Thank you to all of the citizen scientists who joined us during the 2022 City Nature Challenge in Madison Square Park. From Friday, April 29–Monday, May 2, over 450 cities across 50 countries joined the four-day global challenge to collect as many wildlife observations as possible.

The observations taken in Madison Square Park during the City Nature Challenge help our team make important decisions to protect the plant and wildlife species that call the park home. Each photo helps ensure that the park’s ecosystem provides adequate food sources and habitat for all of our wild friends to live happy, healthy lives.

This year, Madison Square Park joined 21 NYC greenspaces representing all five boroughs to race and see how quickly we could reach 5,000 observations in the first-ever Greenspace Race. While we await the final international results of the City Nature Challenge, which will be announced on Monday, May 9, we are very happy to share that we reached our goal of 5,000 observations over four days—and then some! To date, 252 iNaturalist observers from the 22 participating greenspaces collected 6,024 observations of 940 species—proving that there is much more than just pigeons and squirrels living in our ecologically rich city!

Stay tuned to learn more about the species that were uncovered during the City Nature Challenge. And remember: your iNaturalist observations help our team learn important information about the park any time of the year!