Posted by Bob Lefebvre

Midnight tonight marks the beginning of the Calgary BiodiverCity Challenge 2022. The four-day event runs from Thursday June 9 through Sunday June 12.

Like the City Nature Challenge which was held at the end of April, the BiodiverCity Challenge will include all observations submitted to iNaturalist that were made within the region over the four-day period. You don’t have to join the project – although you can! – all observations in the region and time period will be included.

The region includes the city of Calgary, plus Cochrane, Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park, Airdrie, Chestermere, and Okotoks.

Like the City Nature Challenge, the idea is to document as many species of wildlife as possible. The date of the City Nature Challenge is in early spring here (it is a worldwide event), but the time frame of the BiodiverCity Challenge was chosen to better represent the maximum number of species that can be found at our location.

Here is a link to the Project Page on iNaturalist Canada. Join the project to be kept informed of the progress in this year’s count, and of the details of next year’s count when they are available.

This year there will be a friendly competition between Calgary and other cities (including Edmonton) to see who will have the most participants and observations. So get out and take lots of photos this weekend to document the biodiversity of the Calgary region! You have until June 19th to upload them to iNaturalist.