City Nature Challenge: Wilmette Bioblitz

• FREE Family Event
• April 25-28 across Wilmette

Join an international effort to find & document wild flora and fauna in cities across the globe using iNaturalist!

What is the City Nature Challenge?

• It’s a bioblitz-style competition using iNaturalist where cities around the world see which city can catalogue the highest number of nature observations, identify the most species and engage the most people, all in a 4-day period each spring.
• The Challenge focus is on wild plants, animals and mushrooms (no pets, potted plants or cultivated plants in your garden)

Who can participate in the Wilmette Bioblitz?

• Anyone spending time in Wilmette who can take a digital photo and upload it to iNaturalist (app or website!)
• Users must be age 13 or older to make an iNaturalist account. Parents are encouraged to participate with their younger children for a fun activity for the whole family!

How does it work?

• Chicagoland (including Wilmette) is an established boundary in the City Nature Challenge. Any observations shared to iNaturalist between April 25-28 in Wilmette are automatically added to the project and will contribute to the Chicagoland group of this international challenge.
• iNaturalist’s identification model provides initial suggestions, but other people in the iNaturalist community help you identify and confirm your observations.
• By participating in this project, you’re serving as a field researcher! Your observations are going into a global research project to track and catalogue the regional ecosystem and flora/fauna populations.

How do I join?

• Download the iNaturalist App from either Google Play or the Apple App Store. Create your account and plan time between April 25-28 to search for wild plants, animals and mushrooms in Wilmette! You can search your neighborhood, parks, yard and more.
• When you see something, take a photo and upload it to the app as an observation!
  • Make sure your observation has a date, photo or audio and the location (option to set an Obscured Geoprivacy if your observation is say, in your backyard).
  •  Try to identify what your photo is of to the best of your ability in the ID field. For example “plants” or “beetles”. Observations with an ID are much more likely to be identified by the iNaturalist community. Check your observations later on to see if anyone has helped with identifications!

Questions?

• Contact Lucy Mellen at: mellenl@wilmette.com
• For more in-depth information about the City Nature Challenge, check out the official FAQ page HERE!

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