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Date:2019-04-24
Bracket:2019 NCYU NEWS
Department:ncyu
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Taiwan’s Debut at the City Nature Challenge: NCYU Invites You to Be Enlisted as a World Natural Observer
National Chiayi University joined “2019 City Nature Challenge” on the behalf of Chiayi County and City, Taiwan. It is a four-day globally concurrent surveying event starting from April 26th. This marks the first time Taiwan has ever participated in the event, and all citizens of Taiwan are welcome to be enlisted. During the event, the participants will search for wildlife in Chiayi County and City, from the coastal wetlands to the 3,000-meter-high mountainous area of Yushan. Once you spot any existence evidence of wild animals, plants, fungus, slime or other wildlife (feces, hair, footprints, shells, or even corpses), just take a photo and upload it to the iNaturalist platform. There will be experts or social media volunteers to identify the species with the photos. All the records uploaded will help bring more international visibility to Taiwan, and even enrich the global biodiversity database.
The global event of the City Nature Challenge found its start at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, the US, before emerging as a global event. It invites citizen scientists, natural observers, students, and NGO volunteers from all over the world to join the globally concurrent surveying event that has been taking place annually since 2016. This year, it is scheduled from the early morning of April 26th to midnight on April 29th. It will be conducted in more than 150 cities worldwide on a concurrent basis. With collaboration among National Chiayi University, Yushan National Park Headquarters, Endemic Species Research Institute, Council of Agriculture, and other units, Chiayi County and City will make its debut at this grand global event. One and all are invited to take part by surveying the wild animals and plants in the Chiayi region in the duration of the event.
Ever since a Chinese version was published with the help of NCYU Assistant Professor Lin Cheng-Tao, there has been an increasing number of natural observers using the iNaturalist app in Taiwan. There is also a social media web page where they can share and exchange ideas (https://www.facebook.com/groups/iNaturalistTaiwan). For the past one and a half years, the iNaturalist platform in Taiwan has boasted observation records of more than a hundred thousand. It will continue efforts to improve the quality of biological observation records as part of environmental education, and raise awareness of biodiversity and nature conservation. The ultimate goal is to propel Taiwan onto the world stage, and help promote the Aichi Biodiversity Targets and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
Assistant Prof. Lin indicated that the event is open to all without age or education restrictions. During the event, all lovers of nature and wildlife observation may go to the website of iNaturalist or download the app on the mobile device for free. You may upload any photo of wild animals or plants they see. It does not matter if you do not recognize their species, since iNaturalist provides suggestions on species identification with the help of artificial intelligence. All you need to do is make simple choices among options including “animals,” “plants” or easy-to-recognize taxonomic groups, such as “butterfly and moth.” Then, experts, scholars, natural observers or social media volunteers from different parts of the world will view the photos or listen to audio files uploaded to identify species through the iNaturalist platform.
All the wildlife species that have been observed and uploaded during the event this year will be reviewed by social media volunteers from April 30th to May 5th. Results of the global contests will be announced on May 6th. The event this year is expected to be of the largest scale, compared with its previous editions, with over 750 thousand records of wildlife observations by 25,000 people from around 150 cities. This time, NCYU joins the competition on the behalf of the region of Chiayi County and City, known for its biodiversity, and we cordially invites all nature lovers in Taiwan to contribute a part to lift the country onto the world stage, and make the ecological resources in Chiayi known to the public.
For more information:
‧City Nature Challenge official website: http://citynaturechallenge.org
‧City Nature Challenge in Chiayi website (details on participation in traditional Chinese): http://chiayi2019cnc.wordpress.com
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