GO NEW MEXICO
The City Nature Challenge starts April 24 鈥� find out how you can get involved
The City Nature Challenge, a global citizen scientist effort, is back for 2026 and New Mexico has three participating areas this year.
The Albuquerque, Santa Fe and Silver City areas have signed up to face off against the world and those interested in taking part can sign up at citynaturechallenge.org.
CNC starts with a four-day bioblitz Friday, April 24, through Monday, April 27, where participants take photos of wild plants and animals, noting the location of the sighting. The iNaturalist website recommends excluding casual observations and avoid the three P鈥檚 鈥� people, pets and potted plants. Casual observations can include animals in a zoo/aquarium, plants in your garden, potted plants, plants at a botanical garden, etc.
Then, from Tuesday, April 28, through May 10, participants upload their findings using iNaturalist and work together to help ID photographed species. The global results will be announced on May 13.
In 2025, the Albuquerque area reported 15,849 observations of 1,718 species and had 435 participants. Santa Fe recorded 2,089 observations of 616 species with 128 participants. Silver City reported 855 observations of 379 species by 33 participants.
City Nature Challenge started in 2016 as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Last year鈥檚 event recorded a total of 3,310,131 observations of 73,765 species by 102,945 people globally.
