The Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), through the Texas Nature Trackers program, invites all Texans to participate in a four-day outdoor focused community event involving 16 Texas metropolitan areas for the 11th year of the City Nature Challenge, from April 24-27.
The event utilizes the free mobile app, iNaturalist, for identification and documentation of many types of critters while encouraging participants to explore nature in their immediate surroundings: outside their front doors, in their yard or anywhere nature is found and can be safely and responsibly explored.
The global, community-based, scientific effort is co-organized by San Francisco’s California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Texas Nature Trackers encourages use of the hashtag #CityNatureChallenge on social media or as a tag in iNaturalist.
In 2025, 14 Texas metropolitan areas joined more than 660 other cities in this worldwide celebration of the resilience of urban nature that logged over 3 million observations of some 73,000 species by nearly 103,000 people. In Texas, 93 counties logged over 345,000 observations, with 9,709 species recorded by more than 9,200 observers.
Participants can contact Biologists with the Texas Nature Trackers program at tracker@tpwd.texas.gov for more information.