Global challenge to help identify local biodiversity

Panaji: The global ‘City Nature Challenge’ will be hosted in the state later this month, where the community, along with experts, will help in identifying and recording species of birds, odonates and other biodiversity in their surroundings. Besides, they will also learn about conservation.
‘City Nature Challenge’ allows individuals to download an app and record as much biodiversity of all kinds as possible during the four-day period of the challenge. With this, individuals win global recognition in various categories for the best documentation.
“City Nature Challenge is an annual, global, citizen science initiative. Different cities from countries around the world compete in a healthy way to learn about and document biodiversity. Due to Goa’s geographic area, the whole state’s biodiversity is considered as one city. Anyone from anywhere in Goa can participate in it,” said senior coordinator of marine biodiversity conservation at WWF-India’s Goa office, Aditya Kakodkar.
The participants have to download the ‘iNaturalist’ app on their smartphone, observe any living organism around them, click a picture and upload it on the app.
This is the 10th consecutive year of the City Nature Challenge, which will be held from April 25 to 28 and the results will be declared on May 5.
Several pre-events are being held in Goa to warm citizens up for the challenge. Ashish Prabhugaonkar will lead a guided walk on April 20 at 4.30pm at Caranzalem beach on sand dune ecology, which is only one of the many pre-events.
There are no restrictions on participation. A project has already been created in the iNaturalist app and all documentation efforts carried out by individuals during the four days will be automatically recognised as the City Nature Challenge participation.
The challenge will contribute towards the understanding of biodiversity and by getting the images identified, validated, the participants will contribute towards creating a database for their locality.