Record local wildlife levels for the City Nature Challenge

Photo: Rochdale Online

A tree bumblebee

Greater Manchester residents are being invited to take part in this year’s worldwide wildlife recording event, the City Nature Challenge.

Organised on a global scale by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences, the City Nature Challenge sees over 150 cities worldwide find and record urban wildlife between 26 and 29 April.

Anyone who joins in will be helping to make a difference, mapping where wildlife lives in the city-region. The information from this weekend will be added to the UK’s biodiversity database, becoming part of the data used to protect nature. 

A number of organised events are taking place across the region, but with no events taking place in the Rochdale borough, you can take part independently using the iNaturalist app to record any wildlife you spot over that weekend.

You could record the ladybirds living on your balcony, the birds in the local park or the mushrooms you’ve seen on a walk in the countryside.

Stuart Fraser, Environmental Records Officer for Greater Manchester Local Records Centre (GMLRC), said: “Recording your nature sightings is a great way for anyone to contribute to conservation.

“GMLRC uses records to highlight important areas for wildlife in the region; we produce reports on protected/priority species for ecological consultants on Planning Applications, and they help identify sites to be considered by Greater Manchester districts for regional Sites of Biological Importance status.

“Records also help owners and organisations manage land for all species, and track how climate change, habitat management and other changes affect biodiversity over time – locally and nationally, as our records feed into the national NBN database.”

The iNaturalist app is available to download on the Google Play Store and the Apple App Store.