Some months ago, I created a project for the nature of the year 2026 in Germany.
Nature of the Year is a slogan under which many scientific, conservation or other organizations in Germany announce a “species of the year” each year.
It started in the 70s with the biggest German conservation organization selecting the “bird of the year”. This is still the most common of the campaigns (even announced on the flagship national tv channel and nowadays elected democratically).
These campaigns became quite a thing, and now there is one for everything, like cave animal of the year (by the German Association for Cave and Karst Research, lol) or even inanimate thing in nature like “soil of the year”
In any case, the idea behind them all is to generate publicity for (often) threatened species and connect people to nature (much like iNat!), often with events tailored to the specific animal/plant. Personally, I got motivated to volunteer in a Grey Partridge mapping project, partially because it is the bird of the year (it experienced quite the mysterious and drastic decline in Germany within just 20 years).
Long story short, I created this project, because I think it is quite fun to find an “observation of the year” in this sense.
If I wasn’t busy enough already, I would even try to observe as many “species of the year” as possible (I’m not even close). That would be a fun challenge!
The cave animal of the year, the Höhlen-Zwergflohkrebs (engl. cave-dwarf-flea-crab, lol again) doesn’t even have any iNat observations yet!
At the end of the year, I’ll write a journal post, where I announce the person with most species and present the coolest observations of the project.
I’m planning to create a new project also for the next year’s species!
Anyway, it got me thinking, does something similar exist in other countries?
In Austria and Switzerland there definitely is and also I read about “bird of the year” in other countries, but not much more than that.
If there is, people could start creating projects for other countries for each year too!
All projects from one country could be bundled into one umbrella project, and those into a super-umbrella project “Nature of the Year: Worldwide”.
I think that would be fun!
I am active on a lot of social media platforms (21 different platforms a day), and I’m not aware of “Of the Year” initiatives. So either they don’t exist in the USA, Canada, and the UK, or they exist, but they aren’t publicized much.
As you said, in Germany, there seems to be one for everything! When you start getting into things like “Potato of the Year” and “Single-celled Organism of the Year,” though, I think there’s a risk of diluting the marketing message. If everything is “Of the Year”, then nothing stands out.
As an example, think about public fundraising campaigns for diseases. There could theoretically be a different “Disease of the Year” every day, but awareness campaigns tend to focus on a small number of major diseases, so that they remain memorable to the public.
I think it’s great if you stay as the “Of the Year” guy, and keep creating umbrella projects and coordinating global “Of the Year” campaigns! That seems like a great way to add value for everyone, and to amplify existing awareness campaigns for iNaturalist.
The Garden Club of America every year names “an outstanding native plant which is underutilized but possesses superior ornamental and ecological attributes” as Plant of the Year. (more info ) while the Lady Bird Johson Wildflower Center names a Wildflower of the Year (more info).
Individual states also make their own pronouncements too. Indiana celebrates a Fish of the Year, for example.
I found those easily in a few minutes, so I am sure there are plenty more. The ones with archives, especially, might be interesting, as projects, I think. (I have proven a lousy project manager, so will not take any more on at this time.)
Related: if you have an opportunity, there is a really excellent documentary called The Million Dollar Duck which is about the Federal Duck Stamp contest, which is in its way an “of the year” nature contest.
Here we have more daily awareness things, for example day of the flamingo, wherein there are lots of awareness campaigns, etc. These are quite good though, because they are all tied together across agencies, such as habitat preservation, etc, so you get information from many sides, even if you are only on a few platforms.
(edit to make it clear that the Million Dollar Duck was a personal recommendation. It’s really good! And as a bonus I learned a lot about how funds are generated from hunting for conservation.)
Failed to mention one in which I voted: the very exciting Mollosc of the Year, which was even mentioned here. Oops!
And I also really appreciate Nature Photography of the Year contests. I have been to a few museums where the finalists’ photos have been blown up and they were just… staggering.
Hey Adam! :) I get your point and some campaigns I find really silly and/or unnecessary like pet animal of the year.
But I see it more like that every niche has their representative which they want to celebrate for one year and use as a mascot for their cause. There are only so many birds in Germany (many got selected twice already). On the other hand there are much more cryptic but equally important and threatened critters that should get some recognition. I don’t think that the smaller campaigns will draw attention away from the bigger ones. Actually, when I created the project I was only aware of the bird campaign (and this since forever, and maybe also the animal of the year campaign).
Also the difference to the disease comparison is this:
Diseases are important to us mostly because how much they suck. In the end it does not matter if I die of something named X-itis or Y-orosis. In this sense they would genuinely compete as campaigns because I want neither, so how do I know where to get involved?
But the reason animals/plant are important to us lies specifically in their diversity. We dont want just any animal to thrive but as many species as possible. So I think it is important to portray this diversity also in the campaigns, at least a little bit. People who like birds listen to a talk about the decline of the Grey Partridge and people who like amphibia donate for rewilding a swamp. Sure that means that some less charismatic nieches get left out but, I see mostly benefits in their coexistence.
Also to clarify, this Nature of the Year is not one centralized affair. It all just got inspired by the birds and technically anyone can start their “mold of the year” campaign (it literally took me 3 tries to come up with something silly that doesn’t already exist, so I guess you do have a point, at least a little bit haha).
No, I really gotta say I love those more niche campaigns, like molluscs of the year! It’s like someone who is really into molluscs is trying to convince you that this particular one is the coolest of them all. And I think this really rubs off on me.
Also the link in the mollusk forum thread is dead, but judging from the URL, it seems like it was an initiative from the Senckenberg museum in Frankfurt (and others), Germany. So no surprises there, except that it is not in the project yet! Thanks for pointing it out :)
Oh, no! @thomaseverest perhaps can assist? He knew all about it, as I remember. The details are lost to me.
Also I was filled with nostalgia remembering the documentary and went looking for it. In doing so, I was reminded there is another movie, a comedy from 1971, by the same name.
There would seem to be a real opportunity here for iNat to promote itself by sponsoring Year campaigns for under-appreciated organisms - perhaps starting with Worm of the Year.
Australia has a bunch of these, and they’re quite popular with the public and get a lot of media coverage
Unsurprisingly the Bird of the Year is the most popular (and longest running one), with hundreds of thousands of votes received each year. It has its own Wikipedia article, and you get heaps of social media activity and lots of politicians (including the prime minister) and celebrities weighing in on which species they voted for. There’s even been controversies around ‘voter fraud’ in some years with bot accounts or sock puppets being set up to stack votes for certain species.
Others include the recently started Insect of the Year, and the new Wildflower of the Year, which just finished up as part of National Science Week, with flannel flowers winning this one (note the many iNat photos used to illustrate that article).
Thank you to everyone who commented in this thread and shared links. I learned a lot!
In my original comment, I was thinking of situations when a small organization just declares something on their own (maybe they get a local politician to “officially” endorse it), and most members of the general public don’t notice or care.
But after reading your links, I realize that “Of the Year” competitions, when done in the style of an exciting election, can engage hundreds of thousands of people, and they can provide a structure for storytelling that lasts for the entire year. And this storytelling can drive nature observations, volunteer hours, and donations. Storytelling can influence schools to include more nature in their curricula, and it can even influence conservation budgets and legislation.
John Oliver quite famously hijacked our bird of the year in 2023.
In 2022 the Pīwauwau / rock wren won with 2,894 votes
In 2023 the Pūteketeke / Australasian crested grebe won with 290,374 votes
Back to 2024 the Hoiho / yellow-eyed penguin won with 6,328 votes.
2025 was Kārearea / New Zealand falcon with 14,317 so gaining momentum but nothing compared to 2023.
The comp runs from sept, so should open soon.
Orange Coral Fungus won the 2026 fungi of the year.
Northland Mudfish won the 2026 fish of the year
Avatar Moth won the 2026 bug of the year
I think whether small campaigns get diluted is going to depend on how they’re presented and what people are expecting. If you have a bunch of tiny campaigns simultaneously, it can definitely get overwhelming. But if your target audience is looking forward to finding out what critter they’re going to learn about this year, they don’t necessarily have to remember all the specific previous animal-of-the-year campaigns to appreciate biodiversity.
I really like the possibility of using Of-The-Year type campaigns to counteract the tendency of environmental organizations to promote a handful of charismatic mostly-mega-fauna because that’s what most people know and care about. And I totally get the logic behind talking about pandas or whales or monarch butterflies! But there are also a lot of people who are highly motivated by collecting/finishing/shiny-new-thing type campaigns, and I’d love to see that tendency exploited to get people really excited about weird cave crabs and rare squirrels and did you know there are like 30 different species of ladybug just in this local area?? Etc.
There is Tree of the Year in the UK, run by the Woodland Trust. I remember one year’s winner in the English midlands got the award shortly before being felled to make way for the HS2 high speed railway vanity project. There is also European Tree of the Year. Our 2025 winner came a plucky 12th in Europe in 2026 apparently. I guess it is like football - this year’s country champions go into the European competition next year.
