City Nature Challenge comes to Hyderabad, starts from April 28

Over 30 Indian cities including Hyderabad are all set to take part in a unique global nature competition titled City Nature Challenge (CNC) that encourages individuals, especially nature lovers, to record and share their observations of nature in a mobile application iNaturalist app.

Globally 485 cities from across 46 countries are participating in City Nature Challenge (CNC) and the city that records the most observations over a period of four days between April 28 and May 1 will win the friendly competition, a press release said.

Noted wildlife organisations including World Wide Fund for Nature-India, Bombay Natural History Society, and The Naturalist School have partnered to lead the event in cities like Bangalore, Bombay, Hyderabad and Delhi.

Individuals can simply take pictures of natural flora and fauna, anything from insects and fungi to flowers and trees, and then upload them in the iNaturalist app, which an AI powered application that can suggest the species name, automatically picks-up GPS coordinates for the observation from the image data.

Once an observation is confirmed, it becomes available to scientists and researchers. They can, for example, use this data to research different plant and animal species, or determine the biodiversity in a region.

First organised in the US in 2016 by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences, the event has now become a global citizen-science phenomenon.

Farida Tampal, State Director, WWF-India Hyderabad Office, said “There is a lot of interest in Hyderabad being shown by individuals, partner NGOs, schools and colleges, and corporate groups to associate with this event. This is the first time that a citizen science event is being organised on a large scale for Hyderabad and we are hoping that this Challenge is going to set the ball rolling for more such initiatives in the city. We have over 200 Volunteers who will record wildlife across Hyderabad on these 4 days”.

Suchi Govindarajan, Communications Head of The Naturalist School, believes the challenge will bring out the naturalist hidden in each one of us. She said “Indian cities have more biodiversity than we realise.

With the iNaturalist app, just about anyone can record an observation and learn more about what they have seen.” “CNC has possibilities to become an effective and robust data-gathering tool for researchers to carry out long-term studies over large geographical areas especially focusing on urban areas. But even more than that, it is an exercise for citizens to use Nature in helping to reduce stress, calm anxiety and slow our breath, heart and pace of life in today’s concrete jungles”, said Mr. Sohail Madan, Assistant Director, Bombay Natural History Society.

Indeed, the data from earlier events has already contributed to a number of studies and some rare sightings – and this time, researchers who study Indian species will also benefit. As one of the world’s most biodiverse regions, India is uniquely placed to make its mark in this competition.