By Todd Burley
Did you participate in this year’s City Nature Challenge? Are you interested (as we are) to know what native species live in Seattle’s parks? Curious to know what the collective action local community scientists can contribute to the understanding of urban biodiversity in Seattle? Read on!
At the end of April, Seattle Parks and Recreation (SPR) joined with other regional nature-based organizations like the Woodland Park Zoo to engage people in our community to advance the understanding of what animals, plants, and fungi live in our public parks. The City Nature Challenge is an annual international “bioblitz” where people go out into their community to observe and record nature. In 2025, 669 cities joined in. Regionally this year, 1,224 people participated in the Seattle-Tacoma Metropolitan Area, making 19,547 observations of 2,123 species!
SPR is curious to learn what native species live in our parks, so this year set up a “project” in iNaturalist, the platform used by City Nature Challenge that can also be used year-round. The Seattle Parks Project incorporates 30 of our largest parks and natural areas so that any observations made in these locations contribute to our knowledge base. So far, nearly 43,000 observations have been made by 4,500 people in these parks! In all, these community scientists have identified over 1,500 species right here in Seattle.
We invite you to download the iNaturalist app and get out to your favorite park to make observations of nature in your backyard. Help us learn about the biodiversity right here in our urban parks!
Here are a few of the 382 observations from the City Nature Challenge in Seattle’s parks this year:
