2026 City Nature Challenge

Curious citizen Jasmine, ‘Jas from the Lab’ observes Question Mark Butterfly (Polygonia interrogationis) in the wild on a NABA Butterfly Count at Black Bayou Lake NWR. It has a characteristic “Question Mark” featured on its hind wing.

I'd like to promote local participation in a global biodiversity survey event, the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge 2026. Many of us are familiar with this from Irvin Louque's Rendezvous presentation and Greater Baton Rouge MN's reports of awesome performance in recent years.
George Gehrig has created a good page about why this is important.

This may be something of interest to many of us? Every year there's a global competitive Bioblitz on iNaturalist.org called City Nature Challenge. It's been growing in popularity; each participating city or region counts its nature observations on the iNaturalist platform during a long weekend that this year will be:

2026 Spring CNC
● Friday April 24 - Monday April 27, 2026: Observations made in our participating areas will be included if you join the registered projects:
● Tuesday April 28 - Sunday May 10, 2026:
Uploading of images and identification period
● Monday May 11, 2026: Results announced
 
This year the following regional projects are officially registered in Louisiana, so joining these will contribute your observations to CNC:
 
City Nature Challenge 2026: Northwest Louisiana
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-northwest-louisiana
 
City Nature Challenge 2026: Southwest Louisiana
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-southwest-louisiana
Please join this if you are attending the LOS Weekend.
 
City Nature Challenge 2026: Baton Rouge Area Region
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-baton-rouge-region
 
The above projects correspond with the boundaries of the Louisiana Master Naturalist Chapters (although there are some overlaps and combinations). George Gehrig (handle https://www.inaturalist.org/people/quovadis) is a former master naturalist and he set up the the Northwest Louisiana CNC project. Because I didn't register a project in time for the NELA Chapter this year, George very kindly created two unofficial CNC Projects to capture observations from:
 
City Nature Challenge 2026: Northeast Louisiana
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-northeast-louisiana
 
City Nature Challenge 2026: Central Louisiana
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-central-louisiana
 
Finally, George’s primary focus is on creating EPA Level III Ecoregion projects, so he created this one for the South Central Plains Ecoregion (SCPBC):
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/2026-spring-south-central-plains-biodiversity-challenge-scpbc
This project was the result of a geospatial intersect that mapped the ecoregional boundaries with governmental jurisdictions (states, counties and parishes), done pro-bono by Thomas Bergeron. The CNC maps were done pro bono by Chris Kingwill. You will be able to see from the overall project map, and the individual jurisdictional maps, what part of it corresponds to the ecoregion (in whole, or just partly).
 
Note:
You don’t have to “Join” any of the projects for your Observation(s) to automatically be included, and you don’t have to reside in the jurisdiction you make the Observations in (you can them in multiple jurisdictions). The only reason to join is so that you get notifications of “Project Journal” updates. A lot of effort was made to include the relevant project information in the introductory “About “ section. However, additional information can, and is, added after the fact by using the Project Journal feature. For example, one such entry in the SCPBC project discusses the reason for creating projects at the ecoregional level.
 
George is also keen on using the bioblitzes to understand WHO is making the observations, and their level of engagement. To that end, he will compile a list of the Top 3 Observers for each jurisdiction, and the Top 10 for each state, and the Top 25 for the ecoregion (for the SCPBC). Ultimately, his hope is to use this information as a basis for creating a "Biodiversity Hall of Fame" (ones for each school/college/university, school district, state and ecoregion.
 
He posted on FB about this here:
https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17suXts6GK/


Please get in touch with George if you are interested in the "Biodiversity Halls of Fame". It's great to recognize our keen Citizen Scientists and this sense of competition may draw in more young people!
 
Thank you all. Enjoy your time outdoors!

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