City Nature Challenge x Biodiversity Week
Introduction:
Though Green Week just ended last term, WANBO is excited to introduce its next event, Biodiversity Week. After seeing the resilience and enthusiasm that everyone has shared with our inter-house competitions & initiatives. We’ve decided to raise the bar as our school faces off against the world for the first reiteration of Biodiversity Week here on the Borrett Road Campus!
Teaming up with the rest of Hong Kong, we will be up against the likes of Miami, London, Paris, Melbourne, New Delhi , France, Toronto and Tokyo just to name a few cities. With a total of 445 cities participating, the City Nature Challenge is going to feature as part of our inter-house competition during this years Biodiversity week.
The Competition:
iNaturalist is a platform created by the National Geographic group and the California Academy of Sciences. This app allows you to track observations of different wildlife species through just a few taps on your phone. The data collected not only is to help us understand more about the living things that are a part of our world but also contribute to scientific discoveries and observations.
To participate in the interhouse competition, all you need to do is the following:
- Download the iNaturalist app
- Set up an account and create a username.
- Log your username in this Google Form. This is important as otherwise your data will not get logged to the Island School Platform.
- Get outdoors and take pictures of nature (fungi, plants, birds, mammals, reptiles, etc,) through the app. That does mean things in the wild, so no pets, no pot plants, no plastic toys, no taking pictures of animals on laptops and no siblings as we had all of these last year!!!
Log your observations from the 24th April to 7th May through the camera button and identify the species starring in the photo. Please avoid uploading pictures from the internet or the following: siblings/people, pets, house plants and non-living objects.
Interhouse points will be awarded to the houses with the most observers and most species recorded. Student prizes will also be awarded for the most species recorded. Anyone ranging from students, younger siblings, parents, teachers! All are welcome in the Island School community!
We hope to see your weird and wonderful observations, and remember: Now is the time to take action!
Conclusion & Promotions:
We hope you are just as eager as we are to participate and contribute to these activities! You can watch this video about how to use the app and you can find full instructions on how to take part in the inter-house competition on the slides.
We are extremely thankful for the unfailing support of the Island School community for making all of these initiatives possible and team WANBO wishes everyone the best of luck with this new challenge!
If you have any questions in regards to WANBO, feel free to email our Heads and Deputy
Heads: Clement Kwan [12R] ~ clement.kwan@online.island.edu.hk & Hannah Wu [12D] ~ hannah.wu@online.island.edu.hk
Deputy Heads: Zoe Tan [10E] ~ zoe.tan@online.island.edu.hk & Megan Chan [10D] ~ megan_yh.chan@online.island.edu.hk
For more regular updates and announcements on the project, as well as opportunities for students to get involved in WANBO’s initiatives, please follow their Instagram page @iswanbo.
Credit: Chloe WONG [10D]
