iNaturalist City Nature Challenge

Cape Town will be participating in the iNaturalist City Nature Challenge from 26-29 April, where cities around the world compete to record the most observations of local wildlife (fauna) and plants (flora). Cape Town is one of the most biodiverse cities on Earth, so the challenge is on!

Communitree invites you to join us to map all the plants and animals at our priority sites. We require at least two volunteers at each site; one volunteer to map the plants and another to map the wildlife, but the more the merrier! By participating, not only will you will learn more about the nature in your city, but also provide us with an excellent baseline for monitoring the animal and plant species at our sites.

Everyone is encouraged to take part in this challenge. You can choose any day, between the 26th and 29th of April, to join in the fun. Simply download iNaturalist and sign up on our website, so we´ll know who will be mapping out plants or animals at our sites. All of Communitree's priority sites are part of this challenge, and we would like to record all the plants and animals at each of these sites. If you take part in this challenge, then you can visit the site by yourself or you can team up with friends to do the mapping together. 

New to iNaturalist?

We will be hosting a training session, for those interested, to practice for the big event. These sessions will provide you with useful information on how to use iNaturalist, and handy photographic tips and tricks. Please indicate in the comment section, when signing up for the event, if you are interested in joining the training session.

Signing up

If you want to sign up, identify the priority site of your choice. You are also welcome to visit multiple sites! Furthermore, please indicate if you will be mapping animals, plants, or both. If you do plants, then we would like to ask you to photograph ALL the plant species at the site - including invasive grasses, mosses, etc. 

Other sites

Communitree has 16 priority sites. However, there are dozens of other public spaces that we have identified as potential Communitree sites. If you live near a Communitree site that is not a priority site, then you can still participate! It is very useful to know the baseline before we start our intervention. By mapping all the current plants (and animals) we can get an idea of what is happening at each site right now. So feel free to browse all our sites. 

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