News

The City Nature Challenge is nearly here! This is Herefordshire’s first year participating in the CNC, and also the tenth anniversary of the Challenge itself. It’s the world’s largest community science event – in 2024, 2,436,844 observations were made of more than 65,682 species, by 83,528 participants!

Taking part in the City Nature Challenge is easy – all you need to do is record wildlife in Herefordshire between April 25 and 28 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 iNaturalist community – help each other to identify species observations
• Get outdoors and enjoy our county at a wonderful time of year (the weather forecast is currently looking very good!)
• 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!

26 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!