Passport to Texas

Join the City Nature Challenge.

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This is Passport to Texas

Seven Texas regions will square off as teams against the world and one another during the City Nature Challenge. Teams try to document more plant and animal species than their competitors. Marsha May is a biologist and coordinator for Austin.

And we are using a format called iNaturalist, which is a real easy way of collecting data. You don’t even have to know what it is, because other people will come in and help you identify it through the program.

Last year DFW, Austin and Houston were in the challenge, igniting friendly competition.

Austin and Houston competed for the greatest number of species. We were going neck-and-neck for a while. And it looked like Austin was going to win, but then on the final count, Houston won—by five species. Dallas/Fort Worth, though, had the most observers and the most observations, So, they won with observations, but they had a very, um, gung-ho urban biologist up there.

That gung-ho DFW urban biologist was Sam Kieschnick.
Download the app to your smart phone from iNaturalist.org. Observations made in the metro areas of each city during the challenge will be counted. Any last words, Marsha?

Sam! We’re coming. We’re going to beat you this time. [laughter]

The City Nature Challenge is April 27-30th. There’s more information on the Texas Nature Trackers Page on the Texas Parks and Wildlife website.

The Wildlife Restoration program supports our series.

For Texas Parks and Wildlife…I’m Cecilia Nasti.