PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — The third annual City Nature Challenge is underway in Philadelphia and the rest of the world, motivating people to look for and document wildlife in their cities.
Now that more COVID-19 restrictions have eased, this year’s challenge will be very different than 2020.
Last year, during the peak of the pandemic, the City Nature Challenge encouraged people to observe nature from home — spiders in the corner, birds outside your window.
This year, organizer Billy Brown said more places are open, like Fairmount Park and the John Heinz National Wildlife Refuge at Tinicum. The idea is to get as many people as possible to make observations about the nature around them, then share it on an app called iNaturalist.
“We all go out there and use iNaturalist and try to find as many different plants and animals that we can find,” he said. “Then we’re comparing how we’re doing against hundreds of cities around the world that are all doing the same thing.”
Last year, 800 people participated from the Philadelphia region. This year, the challenge hopes more people will explore their neighborhoods to see what’s out there.
“People are sometimes surprised to learn about all the foxes and raccoons and possums that are living in their neighborhoods,” Brown added. “There are probably more coyotes living in Philadelphia than people realize.”
Visit cncphilly.org to participate in this year’s challenge, which runs now through Monday.
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