City Nature Challenge 2024

Princess Vlei, Cape Town
Photographs provided by Leila Matrani.
Written by Simon Tamblyn.

What a great turnout! Eighteen excited people pitched up early on a Saturday morning for Princess Vlei Forum’s City Nature Challenge walk for 2024. We met outside the car park of the Eco Park facilities and were greeted with a sunny, not too cold and windless autumn day, giving us perfect conditions to explore the dunes between the Little Princess and the “big” Princess, just outside the Eco Park facilities. 

If you are not familiar with the City Nature Challenge, here’s the quick explanation. It’s an annual global (friendly) citizen science competition between cities, countries and individuals to rack up as many ‘observations’ of wild organisms on the iNaturalist app in urban and peri-urban areas. Read more about it here: https://www.citynaturechallenge.org/. It is a perfect blend of technology, fun, science education (especially for youngsters), socialising and light exercise

The conservation angle is also hugely important, especially for fynbos. Humans have evolved alongside trillions of other organisms, many of them are so commonplace, that they are near invisible. Many species here on the southern tip of Africa have evolved so close to humanity, that they can almost entirely escape our senses, even when they’re right in front of us. And when we can not even accurately describe where we might find some species - especially if they are threatened with extinction - it becomes difficult for us to protect them from us. 

This is the greater purpose of the City Nature Challenge, by enjoying an exciting day out with like-minded individuals we focus on observing the life that we typically don’t give time to observe on a daily basis. This data - if it is good quality and with the user’s permission - will be used by conservationists, ecologists and others to further efforts in maintaining the health of our natural areas across the planet.

We photographed as many wild organisms as we could. All in all, a fantastic day was had, people of all ages were there. Some people had never been to Princess Vlei before, some were from the neighbouring communities, and others still were from the Botanical Society of South Africa’s Kirstenbosch Branch and The Friends of Tokai Park. 

Highlights were seeing a hovering Pied Kingfisher (Ceryle rudis), a Common Slug Eater (Duberria lutrix; expertly caught and released by a young herpetologist in the making), a rarely observed moth without a common name called Nomophila africana, Cape Moonseed Vine (Cissampelos capensis) - a common plant, but perhaps the first online record of it at Princess Vlei? - and a tiny Western Leopard Toad (Schlerophrys pantherina).

We walked through one of the areas that burned in this year’s summer and saw many shoots and seedlings taking root. While this was wonderful to witness the regenerative force of fire in our fire-based ecosystem, it did mean that we weren’t able to identify as many species that we would have hoped for. But, all is not lost, next year, there will be many yearlings that will be more established and identifiable in the City Nature Challenge 2025. Then we can continue adding more names to the list of species that call Princess Vlei home, cementing our stance that it is an area of ecological, historical, scientific and spiritual value that deserves conserving and protecting.

See the global results of the City Nature Challenge here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2024-eurasia-africa-oceania