Over the past few years, we have brought experts and members of the community together through our BioBlitz events to discover, document, and learn about the species that call our city home.
City Nature Challenge 2023
In 2023, we participated in the City Nature Challenge, an annual global citizen science BioBlitz event, coordinated by the California Academy of Sciences and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum, which was first run in 2016.
We joined over 25 councils across metropolitan Melbourne along with community organisations to represent Greater Melbourne on a global stage.
We competed against other cities around the world to see who can make the most observations, find the most species, and engage the most people.
What were the results?
Out of 482 participating cities, Greater Melbourne achieved some fabulous results:
Within the City of Melbourne, our community contributed 827 of these observations, identified 248 species and engaged 101 observers. Our most observed species in the city during this BioBlitz was the Superb Fairy-wren.
Thank you to everyone who got involved.
You can take a look at all the iNaturalist observations that happened across the four-day challenge in the City of Melbourne.
Timeline
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Timeline item 1 - complete
Melbourne BioBlitz 2014
October to November 2014
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Timeline item 2 - complete
Melbourne BioBlitz 2016
3 March to 28 April 2016
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Timeline item 3 - complete
City Nature Challenge 2023
28 April to 1 May 2023
Our BioBlitz events wouldn’t be possible without the dedicated time, involvement and expertise from a range of organisations, universities and community groups.
Our past BioBlitz events have been run by the City of Melbourne in partnership with Museum Victoria, Royal Botanic Gardens, Melbourne Water, University of Melbourne, RMIT, Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Monash University, Arthur Rylah Institute for Environmental Research, Entomological Society of Victoria, Wild Melbourne, Friends of Westgate Park, Friends of Royal Park, Birdlife Australia, and Field Naturalists Club of Victoria, Deakin University, School of Ants, Fungimap, Royal Park Protection Group.
Your photos (2016)
by Merri Creek. Area had just been sprayed for weeds. This looks like comfrey, but isn't fuzzy - by Sasha
Your photos (2014)
Some sort of ocean life which was washed up on shore. The rear could fold up completely underneath itself by Tim
