I'm glad you're interested in the City Nature Challenge! I've put this page together to give you some more information about the CNC and iNaturalist in general. I think that the amazing biodiversity here in Wallowa County is a treasure and I hope that we can share some of its beauty with the rest of Oregon and the world.
Scroll down to learn more about the City Nature Challenge, find more resources for how to take the best photos you can for an iNaturalist observation, join Facebook and WhatsApp groups for the CNC and Wallowa County Naturalists, and more.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to email me at me@daniel.observer and I'll help you as much as I can to get started. If you'd like to participate in the CNC but aren't interested in joining iNaturalist, you can also send me your observations with date & location information and I can post them anonymously to iNaturalist for you.
Hope to see you out there!
Wallowa County City Nature Challenge 2026 Project on iNaturalist
Started in 2016 as a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, the City Nature Challenge (CNC) has grown into an international event, motivating people around the world to find and document wildlife in their own cities. Run by the Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM), the CNC is an annual four-day global bioblitz at the end of April, where cities collaborate to see what can be accomplished when we all work toward a common goal.
You can view a list of participating cities here.
You can view the iNaturalist project for the Wallowa County City Nature Challenge here.
From April 24 - 27, 2026, take photos or audio recordings of WILD nature anywhere in Wallowa County.
Wild nature means anything that isn't a pet, livestock, landscape plant, or person.
It can be at your house, at your local park, out in the mountains, on the side of the road – anywhere in Wallowa County!
After you've taken the photos, add them to iNaturalist by May 10, 2026. You can use the iNaturalist app or the inaturalist.org website.
Check out the iNaturalist Website
The inaturalist.org website is my favorite way to interact with iNaturalist. It has the most features, and in my opinion is the easiest to use. It is definitely the best way to view other observations and add identifications, if that's something you're interested in.
Download the iNaturalist iPhone App
The iNaturalist app is a great way to add your observations straight from your phone.
It can also be used "in the field" to try to figure out what things are when you're out in nature, but generally it's easier to just focus on taking pictures while you're out and adding observations when you're back at home with a good internet connection.
It is a newer version of the app, and sometimes has problems with locking up and being unresponsive, especially with a spotty internet connection.
Download the iNaturalist "Classic" iPhone App
The iNaturalist "Classic" app has less features that the new app, but it's a little more reliable and is probably a better option for older phones.
Download the iNaturalist Android App
The Android iNaturalist app is actually the best version of iNaturalist for phones. If you have an Android, this is a great way to add your observations and explore nature in your area.
This is true. And since we don't have any cities, we'll be contributing as a county! That way we can combine our efforts and see how we compare.
The Oregon cities/regions participating are