City Nature Challenge : Christchurch City Council

Help put Ōtautahi Christchurch on the biodiversity world map. We're joining cities around the world to share observations of nature in the 2026 City Nature Challenge.

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The City Nature Challenge (CNC) started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, and has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities.

Run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), the City Nature Challenge is an annual four-day global bioblitz at the end of April, where cities collaborate to see what can be accomplished when we all work toward a common goal.

Find out more(external link)

Ōtautahi Christchurch has participated in the City Nature Challenge since 2019.

In 2024, there was a large-scale collaborative effort to put Otautahi on the biodiversity international map. The results saw us place 26 out of 690 cities, beating Los Angeles, Melbourne and Wellington.

In 2025, we blew the previous year's observations out of the water. Globally, we placed 27 out of 669 cities, with a grand total of 3.3 million observations made worldwide.

Can we do it again in 2026?

	2024	2025
Observations	20, 313	25,479
Species	2241	2441
Observers	359	377
Identifiers	642	618

See our observations and statistics on iNaturalist(external link)

Save the date

The 2026 City Nature Challenge will take place from Friday 24 to Monday 27 April 2026.

How it works

City Nature Challenge takes place in two parts:

Friday 24 to Monday 27 April: Take pictures of wild plants and animals. Wild, meaning that it wasn't put there, and is not being taken care of by people.
Tuesday 28 April to Sunday 10 May: Upload your photo observations to iNaturalist. You can try to identify the species you found, or you can let the experts do this for you.

Taking part

Do you have a phone or a camera? That's all you need:

Find wildlife: Head out to your local park, river, the beach - anywhere wild - to find wild plants and animals. You can also check back here for organised walks or meetups with community groups who are taking part.
Take a picture or record a sound of what you find. Be sure to note the location or have your camera gps turned on.
Share your findings: Sign up to iNaturalist(external link) and either download the app – Apple(external link) or Google Play(external link) – or sign in on your web browser, and join the 2026 project.(external link)

This is all free to do. Upload your photographs or sound recordings to iNaturalist, and they will automatically be added to this project during the City Nature Challenge.

To be confirmed.

Ōtautahi is home to an incredible array of plants and wildlife - from endemic to native to introduced species.

Whether you stick to urban parks or head into the hills, hit the beach or scour the rivers, you're bound to discover plenty of awesome living things to photograph.