Stellenbosch will this year join hundreds of cities in a global competition that encourages locals to photograph local fauna and flora.
This is according to Stuart Grobbelaar, spokesperson for Stellenbosch Municipality, via written correspondence with MatieMedia.
“I believe that getting people interested in the biodiversity around them is fundamental to any and all conservation efforts,” stated Prof Dave Richardson, director of Stellenbosch University’s DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, via written correspondence with MatieMedia. PHOTO: Bianke Neethling
The City Nature Challenge is a friendly competition between more than 400 cities around the world which encourages citizens to take photographs of their local fauna and flora, explained Grobbelaar. These pictures are uploaded to an application, iNaturalist, where they are identified, he stated.
The city that “can find and document the most wildlife over a four-day period” wins, stated Grobbelaar.
Participants in this challenge could upload photos to the app from 29 April to 2 May and now, from 3 May to 8 May, the identification of these photos are taking place. The results of the challenge will be announced on 9 May. This is according to the City Nature Challenge website.
“I believe the City Nature Challenge is important in creating a collective emphasis on contributing naturalist observations through crowdsourcing platforms, indirectly touching people who have never heard about citizen-sciences, and more importantly engaging them on the longer term,” according to Dr Christophe Botella, postdoctoral researcher at the DSI-NRF Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology, via written correspondence with MatieMedia. Pictured above is Bernard van der Berg, an avid amateur nature photographer. PHOTO: Bianke Neethling
A win for science
Prof Dave Richardson, the director of Stellenbosch University’s department of science and innovation and the National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Invasion Biology (CIB), is an identifier on the application. He has been involved with iNaturalist “for the last five years or so”, and described it as “the most accessible platform for leveraging contributions of citizen-science”.
His team at the CIB “[makes] use of data from iNaturalist in various projects”, Richardson told MatieMedia via written correspondence. The data collected via iNaturalist is “essential for building comprehensive pictures of the distribution of different species” and is “of huge value to researchers interested in biodiversity”, he stated.
Stellenbosch’s participation in the City Nature Challenge is “a greathonour”, stated Stellenbosch mayor Gesie van Deventer, via written correspondence with MatieMedia. “We have such a unique natural heritage and our region boasts with some of the richest biospheres of animal and plant life in the world.” PHOTO: Bianke Neethling
“The impacts of such bioblitz events on scientific ecology must first be put into the larger context of the emergence of crowdsourcing (‘citizen-science’), which has quickly become […] the largest source of biodiversity data in the past 5 years,” said Dr Christophe Botella, postdoctoral researcher at the CIB, via written correspondence with MatieMedia.
The impact of this challenge can already be seen, stated Botella, who added that it “overall increased the number of observations for Stellenbosch by 4%, just during last weekend [30 April to 1 May]”.
At the time of this article’s publication, more than 2 900 observations had been made in the challenge.
The City Nature Challenge is not the only venture of its kind, according to Dr Laura Fernandez Winzer, postdoctoral research fellow at the South African National Biodiversity Institute, via written correspondence with MatieMedia. “I participated in a bioblitz in Tasmania, which was related to iNaturalist (we added records but only if they were rare species). The goal was to raise awareness of the critical state of the forests with conservation aims, given that forestry wants to cut down native forests.” PHOTO: Bianke Neethling
Crowdsourcing conundrums
However, Botella warned against the downsides that may come from gathering data through a platform like iNaturalist. “For instance, the City Nature Challenge inflates the number of observations of plant species flowering now. These species end up over-represented compared to the non-flowering ones.”
Despite the potential risks, “crowdsourcing and events like the City Nature Challenge in particular are progressively and deeply transforming our work and scientific field, hopefully for generating a more global and better knowledge of biodiversity and ecosystems”, stated Botella.
The City Nature Challenge is “run by the community science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County”, according to the competition’s website.