Love nature and want to learn more about Maroondah’s local biodiversity? Join in the 2023 City Nature Challenge from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May (date TBC).
Following on from our successful results in the 2022 City Nature Challenge, Maroondah is again participating in 2023 and invites you to help us make it bigger and better than last year!
What is the City Nature Challenge?
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 2022 Maroondah collaborated with 20 other Councils from across metropolitan Melbourne, along with the Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, the Entomological Society of Victoria, and Scouts Victoria, to represent Melbourne on the global stage as “Greater Melbourne”.
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.
Watch the official 2022 City Nature Challenge video to view some of the amazing observations of wild plants and animals that people around the world have made in previous challenges.
How you can contribute
You can contribute to the challenge directly by logging observations during the four days of the challenge (dates for 2023 TBC) of the wild plants and animals you can find in your local area - a nearby creek, a local reserve, or your own backyard.
Please note more information on the 2023 Challenge and how you can contribute will become available later in the year.
Online webinars
If you want to learn more about how to use the iNaturalist platform, gain expert knowledge on capturing quality observations of wild biodiversity and to hear more about the 2022 City Nature Challenge, you can watch a recording of the online webinars that were held leading up to the 2022 Challenge. These were organised on behalf of the Greater Melbourne collaboration by Boroondara, Stonnington, Monash, Hume, Moreland, Banyule, Darebin, Knox, Moreland and Mitchell councils.