City Nature Challenge

Memphis needs you to help document our biodiversity! City Nature Challenge is a friendly international competition to see which cities can document the most wildlife in a single weekend. This year, you can help us put Memphis on the map. Join Overton Park Conservancy, Memphis Botanic Garden, T.O. Fuller State Park, University of Memphis – Meeman Biological Station, and Wolf River Conservancy for a weekend of fun nature-focused events, or use iNaturalist to record wildlife observations on your own!

Click here to learn more about the City Nature Challenge in Memphis & Shelby County.

How it works:

Using the community scientist platform iNaturalist on either your phone or a computer, you’ll upload photos of any wildlife you see: plants, mushrooms, insects, and beyond. We’ve set up an iNaturalist project page that will capture all observations made in Shelby County between April 26-29. Be sure to join the project if you’d like to follow our progress in real-time, but you don’t have to join for your observations to count. They’ll be automatically captured!

Then, between April 30 and May 5, a team of local naturalists will work to identify all these organisms, so we can see how rich our biodiversity is as a city. Note: you don’t need to know what you’re observing to share your observations–iNaturalist will make suggestions based on your photos, and the community will do the rest.

The results of the challenge will be announced on May 6, and we’ll see how Memphis ranked!

How to participate:

Start by downloading the free iNaturalist app from your app store, or bookmark inaturalist.org if you prefer to use a computer. Any observations you submit between April 26 and 29 will count toward the challenge. Our local partners have set up lots of ways for you to participate as part of a community! 

Events at the Memphis Botanic Garden:

iNaturalist Training
April 26, 9 am-12 pm
Have you ever gone on a walk and been interested in identifying a plant but didn’t know how? There’s an app for that. Join us on April 26 as we talk about iNaturalist, an app designed to record natural observations, share biodiversity science with others across the globe, and build your knowledge by having your observations identified by others. This app is available for iPhone, Android, and desktop computers, even without cell reception or wifi, so you can take it out into the field with you. If you are interested in learning more about this app, join us for a training session at 9 am, 10 am, 11 am, or 12 pm. 

Bioblitz
April 27, 12-4 pm
Join the Memphis Botanic Garden as we participate in the City Nature Challenge 2024! This challenge is a global project to find, document, and identify wildlife in our city as a part of citizen science through the iNaturalist app. 

Help us document plants and animals in our native Woodlands, participate in children’s activities to learn about native wildlife, and join our native plant curator and horticulturist Anne Ballentine in our Pollinator Garden from 12-12:30 and 1-1:30 pm to discover what’s popping up in the garden!

Free with Garden admission. No reservations necessary.

Shelby County Full Schedule:

Friday, April 26:
9 am-12 pm – iNaturalist Training, Memphis Botanic Garden
4-5:30 pm – Birds and Bugs at Shelby Farms Park

Saturday, April 27:
9 am-12 pm – Nature 101 Walks, Old Forest at Overton Park
12-4 pm – Bioblitz, Memphis Botanic Garden
8-9:30 pm – Moth Party, T.O. Fuller State Park Shelter 4

Sunday, April 28:
9 am-12 pm – Bioblitz & Nature Walk, Wolf River Greenway at Epping Way
12-3 pm – Cicadas, Butterflies, and Flowers, T.O. Fuller Wildlife Habitat Area

Wednesday, May 1:
5:30-7 pm – ID Pizza Party at the Overton Park Golf Clubhouse

*Please see individual organization websites for more information, registration links, etc.

Overton Park Conservancy
T.O. Fuller State Park
University of Memphis – Meeman Biological Station
Memphis Botanic Garden
Wolf River Conservancy

City Nature Challenge is organized by the Community Science Teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.