Help needed to break wildlife spotting record in Staffordshire

Staffordshire Ecological Records (SER) and Staffordshire Wildlife Trust are calling on people across the county to record wildlife sightings for the 2024 City Nature Challenge.

The City Nature Challenge is an annual competition among cities all over the world to see how many wild species their citizens can spot over four days: Friday 26 April to Monday 29 April. This is the second year that Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent are taking part.

Rory Middleton, Ecological Data Manager for SER, said: “We’re excited for this year’s challenge. In our debut last year, the county placed eighth out of the 11 UK places that took part, and 114th out of the 492 places worldwide that took part. It was a great start, but we hope Staffordshire can break its record this year.

“To take part you’ll need to either download the free iNaturalist app on your phone or tablet, or use the website to record sightings. For a record to count you’ll need to snap a photo of what you’ve found and upload it to iNaturalist. You can use the app to identify what you’ve found or use the in-built search function to select the species if you know what you’ve seen.

“Not only is this a fun way to get involved in recording nature – the information gathered will give us vital data for our county and help us work to protect it. Observations recorded during the challenge will help us map changes in the distribution and population of Staffordshire’s wildlife.”

More information about how to take part, and an iNaturalist instruction video, can be found online: www.staffs-wildlife.org.uk/city-nature-challenge-staffordshire