City Nature Challenge West of England – Results and thank you!
Thank you to EVERYONE who took part in City Nature Challenge this year across the West of England!
It’s been an incredibly busy year for us, but we wanted to share what a great weekend we had back at the beginning of May.
Across the West of England project area, 374 of you took part in making wildlife records – and collectively made 7,500 observations of 1297 species on iNaturalist! This is the second highest number of species ever recorded during a City Nature Challenge event in our region – what a result!
In comparison with the rest of the UK, the West of England CNC region came:
• 2nd highest in the UK for number of participants who made observations
• 3rd highest in UK for numbers of species recorded
• 4th highest in the UK for numbers of observations made
Thank you to everyone who came along to one of the many recording events. We ran 11 events across the weekend, which included 7 pop-up activity hubs. We know of at least 7 additional CNC events that were ran by a range of other organisations across the region too – absolutely great work by all.
197 people came along to our 16 nature walks – thanks for all of your fantastic feedback, we’re really glad you enjoyed them.
There were lots of really interesting records, but one of our highlights has to be a confirmed record of a Variable Nomad Bee Nomada zonata, which was was photographed at Troopers Hill by iNaturalist user @guttulata - A regional first record for this species (confirmed by renown bee expert Steven Falk), it was reported on widely in the local news, such as ITV Westcountry!
CNC Global total
Across the world, 66,394 people were taking part in City Nature Challenge – thank you for helping CNC reach its highest ever global count for numbers of observations (1.8 million!!) and number of species recorded (57,222+)!
Where do the records go?
A key part of iNaturalist is that scientists are able to access and use iNaturalist data in their research - a list of 3700+ publications that cite iNaturalist records can be found HERE .
During 2023, open-licence records made during CNC in our region will also be processed by BRERC, our Local Records Centre, to maximise use of records by local organisations. You can find out how to make sure your records have an open licence setting HERE
