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Join Philadelphia and its surrounding counties as we document our fall biodiversity. We’ve done the City Nature Challenge in the spring, but now it’s time to see what we have around us in the fall.

From September 25th (Friday) to September 28th (Monday), we’ll be documenting the plants, animals, and fungi in Philadelphia, Delaware, Montgomery, and Bucks counties in PA and Camden, Gloucester and Burlington counties in NJ. Can we beat our spring totals from the CNC in the fall? What new species are we going to find? Come participate in some community science and help us find out.

Simply download the iNaturalist app on your Android or iOS device and start making observations between September 25th and 28th for them to count towards the bioblitz. You can make observations in your own house or backyard, on your walks around the neighborhood, or anywhere you enjoy the outdoors.

Participating is exactly similar to the City Nature Challenge, except that it is in September. For more detailed instructions, check out our How To Participate page. You can also find more info on using iNaturalist in our Resources page.

Black Lives Matter to the Philadelphia City Nature Challenge (PCNC). The Philadelphia City Nature Challenge Organizing Committee condemns all forms of racism, discrimination, and prejudice. We stand in solidarity with the Black community against systemic racism, white supremacy, and police brutality. We believe that nature is for everyone, but that can never be realized until we do everything we can to ensure that Black, Indigenous, and People of Color feel safe in the outdoors. The experience of engaging in active or passive activities in natural areas, using binoculars, or observing wildlife in every facet of the public realm, is drastically different for different groups of people. BIPOC, and especially black people, face excessive scrutiny from white people when engaging in the activities they love as evidenced by the recent racist incident against Christian Cooper, a black birdwatcher in NYC. While that incident luckily did not end as badly as it could have, we all know how easily the situation could have been very different as we saw with the murder of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others at the hands of law enforcement. We grieve with all of their families and loved ones, and mourn that their lives were taken far too early.

While Philadelphia is a diverse city, the naturalist community in Philadelphia isn’t so diverse. We acknowledge that we haven’t done enough to make sure that this is addressed and we aim to do better. We pledge to increase programs in under-served areas, and actively reach out to communities of color to make sure that they are represented in citizen science efforts.