News

City Nature Challenge 2026 is nearly here! This is Herefordshire’s second year participating in the CNC, which is the world’s largest community science event – in 2025 3,310,131 observations were made by 102,945 participants of 73,765 species, and observations were made of 1 in 20 of all the species known on Earth!

Taking part in the City Nature Challenge is easy – all you need to do is record wildlife in Herefordshire between April 24 and 27 using the free iNaturalist app/website, and your observations will be automatically counted towards our county’s total. You can record anywhere at all in the county – your garden, a local park, a nature reserve, urban or rural – it all counts.

Why participate in the City Nature Challenge? There are many reasons:

• Contribute to global science and conservation – iNaturalist observations are used in hundreds of scientific publications
• Document and increase our understanding of Herefordshire’s biodiversity
• Get involved with the friendly and knowledgeable iNaturalist community – help each other to identify species observations
• Feeling competitive? We will once again be giving away prizes for the highest numbers of observations and species recorded!
• Get outdoors and enjoy our county at a wonderful time of year
• Have fun doing science in collaboration with people around the world
• No experience necessary
• It’s free!
• Feeling competitive? We will be giving away PRIZES! The two iNaturalist users who record the highest numbers of observations and species will each win 5 FSC fold-out guides of their choice from our extensive selection, and a bee brick to encourage solitary bees into their garden!

28 cities and regions from the UK are taking part in the City Nature Challenge this year – to see the full list visit the Natural History Consortium’s City Nature Challenge page. To track Herefordshire’s progress in real time during the Challenge, visit our iNaturalist project page. And to see the main leaderboard of over 650 participating cities and regions around the world, visit the iNaturalist Global City Nature Challenge project page.

We look forward to seeing what you record for the City Nature Challenge!