And now for a hypothetical ranking… what happens if we wanted to rank by verifiable observations only? (Numbers here are based on the 2023 umbrella project and individual city projects for 2023)
new rank
previous rank
city
total
casual
verifiable
1
1
La Paz (CNC)
124,458
60,735
63,723
2
3
Dallas/Fort Worth
48,655
911
47,744
3
2
City of Cape Town
52,300
9,971
42,329
4
4
Houston-Galveston
42,438
2,873
39,565
5
7
Washington DC Metro Area
37,984
1,182
36,802
6
5
Mazatlán, Sinaloa
42,165
7,506
34,659
7
9
San Francisco Bay Area
32,979
0*
32,979
8
10
Graz bis Tierwelt Herberstein
32,883
500
32,383
9
6
Hong Kong
39,367
7,097
32,270
10
8
Cosalá, Sinaloa
35,802
3,604
32,198
*I would like to point out that San Fransisco Bay Area, one of the inventors of the City Nature Challenge, already voluntarily chose to exclude casual observations from their project.
Thank you for this overview! It’s clear that some of the estimates made in the shockingly rapid CNC summary wrap-up really are subject to very large error – or just overestimates based on the fact that observations are not checked in such a short time.
I think this is still quite likely to be an underestimate of any changes. To this very day I encounter problem observations (misidentified, mismarked, or usually both) from the La Paz area – I often have to mark 80% or more of a given observer’s observations as cultivated, and I’m not even qualified enough to re-identify most of them so the species problem could be vastly undealt-with even now. Still, the fact that there are quite major shifts just based on the process of change with identification over the course of a year or two, sans a heaviest possible cleanup effort, suggests that the attempt to put a bow on CNC results as soon as possible (and never check back!) is misguided or at least not useful in terms of precise numbers.
Reporting observations down to the single digits is simply guaranteed to produce erroneous results. Plus, did these include all observations counted in all projects? Was there any attempt to exclude fradulent records like copyright-flagged or location-inaccurate observations that weren’t directly excluded from misconfigured projects? Does the threatened species count include captive animals from the pet trade, or “extinct in the wild” horticultural plants? (I had to mark as captive all the putative observations of some endangered tortoises in Macao, for just one example.)
And don’t even get the microspecies people started on the profound woes of “Taraxacum officinale” sensu lato. I’m not such a person, but even I have severe doubts about the qualifications of that taxonomic aggregate to be counted as “top species”.
Interesting. It obviously makes no sense to mention species numbers right at the end of the event. The CNC 2025 in Bolivia has 75 pages of arthropod observations. I verified a few pages and many observations were identified as species that don’t occur in South America.
I agree 100% with @graysquirrel. iNat is my refuge. I put a lot of effort into getting observations.
I was surprised to see Casual Grade was acceptable this year in my area. I avoid those for the most part and wouldn’t think of including them in a Project. Seems like there should be some kind of controls put in place. Numbers are are great - But they are meaningless when they include fraud and sock puppets (?!?).
Yes for La Paz 2023, they currently have 48.8% casual. What surprized me more is that they only have 12.33% research grade, even now after 2 years for potential identification. It seems they have not made much effort towards identifying their observations.
It really depends on who is participating that matters.
The definition changes for everyone. For me personally, it’s a fun challenge to find as many critters as possible.
I’ve been working on Cochabamba, Bolivia - just going through a few pages and re-IDing the most absurdly incorrect ones. I’ve by no means gone through all (or even most), and I don’t have the expertise to do so for most taxa anyway.
When I started, on the 8th:
Total observations in project: 109,980
Total species in project: 6,730
Verifiable observations in project: 67,410
Verifiable species in project: 5,699
Currently:
Total observations in project: 110,036
Total species in project: 6,412
Verifiable observations in project: 63,556
Verifiable species in project: 5,260
So despite a slight increase in the number of observations, the number of overall species has decreased by 318, the number of verifiable species decreased by 439, and the number of verifiable observations has decreased by 3,854.
That’s just from a single person putting in a few hours. A quick look through the remainder of the “verifiable” observations tells me that the vast vast majority are still mis-IDs, copyright violations, and cultivated plants.
I did send a message to the contact address on the CNC website to express my concerns over how this event is being conducted, but as of yet have not recieved a reply.
It seems it would be better to do CNC on Seek for New Today. Unless you are already active (and in good standing) on iNat.
And make sure that observers are active and willing iNatters, before those obs can go to iNat itself.
No joke IDs from elsewhere to blow up fake numbers. Thank you.
Taxon specialists who had their corner tidy and in order - must be burnt out in despair.
But better waiting at Unknown or Needs ID than faked up RG.
I will persevere with my residue - because then we will come up against the Great Southern Bioblitz - which is at least not so HUMUNGOUS.
Frankly one million obs in a single day, needs technical tools, organised between CNC admin and iNat staff. Merely human wetware. Can NOT.
The City Nature Cheat-athon is not a real competition if there is that much fraud and acceptance of captive/cultivated organisms. I likely won’t bother participating next year.
Honestly, the competition part of it is a joke. I dont understand how it can be taken seriously. As gray above describes, the results have already changed substantially from the official results. The results changing from the official results for species in Cochabamba, Bolivia 4.8% in a few days is ridiculous.
I hate to be so negative, but increasingly im only viewing the net positives of this event being to get people outside and for some to think more about nature. Honestly the CNC could be a much better event for both data and participation if certain things changed. The idea of a CNC is not inherently flawed, its just the execution.
I agree that if it gets new people outside to make a good-faith effort to document wild organisms in their area, it’s a good thing. But if it results in lots of garbage records that make a mess of the database and encourages cheating to boost numbers, then it’s not so good.
It is called a CITY challenge, but not all the projects are cities, or even city sized. That is not in any way a fair contest. How many sp you can expect to see within your designated area also varies hugely. How many identifiers at work to Name That One.
Not being a native English speaker, but to me, the term ‘competition’ - if not directly accompanied by a leaderboard - has a much narrower meaning than a ‘challenge’.
‘Competion’ I associate with comparing results and having an opponent, including some sort of prize or recognition, while ‘challenge’ to me is rather any kind of ‘difficult task’.
That might include a race to the top, but can also mean (in the context of CNC) to make interesting observations, find biodiversity at places you wouldn’t have expected or merely going out of your department despite unfavorable weather conditions to find a plant species that you always wanted to see (or to even find the associated phytoparasite on top)
Thus, a CNC can also mean a personal conquest and having a memorable time.
