Results : Total Domination
San Antonio 12-County Metro Area beat out Texas, the whole US, and almost everyone else in the world for the 2024 City Nature Challenge.
CITY - It started in 2016 with 2 cities. In 2024, over 500 cities/metro areas participated
NATURE - As many plants and animals are catalogued by observers by photos and sounds recordings of all. All observations are peer reviewed to ensure data quality.
CHALLENGE – While data collection is year-round, this world-wide bioblitz is a friendly competition to see which areas can collect the most observations and most species with the most observers during 4 days in late April. Obviously, it also promotes iNaturalist which amazingly originated from a master’s project.
2024 Goal
Last year was the first year the San Antonio 'Metro' Area surpassed the Austin area in most observations and most species. The fact we did it with less observers meant we worked harder. This year, Texas Parks and Wildlife Nature Trackers organized by county many pre-CNC trainings, media and then during the 4-day challenge, many bioblitzes throughout the area. Busy-Birding served as Coordinator for Bandera County and put on multiple presentations, iNat trainings and walks. Motivated by our win over Austin, this year’s goal was to win the Lone Star State. We are proud Bandera County and 11 other counties in our San Antonio "Metro" Area wayyyy surpassed our goal!
For the entire WORLD, San Antonio 'Metro' Area finished -
3 rd for # of observations (64,728 - within our SA area, 11 individuals collected over 1,000 observations!)
5 th for # of species (3,993 - within our SA area, 12 individuals collected over 400 species!)
11 th for the number of observers (1,320)
We dominated Texas - sorry Dallas and Houston, - the whole US and almost everyone else in the world. Complete results are here for the World and SA 'Metro' Area. Be sure to click on Observations, Species and People to see rankings for each of these 3 categories.
Community
iNaturalist is an online community but the event brought together our local naturalist community. We saw many 'old' friends and met new ones. We had fun collecting, sharing information, and asking insightful questions...some of which we had the answers. Always more questions than answers…but that’s the nature (pun intended) of life-long learning.
Our experience
We don't consider myself competitive but we do enjoy a good challenge. Day 2, driving meant looking out the window wondering if there was anything, we hadn't captured yet. Ditto for Days 3 and 4. We put names to a whole lot of plants and bugs we hadn't considered or seen before. Now we will have to walk even slower than birding speed?!?!? We still regret not stopping for the Wild Turkey and Caracara a few miles from home enroute to Lost Maples.
We collected >1,000 observations and >450 species and landed us spots # 10 and # 6 respectively amongst the 1,320 observers in the SA Metro Area. Earning an iNaturalist t-shirt which feels as good as it looks was an awesome bonus.
What an accomplishment !
Results: Our 12-County San Antonio Metro Area
Be sure to click on Observations, Species and People to see rankings for each of these 3 categories