West of England City Nature Challenge 2023 Results

City Nature Challenge (CNC) is a global mission to record as much wildlife as possible on the iNaturalist app, during a 4-day period at the end of April. During 2023, the event ran from Friday 28 April – Monday 1 May. It was the 6th year that the Natural History Consortium (NHC) has organised CNC for the West of England region.

Throughout the challenge, NHC supported events that help connect people with nature by providing opportunities to learn about local wildlife and introducing participants to the importance of wildlife recording. The ecological data collected can be used by researchers and conservation scientists, as well as adding to distribution knowledge of species living locally.

Download the full 2023 report here or view a summary below.

West of England results

Across the West of England project area, 374 participants of CNC made a total of 7,500 observations of 1297 species on iNaturalist. This is the second highest number of species ever recorded during a City Nature Challenge event in our region.

In comparison with the rest of the UK, the West of England CNC region came:

• 2nd highest in the UK for number of participants who made observations
• 3rd highest in UK for numbers of species recorded
• 4th highest in the UK for numbers of observations made

Global results

NHC helped the global totals for CNC reach its highest ever count for numbers of observations and number of species recorded. It was the second highest year for number of people making records (66,400 compared to 67,200 in the year 2022).

Where do the West of England results go?

A key part of iNaturalist is that scientists are able to access and use iNaturalist data in their research - a list of 3700+ publications that cite iNatualist records can be found here.

During 2023, open licence records made during CNC in our region will also be processed by BRERC, our Local Records Centre, to maximise use of records by local organisations.