC timeframe, your  observations will automatically be added to our CNC project.  You can  also join the project using the “Join” button in the top right corner  of the website.  All ages, all experience, all locations are welcome –  please join us

Key Info:
April 30 – May 3, 2021
CNC Ithaca https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2021-ithaca-ny
CNC Global https://citynaturechallenge.org
Teaching Resources https://citynaturechallenge.org/education-toolkit/