City Nature Challenge
By Samantha Green and Geraldine Brown
A global bioblitz opportunity for engaging in nature recording and thinking about our local nature and biodiversity
‘City Nature Challenge’ is a global four-day nature-recording extravaganza in April where citizens worldwide compete to record nature and wildlife sightings in their area, usually recording species by using the iNaturalist app. Recordings can be of any wild plant, animal, fungi, slime mould or evidence of life found in the city. Last year, worldwide, nearly 2.5 million recordings of nature were made during the four days of ‘City Nature Challenge’ in April, with nearly 66,000 species being verified and 84,000 participants taking part.
PLANET4B welcomes Walking Warriors to Ryton Gardens
The City Nature Challenge was also ideal for the PLANET4B project, which aims to engage diverse communities in biodiversity initiatives. On Saturday, April 26, 2025, Coventry University’s PLANET4B team welcomed the local community walking group, Walking Warriors, to Ryton Organic Gardens. The group began in January 2022 as an informal initiative to encourage the engagement of African Caribbean communities with local green spaces following COVID-19.
The gardens in spring provided a wonderful setting for a workshop in which participants were introduced to the iNaturalist app, encouraging exploration and reflection on local biodiversity. The group shared personal stories and gardening experiences, highlighting how Caribbean heritage, spirituality, and cultural values shape their connection to nature. The workshop also explored how nature supports well-being, health, and relationships. It offered a meaningful opportunity to exchange insights from the PLANET4B project and discuss ways to embed biodiversity-focused activities into the group’s regular walking routines using the Tree of Life Framework. This builds on the work being done with the UK Learning Community. Read more about the UK case study ‘Opening nature and the outdoors to Black, Asian and ethnic minority communities‘.
PLANET4B’s building engagement with the City Nature Challenge
Coventry University colleagues also led nature recording activities during the four ‘City Nature Challenge’ days: with staff and students at the gardens, spotting cowslips, scarlet tiger moth caterpillars and bugle flowers; at local allotments, with growers sharing their findings and nature sightings of daisies and red deadnettle; and at a local Warwickshire park with schools groups, where pupils delighted in spotting wolf spiders, mining bees, nomad bees and bumblebees amongst the cow parsley at Wyken Croft.
Knowing which species are present in a city can help their protection too, especially when the community works together to find and document nature in a very local area. Nature is all around us!
