Island School Biodiversity Challenge 2024

The WANBO Team is excited to share that the time has come for our annual iNature week with the iNaturalist inter-house event!

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 year’s Biodiversity Week.

To participate in the inter-house competition, all you need to do is the following: 

1. Download the iNaturalist app 
2. Set up an account and create a username.
3. Log your username in this Google Form. This is important as otherwise your data will not get logged to the Island School Platform.
4. 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 toys, no taking pictures of animals on laptops and no siblings as we had all of these last year!!!

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 by simply taking pictures of fungi, plants and animals. 

While helping us expand our knowledge and understanding about the living things that inhabit Hong Kong and our local environment, the data collected can contribute to scientific discoveries and observations.

To partake in this event, log your sightings from the 26th of April to the 6th of May. This is a chance to experience the outdoors and its wonderful life! Let’s join our love for capturing Hong Kong’s beautiful biodiversity with that Island School competitive spirit – inter-house points will be awarded to the houses with the most users and species recorded. This also gives you the opportunity to win student prizes, which will be given to the observer with the most species recorded. 

The iNaturalist competition is an inter-house event open to everyone! All are welcome to hit that download button to participate. Share iNature week with your siblings, parents and friends!

For more information, check out the WANBO Instagram page at @iswanbo.