City Nature Challenge, La Paz: An Example of Observing and Recording Urban Biodiversity

Citizen science encourages people to participate in scientific research projects. One of the best-known initiatives is the City Nature Challenge contest, aimed at recording biodiversity in cities through the iNaturalist application. The metropolitan region of La Paz, Bolivia, participated in this contest in 2019 and 2022 under the name Reto Ciudad Naturaleza, thanks to the promotion of the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) Bolivia, the Biology Department and the Ecology Institute of Universidad Mayor de San Andres (UMSA), and the National Museum of Natural History (MNHN), who formed an organizing committee. The objective was to strengthen the bond between the urban population and nature, with the aim to generate data on the knowledge and preservation of biodiversity. The activities consisted of the promotion and dissemination of the contest, training events regarding the use of iNaturalist, photographic records, taxonomic identification, and the delivery of certificates to participants. In 2019, La Paz competed with 158 cities and ranked eighth in number of species (3005), third in number of participants (1500), and second in number of observations (46 931). In 2022, 447 cities participated, and La Paz led in all three categories of the contest, with 137 345 observations, 5320 species, and 4296 participants. Beyond these results, the commitment of La Paz citizens to their biodiversity stands out, which results in an increasingly strong bond between the urban population and their natural environment.