This spring Colorado is hosting several exciting iNaturalist City Challenges and Special Projects. New to iNaturalist? Now is the perfect time to join! You can learn so much by participating while contributing to an invaluable database for global biodiversity, iNaturalist data fuels thousands of scientific studies. Citizen science is real! This post will link to all the active Colorado Challenges and Projects and provide information about how to get started with iNaturalist.
City Challenges in Colorado
This year marks the 10th anniversary of the City Nature Challenges, which is a friendly international contest to record the most observations. Newbies please note – you do NOT need to know what plant you are recording, more on that later! These links will take you to the Join page for each one. Once you have Joined, all your observations are automatically added to the Challenge. The dates for making observations are from April 25th – 28th. After that you will have from April 29th – May 5th to upload your observations if you were using a camera instead of a smart phone, and to help with identifications. The cummulative observation number for all particpating cities are announced May 5th.
Denver-Boulder: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025-denver-boulder [inaturalist.org]
Ft. Collins: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025-fort-collins [inaturalist.org]
Western Slope: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2025-colorado-west-slope [inaturalist.org]
Community Events – Participate in a City Challenge with a group:
Denver Audubon and the High Line Canal Conservancy on April 26th
Special Projects in Colorado
Boulder County Parks and Open Space: 50 Plants for 50 Years!
These two projects are separate from the City Challenges, and both of them run for several months. In celebration of its 50th Anniversary Boulder County Parks and Open Space is hosting a Native Plant Treasure Hunt – with prizes!
Join their iNaturalist Project and you will have from April 1st to October 31 to search for a list of plants, details on the Project page:
The Colorado Statewide Natural Heritage Survey
The Colorado Natural Heritage Program will conduct a statewide Survey this spring through summer and they want your help in observing Colorado’s significant species and habitats. They will conduct a special training to explain the Survey and to help those who want an introduction to using iNat. The program will be live in Ft. Collins on Thursday, March 27 at 3:30 PM, and will also be available as a recording. If you are already a member of the CNHP Project on iNat, your observations will be automatically added to the Survey.
For all the details and to sign up for the training, click here: https://cnhp.colostate.edu/ourwork/snhs/snhs-engagement/
(Click to see a larger image of the survey training).
Fellow plant-lovers, I can personally guarantee that you will expand your knowledge of Colorado’s flora, sharpen your plant ID skills (both native and non!) and absolutely love being an ‘iNatter.” All you have to do is get started! Through my own involvement with iNaturalist over the past nine years, I have deepened my understanding of plants and plant communities, met new friends, and had the wonderful experience of connecting virtually with experts I would otherwise never have had access to. Scroll down to Getting Started if you need help.
Getting Started
You can start an account on iNaturalist either from a computer or from your smart phone, and once you have done that it will recognize you in both places. Recording right from your smart phone is great for getting exact locations of your observations. If there is no connectivity from where you are observing, or if you want to save battery life, no problem, you can enter the observations on the app from your photo library once you are home. If you use a camera to take your photos, you upload from home, and iNat has a mapping feature to help you with locations. You can enter your observation without knowing the ID of the plant (or animal) you have recorded. The iNat software has gotten very good at giving you suggestions to help with ID, or you can either wait for another user to help you, or you can tag another person and ask directly for their help.
There are many videos and guides out there – thank you Google – but a good place to start is from iNaturalist:
Our own Mo Ewing wrote an entertaining article for the Conservation Corner of Aquilegia: Discovering iNaturalist
So be a winner! Join iNaturalist and participate in Colorado’s Challenges and Projects, it’s good for science and it’s FUN!
Sue Dingwell
Co-Webmaster
Colorado Native Plant Society