EcoReach

A reminder that the City Nature Challenge observation period lasts until May 10th this year! You don’t need to be an expert — you can help sort unknown observations!🦎
If you’re familiar with how to identify certain taxa, you can help us get our observation levels as accurate as possible and verify what people have found around Athens!

Join us this Tuesday at 5pm Odum School of Ecology courtyard for a City Nature Challenge ID party! Bring your laptop, favorite field guides, or just yourself and help us identify some of the iNaturalist observations made during Athens CNC!
You don’t need to be an expert, just a curious mind! This is a great way to learn about the iNat identification process so you can keep contributing to citizen science all year round!

That’s a wrap on the CNC observation period! Thank you to all the curious minded folks that went outside to observe Athens’ biodiversity this past weekend. Whether you joined us on a guided bioblitz led by our amazing local experts or observed nature out on your own, we thank you for participating in citizen science through iNaturalist!
A huge thank you goes out to our naturalists Dr. Tanisha Williams, Steven Hughes, Kayleigh Koynes, the Lilly Branch Birding Club members, and Dr. Jim Porter for leading our walks and to the EcoReach and Botanical Gardens volunteers for keeping us organized!

ATHENS CITY NATURE CHALLENGE STARTS TOMORROW!🤩🌱

The observation period starts at 12:01am and any iNaturalist observations made inside the bounds of Athens Clarke County will count towards the challenge! Let’s get outside and show everyone what cool biodiversity we can find in our Classic City!🦎🐌🐦🦊🐝🪲

City Nature Challenge is only 11 days away!🐿️ Joining a bioblitz guided by local experts is a great way to participate. Get to know what flora and fauna live in our area in while experiencing nature with others! All CNC events are free and no registration is required.🌿🌷

We had a wonderful time at Barrow Elementary last Friday with our Seed Fight Club activity! 2nd grade students learned why it’s good for seeds to disperse long distances to new areas and the different ways they do so. After discussing what makes for a good wind-dispersed seed, student put their creativity to the text and build their own “seeds” out of craft materials, then used the fan to see how far it could travel in the wind.
A big thanks to Ms. Boyle and Barrow Elementary for hosting us!

City Nature Challenge is only 18 days away! Check out how you can participate — it’s easy and free!🌱🪲🍄‍🟫🗻

Athens, get ready! 🏞️ We’re thrilled to announce our city’s first ever City Nature Challenge from April 24th - 28th!🌳 City Nature Challenge is a weekend bioblitz competition between participating cities to observe as much biodiversity in our area as we can using iNaturalist! Participation is easy! Check out the webpage linked in our bio to learn more.🌱🦉🪲

Enjoyed being a part of the Experience UGA science expo for 9th grade students in the Clarke County School District!
Students learned about Optimal Foraging Theory and how animals make choices about what food items they should eat. Tootsie rolls represented an accessible but low calorie option while starburst represented a high calorie option that took a lot more time to forage for. This helped students understand the trade off between handling time and food energy. Thank you to Experience UGA for inviting us for another year!

Our next month GBM will be next Monday! 🍕
Join us to learn more about the Athens’s first year participating in the City Nature Challenge and workshop lessons for our upcoming classroom visits!