The City Nature Challenge is organised on a global scale by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences. Between the 26th and 29th April, over 150 cities globally will be competing to find and record wildlife in their patch. For the first time, Liverpool City Region will be pitting our wildlife spotting skills against the likes of Athens, LA, London and Manchester.

There are two ways to get involved with this fun and friendly competition. You can take part independently using the iNaturalist app to record any wildlife you spot over the weekend within Liverpool City Region’s six districts (Liverpool, Knowsley, St Helens, Sefton, Halton and Wirral). You could record the ladybirds living on your balcony, the birds in your local park or the mushrooms you’ve seen on a walk in one of our region’s fantastic nature reserves. The app is available to download at www.inaturalist.org, through the App Store or on Google Play. 

You can also get involved by coming along to one of the many recording events taking place that weekend in parks and greenspaces across the region, held by Liverpool’s amazing local and national conservation organisations.

On Friday the 26^th April, Liverpool’s Croxteth Park Volunteer Group will kick off the events with a Wildlife Walk and Recording Session at 10am. Also on the Friday, a Wildlife Recording Day will be taking place at Royden Park in Wirral lead by the team from Cheshire’s local biological record centre, RECORD at 10am. On Saturday 27^th Heal Earth are hosting a Family Foraging Walk starting at the Gunsite car park in the North Wirral Coastal Park at 2pm. The Lancashire Wildlife Trust are also encouraging people to visit and send in wildlife sightings from their nature reserves in Sefton: Lunt Meadows, Seaforth Nature Reserve and Freshfield Dune Heath. The Trust are then rounding off the weekend by hosting a Bring and Share Picnic from 4pm on Sunday 28th April at Freshfield Dune Heath. The picnic will be followed by an evening of more wildlife spotting.

Anyone is welcome to come along to any event and have a go. More information on the events taking place that weekend can be found here.

Anyone who joins in will be helping to make a difference, mapping where wildlife lives in the city. The information from this weekend will be added to the UK’s biodiversity database, becoming part of the data used to protect nature. 

Ben Deed, Lead Environmental Records Officer for Merseyside Biobank said, “The City Nature Challenge is a global competition where the Liverpool City Region will join together and go toe-to-toe with the rest of the world to showcase its incredible wildlife. We need your help to do this and it’s really easy to take part. Just download the iNaturalist App, get outdoors and upload photos of the wildlife you see over the weekend. The information you send in will be shared with a range of organisations to help improve our knowledge of wildlife, locally and nationally. By taking part, not only will you discover the amazing plants, animals and fungi that live alongside us, your wildlife sightings will be used to promote and protect important natural places, and aid conservation and scientific research. If we know who our wild neighbours are, then we are in a better position to help them thrive for years to come.”