– The Baton Rouge region, which includes St. Martin Parish, is participating in the 2026 City Nature Challenge, the annual biodiversity survey that has taken the world by storm. The City Nature Challenge started in 2016 with just two cities, and has grown to over 800 participating cities.
The Louisiana Master Naturalists of Greater Baton Rouge are the local organizers for the region and encourage everyone in Southeast Louisiana to explore nature April 24-27 and help document the wild plants and animals in our urban and rural areas. The mission is to collect photos of wild plants and animals in the iNaturalist app or iNaturalist.org website and discover our incredible wildlife hiding in plain sight!
Find wildlife or plant life anywhere in Southeast Louisiana. (Wild only - no landscaping plants or pets).
Take photos of what you find April 24-27 with your phone or camera.
The event is 24 hours a day for 4 days, so look for nocturnal critters, also.
Upload the photos as observations to the iNaturalist mobile app or the iNaturalist.org website before May 10.
The Baton Rouge Region has a fun rivalry to see who can get the most participation with our nearby competitors, Northwest Louisiana, Southwest Louisiana, and our Texas neighbors, Austin and Houston.
The global organizers,
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the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, host this massive event with the goals of connecting people to the nature around them while collecting valuable biodiversity data that can be used to help us better understand our world and to help fight biodiversity loss. All data collected during this event is verified, and research grade observations become open source data for research.
