At the end of April, people all over the world participated in the annual City Nature Challenge – a friendly nature competition where cities compete to document the most observations, find the most species, and involve the most people.

This year, 67,220 people made 1,694,877 observations globally! Over 50,000 species were documented including more than 2,000 species at risk. Perhaps not surprisingly, the most observed species was the common dandelion! The Thompson-Nicola Region participated in the regional Northern Rocky Mountain Challenge and ranked 211^th out of 445 cities for number of observations.

The real victory in the Thompson-Nicola was the overall increase in species observed and number of observers participating over last year! 1247 observations were made of 317 species by 64 observers this year compared to 568 observations of 231 species by 42 observers in 2021. Well done Thompson-Nicola!

Photo: Melissa Maslaney