Cape Town: Capetonians are invited to participate in 2025 City Nature Challenge. The residents and visitors are invited are asked to take part in the challenge and capture photos of any plants or animals on their phones or cameras.
City of Cape Town’s staff and public members are encouraged to record and upload their observations on the ‘iNaturalist App’ from Friday, April 25, 2025 to Monday, April 28, 2025. People from more than 2000 cities worldwide will be recording their local animals and plants, next weekend.
Deputy Mayor and Member of the Mayoral Committee for Spatial Planning and Environment – Alderman Eddie Andrews said that this is the 10th anniversary of the City Nature Challenge. The theme of this year is ‘Bring the Globe Together for Biodiversity’.
The challenge is all about documenting the wildlife in the city such as Cape Town. All the participants requires residents, when contributing an observation while taking a photo and uploading it onto the iNaturalist app.
Capetonians are spoilt for choice with an array of nature reserves and conservation areas. Entry to City nature reserves will be free from April 25, 2025 till April 28, 2025 for those who are taking part in the challenge.
Deputy Mayor Andrews further encouraged schools, universities and social groups to use it as an opportunity to facilitate, manage and support student outdoor learning and exploration in schoolyards, nearby parks or other green spaces.
However, there is no limit to the number of observations one can submit. City residents are encouraged to click as many wild plants and animals as they can find in nature reserves, suburbs, schools as well as in gardens.
As per records, in 2024, the City Nature Challenge has seen over 83,000 people across 690 cities in 51 countries on all seven continents documenting more than 2.4 million wildlife observations. Out of these observations. 42,643 were done in Cape Town.
Alderman Andrews is confident that they can increase these numbers in 2025 and encouraged the residents to put on their citizen scientist caps and to go out there to show off the local biodiversity to the world.