City nature challenge 2025: Toronto and GTA
Join EcoSpark and TRCA in the tenth annual global event. Take part in the City Nature Challenge 2025 from April 25 - 28!
The City Nature Challenge is a free four-day event where communities across the world collaborate to see which city can gather the greatest number of wildlife observations, find the most species and engage the most people in nature connection. EcoSpark and TRCA are regional organizers for the city of Toronto and the Greater Toronto Area.
Every record of a plant or animal helps track biodiversity! Everyone can participate.
Together, we will put Toronto and GTA on the map to win the title of the wildest city in Canada. Help global participants contribute millions of observations this year to make a HUGE difference for biodiversity.
Individuals, Youth & Schools
Teachers, volunteers, and youth age 13+ can participate in the City Nature Challenge on their own. Our resources make it easy!
Get students outside and collect nature observations using the iNaturalist platform during the Challenge. Youth environmental leaders can spread the word about the Challenge and encourage ecoclubs and communities to get involved.
Teachers: Check out the education toolkit for tips and ideas about engaging your school in outdoor learning and exploration of nature in schoolyards, parks and nearby green spaces.
EcoSpark can visit your school to deliver hands-on biodiversity training!
Silvery Blue, Vaughan, ON, Canada (CC BY-NC Colleen Craig)
The City Nature Challenge is a perfect way to reconnect and give back.
Corporate Group Challenge
Who: ALL global employees and local groups looking to give back, get outside, and reconnect with nature!
What: The City Nature Challenge is free to everyone to take part. EcoSpark offers opportunities to grow your impact and build volunteer teams with additional resources and workshops.
When: Schedule a virtual training before or during the Challenge, which takes place April 25-28. Book in-person workshops year-round to support biodiversity in a local park.
Where: Gather at a centrally located greenspace, or encourage employees to volunteer from home. EcoSpark can help you engage employees at multiple cities in the global City Nature Challenge.
Why: Nature is everywhere! Your help to find and document wild species supports biodiversity, especially climate-sensitive species. You also enable community health and environmental education by taking part. Fees support up to 120 students to participate in transformative STEM workshops for the environment, where the need is greatest!
How to participate in City Nature ChallengE
1. OBSERVE LOCAL WILDLIFE
Safely explore nature on trails or from wherever you are in the GTA by finding wild species close to home. Even watching birds from your window is helpful! Take a picture or record a sound of what you find using a camera and upload it to iNaturalist (must be 13+ to make an account). Be sure to note the location.
Record observations anytime April 25 - 28 and submit to iNaturalist. Encourage your friends and neighbours to help out! View photos on the City Nature Challenge: Toronto and GTA project.
Be aware of human and wildlife safety at all times and explore natural areas responsibly with ethical wildlife photography. To support biodiversity research, focus on insects, birds, weeds, and other wild plants, animals and fungi (rather than cultivated species like garden flowers).
Yellow-rumped Warbler, Derek Spencer, some rights reserved (CC-BY)
2. Share Your photos
Red Trillium, ocius1, some rights reserved (CC-BY-NC)
Submit observations by uploading them to your iNaturalist account (on your computer or with the app). Join EcoSpark’s iNaturalist page for fascinating biodiversity info and local updates!
Check back on iNaturalist April 29 - May 4 to help identify what species we found. No special skills are required to get involved in exploring the data! EcoSpark will showcase local results and species totals for this collaborative global event.
3. learn about local biodiversity
Dig deeper to explore the plants and animals that share our city! EcoSpark educator resources and City Nature Challenge Education Toolkit help teachers and students make curriculum connections and practice outdoor inquiry.
Book a remote interactive EcoSpark session to engage your grade 6-12 class in citizen science activities you can use to monitor wildlife in school grounds or try at home. We also help corporate and volunteer groups engage with their local environment. Our programs help you learn about and improve local habitat. Subscribe to our newsletter (below) for updates.
Let’s support even more diverse species for next year’s count! Together we can steward the GTA’s ecosystems that sustain us all.
Eastern Chipmunk, dodo2106, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC)
City nature challenge 2025 timeline
April 25 to 28
Join EcoSpark and TRCA for City Nature Challenge 2025: Toronto and GTA. Volunteer with citizen scientists from around the world surveying wild species in their communities. Anyone can help out! Take photos or record sounds of plants and animals and post them on iNaturalist. EcoSpark will map and share the results.
April 29 TO MAY 4
Explore the records on our iNaturalist project and help identify species to the best of your ability. It’s easy to get started! By categorizing “unknown” observations into groups like “birds”, “trees”, etc. or providing species names, you will help the GTA quickly identify species for the global count.
RESULTS
Check back at here for results! View 2024 results from Toronto and GTA, Canada and all over the world. Thanks to everyone who participated in City Nature Challenge 2024, we were able to exceed 2.4 million observations last year!
Did you participate in a past City Nature Challenge: Toronto & GTA? Check out our City Nature Challenge dashboard to view your results from 2024 and previous years.
WHY PARTICIPATE?
City Nature Challenge is a great way to connect with nature and collaborate with experts all around the world. By participating, not only do we get to learn about the local nature that is all around us, we can also help scientists study and protect species in our cities by documenting nature in our area and at the same time build community and connection. Join hundreds of cities worldwide in celebrating and tracking wild species!
City Nature Challenge 2025: Toronto and GTA is sponsored by:
The City Nature Challenge is a free international event. Learn more about the co-founders at www.citynaturechallenge.org.
