Projektin City Nature Challenge 2021: Surrey BC Päiväkirja

A huge THANK YOU to everyone who helped organize, participated in, and identified observations from the 6th annual City Nature Challenge! Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, internationally over 10,000 more people participated compared to last year, and for the first time ever, there were over one million observations in the four days of the challenge!

Here are the collective results:
Observations: 1,270,767
Species: 45,300+, including more than 2,100 rare/endangered/threatened species
Observers: 52,777
Most-observed species globally: Mallard (Anas platyrhynchos)

Here in Surrey, our results were:
3,869 observations (2,607 in 2020)
595 species (560 in 2020)
94 observers (87 in 2020)
318 Identifiers (296 in 2020)

Although it wasn't a competition this year, we HAVE TO point out that for just our second time doing the CNC we were once again in the top 10 for observations, species and observers in Canada! What an amazing community of nature-appreciating folks Surrey has! An enormous THANK YOU to all of you! And a special shout-out to our top...
Observers: @johndreynolds, @david_dyck, @deboraobrist, @culturenaturewildlife, @fylin, @emilyln, @tkavs, @drclements, @northvandad

Since you can't click the links in the infographic, here are some of the interesting observations from around the world:
Peregrine Falcon (Falco peregrinus)
Lixus placidus weevil
Turkish Snail (Helix lucorum)
Witches’ Cauldron (Sarcosoma globosum)
Blainville’s Horned Lizard (Phrynosoma blainvillii)
Purplish-backed Jay (Cyanocorax beecheii)
Sargassumfish (Histrio histrio)
Southern Lion (Panthera leo ssp. melanochaita)
Common Giant Flying Squirrel (Petaurista philippensis)
Euglossa macrorhyncha bee
Adelpha zea butterfly
Short-clubbed Wasp Orchid (Chiloglottis reflexa)

The City Nature Challenge also contributed to the most observations uploaded in a week on iNaturalist again - and also gave iNaturalist the first two weeks ever with over one million observations uploaded!

Thanks everyone! Continue to help IDing those CNC observations - it takes a while to get through them! We're looking forward to CNC 2022!

Midnight tonight is the cutoff for getting the remaining 43% of this year's CNC observations verified. If you have time this evening to run through the 1700 or so remaining observations that need a push into the green zone, go to it!

Regardless of where we end up tomorrow, to all the observers and identifiers, a huge thank you. You did the City of Surrey proud.

We hope that after the CNC you'll continue to contribute observations in your day-day life. All of your contributions are an important part of supporting the City's efforts in mapping and monitoring the diversity of local flora and fauna.

Pamela Zevit RPBio
Biodiversity Conservation Planner
City of Surrey

As we head into the weekend we are about 50/50 for getting or close to 3800 observations to research grade. If you haven't already done so please update any of your observations in the casual/unknown category so that they are either removed (if you cannot provide any info) or updated to kingdom, class or even family. I have gone through and provided updates to all of the casual observations that I could, but this is a great opportunity for our super identifiers to help move all those "needs IDs" into the green zone on the ID wheel!

We've managed to pull up into the top five for observations, and top 6 for species. Amazing to see how the GTA has done in that regard with 800 species!

As far as BC goes, we are still on top.

I'm curious how the pandemic has affected participation this year (for the better).

All in all, lots to be proud about!

Really incredible to see everyone's observations adding up, compared to last year we have surpassed our results by almost 1,000 observations (and will go up as many more are still to be added).

If you want to compare years, you can check out last year's results here:
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-2020-surrey-bc

And see how we are ranking in the national stats here:
https://inaturalist.ca/projects/city-nature-challenge-canada-2021-defi-nature-urbaine.

Results so far from the international tallies put the numbers at over 1,000,000!

Just thinking about all the craziness going on in the world, and the situation here in BC makes all this even more of an incredible phenomenon.

The time to collect your observations for this year's CNC is coming to a close. Many observations have yet to be tallied but it looks like we will meet or surpass last years count! That is a huge achievement for the second-time around during a pandemic. So I hope you enjoyed your time out these past four days.

We'll be spending the next week going through the observations and helping with the ID's and curation of the observations in preparation for the cutoff May 9th.

We'd love to hear from you about your favourite CNC spot and observations this year, so please share if you get a chance!

Thank you to all our intrepid observers and identifiers out there. We're already up to 400+ observations and close to 200 species.

Just a reminder that you do not have to upload your observations before midnight May 3rd, you still have until 11:59 pm May 9th, as long as your files are time stamped between April 30-May 3.

And remember you can do audio recordings as well. Just add date and location. It's super helpful for birds and well-camouflaged critters like Pacific Treefrogs!

Enjoy day two, the universe has smiled upon us weather-wise.

p.s. Reports from the birding community this week indicate that the migratory invasion has begun, with warblers and other neotropical migrants swarming into local parks and greenspaces in the Lower Mainland. Surrey staff were blitzing Redwood Park yesterday and can confirm the warbler wave is building!

Four observations logged already and while we're off to a soggy start the weekend looks glorious! Looking forward to all the wondrous plants and critters to be added over the next four days.

Tell us about some of your favourite CNC spots this year.

We are almost about to start Surrey's second CNC!

We'd love it if you can help us share the event via your networks: https://www.facebook.com/groups/surreybcevents/permalink/2249687388498452/ or https://www.surrey.ca/news-events/events/city-nature-challenge
And something we've learned from some recent research is that when it comes to iNaturalist observations for Surrey, birds remain one of the less frequently captured group of species. But they make up our largest set of biodiversity indicators. So, if you are in the Surrey area over the four days of the CNC, snap and record away - it's your observations and identifications that makes this such an incredible event!

For those not able to get out to capture observations, we hope you can make some time over the review period from April 30 - May 9 to help with the ID's. Many curatorial voices make the data so much more valuable :).

A huge thank you in advance for being part of helping us grow our understanding of Surrey's biodiversity.
And remember to adhere to Covid safety guidelines while getting all those awesome observations.

Pamela Zevit RPBio
Biodiversity Conservation Planner
City of Surrey