Successful premiere

City Nature Challenge 2022: Worldwide event and the Gesäuse right in the middle.

The Gesäuse region is a hotspot of biodiversity. This was again impressively demonstrated during the City Nature Challenge 2022. In four days, a total of 457 species were documented in the communities of Admont, St. Gallen and Landl with 1330 observations! This puts the Gesäuse National Park region in the good midfield of participants worldwide.

The City Nature Challenge 2022, the largest Citizen Science event in the world, took place from 29 April to 2 May - now the results have been fully evaluated. Almost 450 regions from 47 countries competed in the friendly competition with the aim of finding as many wild animal, plant and fungal species as possible.

Taking part was very simple. Anyone who had installed the "iNaturalist" app on their smartphone and was in one of the participating regions could become part of the project by photographing and uploading their observations.

Playfully, 457 species were detected over the four days. "There was even a find of the rare blue ground beetle (Carabus intricatus) with his favourite food, a nudibranch," says Alexander Maringer, Head of the Nature Conservation and Research Department of the Gesäuse National Park.

Internationally, the 6th edition of the City Nature Challenge was also a great success. Since the start of the competition in 2016, 67,000 volunteers have already collected 1.7 million observations. As an added value for science, as many as 2,244 rare or endangered species were photographed.

At this point, we would like to thank all those who diligently participated. First and foremost, thanks to the National Park Junior Rangers who spent a day criss-crossing the area with their mobile phones. A repeat of this international challenge is planned for 2023 - the Gesaeuse region is a biodiversity hotspot and there is much to discover!

Enquiry notice:

Magdalena Kaltenbrunner, Tel: 0664-82 52 310

Email: m.kaltenbrunner@nationalpark-gesaeuse.at

© Stefan Leitner 

Photos and illustrations:

Please insert the logo of the City Nature Challenge and the Natural History Museum: