3rd Wildlife Viewing & Nature Tourism Academy

The City Nature Challenge is a global, city-scale BioBlitz event hosted on iNaturalist that frames a biodiversity survey as a friendly competition between cities or metropolitan areas. This event provides a variety of opportunities for connecting people with nature in and around these areas, whether at local nature-tourism and wildlife-viewing venues or in their own back yards. Additionally, City Nature Challenge participants contribute to nature stewardship through collection of valuable citizen science data. This session will present two coordinators’ perspectives on the value of taking the City Nature Challenge: a statewide view of the event’s value to biodiversity monitoring across multiple, fast-growing metro areas in Texas and a focused look at lessons learned at the local level in Leon County/Tallahassee, Florida. We will discuss key outcomes from the event, ways it can build local partnerships and engagement with nature, and how the data generated can contribute to biodiversity conservation and resource management.