Explore the outdoors with a city-by-city nature challenge

For a bit of motivation to explore nature in your immediate surroundings, the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department and the Texas Nature Trackers program encourage people to document their local biodiversity April 26-29 as part of the City Nature Challenge. It’s a chance to get outside – just out your front door, in your yard or anywhere nature is found and can be safely and responsibly explored – and enter your observations of plants, animals and fungi on the free mobile app iNaturalist. This global, community-based, scientific effort is co-organized by San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Texas Nature Trackers encourages use of the hashtag #CityNatureChallenge on social media or as a tag in iNaturalist. In 2023, Texas metropolitan areas joined more than 400 other cities in a worldwide celebration of the resilience of urban nature that logged more than 1.8 million observations of more than 58,000 species by nearly 70,000 people. In Texas, 93 counties logged more than 174,000 observations, with 7,500 species recorded by more than 6,000 observers. Check out the City Nature Challenge online to find links to Texas projects and learn more. Free training can be viewed online. Participants can also contact TNT biologists Craig Hensley and Wendy Anderson with the Texas Nature Trackers program at tracker@tpwd.texas.gov.