April 17, 2024

Join Atlanta’s City Nature Challenge

If you’ll be in the Greater Atlanta Metro Area from April 26-29, 2024, we invite you to participate in a global nature competition. If you like to take pictures of nature, enjoy citizen science projects and like learning more about nature, you can be part of an international research project from your backyard, local park or even in Fernbank Forest. 

Are you ready to have fun and get outside? Since the answer is obviously yes, we hope you’ll join Atlanta and over 600 other cities in the City Nature Challenge!

City Nature Challenge was started in 2016 by the California Academy of Science and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to find and document local wildlife in their area, and it is easy, fun and free for you to also join in. Just go outside, enjoy nature, snap pictures of anything wild outside and post them to iNaturalist, a free app available on your mobile device or computer. You can find more information on using iNaturalist and City Nature Challenge here.

Greater Atlanta City Nature Project Map:

If you are in an area highlighted on this map, you will be included in the greater Atlanta City nature project. Any other areas will be included in the global project. 

The second part of City Nature Challenge is April 30 – May 5, when we need your help identifying all the iNaturalist observations made by participants in the metro Atlanta area. Before you say you don’t know enough to help, you can!  Even if you don’t know an exact species captured in an observation, you can identify that it’s a plant, spider, bird, etc. Every little bit helps the project.

Check out some of our fun finds right here in WildWoods and Fernbank Forest. 

1. Southern Flame Azalea 

2.Woodland Phlox (Phlox divaricata) and Silverbell (Halesia carolina) 

3. Fungi

4. Blue tailed skink and snail 

5. Red-tailed Hawk

By participating in City Nature Challenge, not only will you be spending time in nature, but you will also be helping the scientific community. In the past few years, City Nature Challenge participants across the globe have found rare, threatened and endangered species. This is a project which benefits everyone. 

You can see what species were found in 2023 in Atlanta here. Our goal this year is to get 10,000 observations for the Greater Atlanta area (the map above shows the coverage area). Even if you only take one photo, that will help. Let’s see what we can find this year!