Happy Earth Day!

Have you heard of a bioblitz?

It’s where a group of people gather to document the plants and animals of a particular location for a set duration of time. Participants use the app iNaturalist to record their observations.

To celebrate Earth Day in 2016, Lila Higgins at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and Alison Young and Rebecca Johnson at the California Academy of Sciences created the City Nature Challenge. It was a competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco to see which city could generate the most observations during the weekend after Earth Day.

This has now become an international event. If you make an observation during the event, April 25- 28th, they are automatically added to your city’s score.

Not only can you become a community scientist adding to a database real scientist use, you can also help your city beat the competition and become this year’s champions.

So, whether you’re like me and you enjoy going out to take photos of lizards, like the side-blotched lizard, Uta Stansburinia, that you’re looking for today, or you like birds, or flowers, and any other wildlife, it’s time to get outside and document them this weekend!

Can you #FindThatLizard?

Let me know with #FoundThatLizard