By Jacob Barringer
What’s the best way to celebrate Spring? With a BioBlitz of course. For those of you who don’t know, a BioBlitz is an attempt to catalogue as many species as possible within a set area during a specific period of time. It’s a helpful tool for providing a clear snapshot of an ecosystem.
Every year, iNaturalist hosts the City Nature Challenge, a global BioBlitz during the last weekend of April. The project is broken up by city, or in some cases county, allowing us to see what lives around us at the time. I will be organizing trips to a variety of different ecosystems within Thurston County to find as many species as I can, and invite everyone to join me. The coming City Nature Challenge will take place April 24-27. To sign up for the project, first log in to or create your own iNaturalist account, then click the “Join” button here: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/city-nature-challenge-2026-thurston-county You can contact me for details about the trips I’m planning through e-mail: jacobbarringer@gmail.com
Photo credit: Springtime Blossoms, by Rachel Holland.
