Anita’s Blog – Global April Bioblitz
- jjvanm
- 1 hour ago
- 6 min read
2026 City Nature Challenge April 24 – 27
Time to prepare – in just 8 weeks, the great nature bioblitz of the year begins
Same Coverage; Same Challenge; SOME Changes – read on
In the early days of the City Nature Challenge, to get citizens involved, observations of everything were encouraged, not just wild nature.
Exotic, well-tended, introduced garden species of plants were included, along with cows, horses, and family pets in the uploaded observations. Animals and plants that were not wild were supposed to be selected as captive/cultivated. Probably not everyone always remembered to do that in the heat of the challenge.
Now, 10 years later, because of the enormity of the popularity and ease of contributing to the iNaturalist database, massive numbers of observations during those first open aggregations loaded up their database. That’s not a bad thing, but it has put a tremendous strain on those volunteers who identify and verify the uploaded observations.
This year, in keeping with the whole scheme of the database: naturalist, City Nature Challenge organizers for the 2026 CNC request that no cultivated plants nor non-wild animals be included. They want the basics: wildlife – and they explain exactly what that means:
“Taking pictures of WILD plants and animals. (Wild means that it wasn’t put there and is not being taken care of by people.)”
Observations can be any WILD plant, animal, or any evidence of life found in your city, according to the organizers. Evidence of life examples: feather, scat, roadkill, animal skeleton, bones, owl pellets, dead bugs, insect eggs, grub worms, larvae, sea beans, dead fish on the beach, animal or bird tracks.
Check out CNC 2026 at this link: https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/
If you have not done a bioblitz before, the CNC is great fun. It is run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles. Participants upload photographs to www.iNaturalist.org. Join on your computer or use the free Smartphone app, iNaturalist.
The event is an annual four-day global bioblitz. Participation makes an impact on understanding biodiversity and coexisting with nature – another reason to only include wild things.
Our area is Lower Rio Grande Valley of Texas: Cameron, Hidalgo, Starr and Willacy counties.
Global tally last year (2025) reached astronomic totals: 3,310,131 observations, listing 73,765 species observed by 102,945 people worldwide. -- 3 million uploads in a four-day period. We can well understand this year’s more exacting parameters.
The CNC is no longer a challenge to see who can observe the most, it is a challenge to find the true natural native nature of a region.
Locating wild plants may be somewhat challenging. My understanding is that we should concentrate on plants that are native to our region – native and also wild.
The best places to look are along country roads (and probably not the safest) edges of farm fields, and coastal sand dunes for authentic wild flora. I recommend you try your own yard first. Look for plants coming up at the edges of your lawn, patchy areas where grass is sparse and at things growing in the cracks of pavement.
Once you upload a photo, using your phone app, and press “what did you see?” when an ID comes up, look to the right of the ID and press on the lower case i in a circle at the right of the identification; more often than not, the description will say where a plant is found or to where it is native.
A couple of examples to help with your decision, using these new parameters: We have a native anacua tree in our front yard. It was already in the yard when we bought the property as were four or five native cedar elms, two Montezuma cypress and a Mexican ash. The house is older than any of those trees so those trees were planted by the previous owners; they are cultivated, therefore, not counted, so I would not upload them.
One of the cedar elm trees has a native ballmoss in it. (See top photo) It is the only ball moss around, which is suspect, still, I will upload a photo of the ball moss – really, I can’t imagine it being put on the tree by anyone. However, I would not upload photos of my five rare Bailey’s ball moss specimens that I tied to branches of a mesquite tree because I placed them there. Were I to go to the area where they get blown out of old forest Ebony trees and landed on the ground, I would certainly upload photos of those wild, rare, native species that are indigenous to Cameron, Hidalgo and Willacy counties. Bailey’s ball moss will not survive on the ground so any found should be rescued. Read more about Bailey’s ball moss at this link:
When discovering observations, you may have to speculate and rely on your judgement. A huge-trunked sweet acacia, Vachellia farnesiana, leans over a resaca inlet at the edge of our property. The tree was probably part of the original landscape prior to the land being purchased for development. I will upload a photo of the sweet acacia as an observation for the CNC.
Other examples of observations worthy of uploading:
From left, green anole, Eastern pondhawk and golden sweat bee.
I spied something new at the edge of our sidewalk and uploaded it to iNat to see what it was. It was identified as an artillery plant, pilea microphylla; the information said it is an annual plant native to Florida, Mexico, West Indies and tropical Central and Southern America. Not native here. I will not include it for the CNC.
I might single out that top little twig (in the photo above) and upload that as an observation. It looks like an upstart of a hackberry tree.
Redseed Plantain, Plantago rhodosperma, growing in the cracks of the sidewalk will get uploaded. It is native and not cultivated.
During the bioblitz, I try, not successfully, to keep my number of observations about even with the number of species, so as not to load up the system with too many of the same species. Joseph Connors, our South Texas Border Chapter Webmaster, Mothing Expert and CNC Aficionado, has a better idea, especially if you are travelling around, observing different areas beyond your own property. “I try not to do too many of the same thing,” Joseph said in a text, “but if I’m going to multiple places, I figure it’s worth documenting that the species is at multiple places.”
Conversely, if he sees a hundred indomitable graphic moths on his moth sheet, he is certainly not posting all of them – which leads me to an excellent idea:
An amazing array of nature comes out at night, and you can summons it with a white sheet and black light during the hours of darkness.
It is not too early to get this all set up and begin using it. It’s called mothing. Joseph got me interested in it several years ago and it’s one of the most fun addictions I’ve ever had. Joseph instructed me via e-mail. He later wrote a tutorial: https://www.stbctmn.org/post/mothing
His tutorial shows my first sophomoric attempts, which were highly successful, if not aesthetically designed. My husband has since built better moth sheets that I can easily move around to different parts of the yard. There are two large eye hooks at the back of the frame so I can anchor it to a tree trunk or post with a bungy cord in the wind. I always check the back of the sheet. (See photos below)
For my efforts, I have attracted and uploaded, during several CNCs, dragonflies, damselflies, a few butterflies, mantidflies, horse flies, fireflies, grasshoppers, wasps, spiders, ants, weevils, bees and beetles of all sorts. And of course, moths, even a few caterpillars.
If you wonder why naturalists, local residents, scientists and citizen scientists consider why this annual bioblitz is worth doing, check out this fascinating story just out in the February iNaturalist newsletter: "A moth thought extinct for almost 150 years reappears on iNaturalist.”
The CNC website proclaims the bioblitz “has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities.”
Help document what’s in our pocket of the world! For help in figuring out the ins and outs of participating in this fun and valuable event, ask a ranger, or staff member at any of the local, city, state or federal parks and nature preserves or ask a Texas Master Naturalist; new class members can ask their mentor, too.