Take part in the City Nature Challenge 2026: share wildlife sightings from your school

Start building a list of the animals, plants and fungi living on your site by joining this global wildlife challenge.  

City Nature Challenge is the biggest community science event in the world, and you can be a part of it! During this annual four-day event, people across the globe photograph wildlife and share their observations using a free app called iNaturalist.

If you're taking part in the National Education Nature Park, it’s an easy way for you to kickstart recording the wildlife you find on your site – a great activity for the summer term. Understanding what’s living there now enables you to understand how your site currently supports wildlife and provides a baseline that you can compare to in future once you’ve made some changes to boost biodiversity.  

Don’t worry if you or your learners aren’t confident identifying wildlife – when you take a photo, the iNaturalistUK app and website give suggestions of what you might have seen, and an online community of friendly enthusiasts confirms or corrects your identification.

How to take part

For your observations to be included on the Nature Park Map, you must:

1. Create an account on the iNaturalistUK website, with both the Display Name and Username starting ‘NENP_’, using a group (not personal) email e.g. [email protected].
2. Set your wildlife data sharing license to CC0 (Account Settings / Content and Display).
3. Tick the box to affiliate with the iNaturalistUK Network (Account Settings / Account). This means your observations can be of greatest benefit to UK nature study. 

Once you’ve completed these steps, you can download the iNaturalist app onto any devices you want to use, log in (all can log in to the same account you just created), and start snapping! Practise with the app yourself before leading your class or group activity. If you don’t want to use the app, you can upload photos to the iNaturalistUK website. 

Whilst the Challenge aims to make lots of wildlife observations, the emphasis is on quality over quantity. Moving slowly, taking care to get clear, in-focus photos, and taking time to discuss and share your photos as a group is the name of the game.  

You can also use the iNaturalist app or website to make observations at any time of year, to continue adding your sightings to the Nature Park Map. You can view them by opening the 'Wildlife Observations in the Nature Park' map layer (bear in mind there may be a slight delay to them appearing on the Map).

Check out the wildlife observations on the Nature Park Map

City Nature Challenge was invented by community science staff, Lila Higgins at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and Alison Young and Rebecca Johnson at the California Academy of Sciences in the USA. 

Using iNaturalist and the Nature Park