City Nature Challenge

iNaturalist is our preferred platform for recording your nature observations.

To get started download the iNaturalist app onto your smartphone. Visit the discovering nature page to learn more about how to download and start using iNaturalist.

iNaturalist allows you to make observations (taking photos and/or recording sounds) of local biodiversity and share them with the iNaturalist community. You can use iNaturalist to make valuable observations of Maroondah’s nature.

Your involvement with iNaturalist increases the quality and the amount of biodiversity data available to local environmentalists, scientists and natural resource managers.

The more that is documented through photographs and recordings helps to build a clearer picture of what occurs in our local area in terms of flora and fauna, which in turn increases our ability to protect it. 

The City Nature Challenge is an annual global citizen science event coordinated by the California Academy of Sciences and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, that was first run in 2016.

In 2023 Maroondah collaborated with 27 other Councils from across metropolitan Melbourne, along with the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, the Entomological Society of Victoria, Melbourne Water, University of Melbourne, Latrobe University, Australian Citizen Science Association and Victorian Environmental Friends Network, to represent Melbourne on the global stage as ‘Greater Melbourne’.

In 2024 the Greater Melbourne collaboration now involves at least 25 Councils and 8 other organisations.

Participating cities competed to see who can make the most observations, find the most species, and engage the most observers in discovering the nature that lives in and around their city.