City Nature ChallengeFree

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”.

In 2023 the “Greater Melbourne” collaboration now involves 27 Councils and 9 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.

Watch the official 2023 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.

2023 City Nature Challenge video 

How you can contribute

You can contribute to the challenge directly by using iNaturalist to log your observations of the wild plants and animals you can find in your local area - a nearby creek, a local reserve, or your own backyard - any time from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May. 

To help you with this, a series of ‘Nature Discovery’ activities will be held during the 2023 Challenge. If you wish to attend one of these activities, please read more and register via the events below. If an activity is fully booked out, you can request to be added to a wait list and if vacancies arise these will be filled from the wait list.