This year marks the third year Eagle Mountain City has officially participated in Utah’s Wasatch City Nature Challenge.
The event days are April 26-29 and this challenge comprises the areas of Box Elder, Cache, Davis, Salt Lake, Summit, Utah and Wasatch counties. This event allows anyone to participate in observing, recording and documenting any plants, animals and everything in-between while recording the observations in iNaturalist.
This program started in 2016 with Utah’s Natural History Museum as the primary state sponsor of the program. The natural history museum hosts, organizes, coordinates and facilitates the event.
The program started with iNaturalist, who first started holding and organizing these city nature challenges in 2016, as well. Today, there are over 400 cities/areas who participate in this program globally.
Last year, Utah’s Wasatch front had over 400 individuals participating in the event. They logged nearly 5,100 observations, and over 850 species. In 2023, eight faithful Eagle Mountain participants logged 197 observations and over 125 species within city limits. We want to try to get more people in the community involved to see if we can beat that number this year.
iNaturalist is a free app that allows users to record their observations either by a picture or sound. It also records date, time and location — all very valuable data for anyone who uses it.
Researchers, conservation organizations and other interested parties can download the data from iNaturalist using their export tool. Many high school and university instructors, and wildlife/land management agencies, are using this data to look at distribution and densities of species.
Eagle Mountain City is holding two events in April that citizens can participate in, and learn more about, this program and how it works. The first event is April 17and is being held in conjunction with our Wildlife and Nature Education meeting (WANE).
This “How to use iNaturalist” event will be held at City Hall on April 17 from 7 – 8:30 p.m.
The second event will be of a field trip where participants will get to record observations using iNaturalist as part of the City Nature Challenge. This event will be held April 27 and we will meet at the Public Works building at 2565 Pony Express Parkway at 7 a.m.
Residents will get to see part of Eagle Mountain that they otherwise may never get to see. To participate in this event, please RSVP to Todd Black at tblack@emcity.org.
