View iNaturalist page: City Nature Challenge 2020: The Maritimes Umbrella Project
“Five areas from around the Maritimes have been registered to participate: HRM, the Valley, CBRM, Saint John and Westmorland County, NB. Each of these areas has its own CNC iNat project page. This umbrella project brings all of these individual project together – we have common goals to not only introduce/promote iNaturalist but to also simply encourage people to get outdoors and explore our part of the world.
“We will be using the iNaturalist digital platform to record observations, under this project. Signup to iNaturalist today and then join one (or multiple) local CNC projects By joining a project you will be notified when news items are added to the project page.”
Pages for the three NS sites:
City Nature Challenge 2020: Annapolis Valley
City Nature Challenge 2020: Cape Breton Regional Municipality
City Nature Challenge 2020: Halifax Regional Municipality
There is also a Facebook Page: City Nature Challenge – The Maritimes
“The CNC has two parts. The first is held: between April 24 – 27, During this time participants take pictures of wild plants and animals; between April 28 – May 3 participants finalize uploading of observations and the community assists with identifying what was found.”
The ‘City Nature Challenge 2019: Halifax Regional Municipality’ project ran over the days April 26-29, 2019 and generated an impressive 6839 observations including (approximately) 839 species by 229 observers.
– we ranked in the Top 40 of all competing cities for total observations and species identified
– among latitudinally challenged cities, we ranked #1 in observations per capita
– we soundly beat Calgary and Richmond and are the “most biodiverse Canadian city in the competition”
– We ranked #1 for lichen observations per capita among all cities
This year will be different because of Covid-19 related restrictions, and a lot of emphasis placed on backyards and sites close to residences. So Sandy Lake & Environs will likely not be as well covered as it was last year, but we can still have fun and hone our nature skills!