City Nature Challenge 2022 North East England Summary of Results
Well, we've had time to digest the data and statistics from the #CityNatureChallenge this year and we are over the moon with the effort you all put in to the event!
Overall, we came 101 out of 445 cities which took part. This position is based on the total number of observations made. For number of observers taking part, we came 109th but we did even better when we look at some different aspects of the data, for example, we came 84th for the number of species recorded.
Digging into the statistics a bit further, it was great to see that 96% of the observations we made were “verifiable”. A verifiable observation is one which has a valid date, a location, has photo or sound, and isn’t a captivated or cultivated specimen. These other bits of information are essential to make the data useful for conservation and research purposes.
Once two thirds of “identifications” of an observation are in agreement, the observation quality moves from “Needs ID” to “Research Grade” quality. This makes the observation much more useful for two main reasons:
a) it is much more likely that the ID is correct and
b) the data will then flow forward into iRecord (the main recording platform in the UK) and ultimately into the National Biodiversity Atlas. Once the data is in iRecord, it is also accessible by local records centres like us at ERIC NE.
We did really well working as a community to help with identification and almost 63% of our records got to research grade over the duration of the event and we got to 64th position for this aspect!!! Further identification can continue beyond the event, so if you have a spare five minutes here and there, you can always pop on to iNat and help out with identifications to get any observations up to research grade.
Looking at the wider global results, 67,220 observers from 445 “cities” took part from 47 countries to make a total of 1,694,877 observations! We more or less made the average number of observations per person. Globally the figure is 25.2 and our number for NE England was 24.7 observations per person.
Observations were made in the Northern hemisphere and the Southern hemisphere and in a wide range of habitats from arid desert to tropical rainforest!
The overall winner, though the CNC is of course officially a collaboration these days, was “La Paz” in Bolivia with an incredible 137,345 observations of 5,320 species by 4,296 people. For some comparison, La Paz has a population of 1,831,350 in their “city” area which covers 7284km2 and here in our “city” of North East England, the population is approximately 2,400,000 and the area of our city is 12,000km2. What is their secret????
A total of 2,244 rare/endangered or threatened species were spotted and recorded around the world and we would like to give a special mention to the 240 participants in Ukraine who made 7,867 observations of 1, 698 species including and observation by zoologist Vasyliuk Oleksij of the rare and endangered Przewalski’s Horse (Equus ferus ssp. Przewalskii). It is also encouraging to think about how the CNC brings people together despite what’s going on in the world when we hear of the 767 observers in Russia who also joined with this collaboration.
And the most observed species globally? The Common Dandelion, Taraxacum officinale!
So don’t stop here! Please keep recording your observations of nature and wildlife. Every record counts and it’s important to record common species too. We could never pay enough scientists to go and do the spotting so wildlife recording is really important and is a really powerful way to help nature.
A MASSIVE THANK YOU for joining in and helping to make so many quality records. We hope you had fun and will be back to join in next year!
From the ERIC North East Team! Paul, Fiona, Anne and Irene.
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