As part of the City Nature Challenge 2024, an event that QuitoZoo has been promoting for five years, a group from our institution went to La Elenita, in Mindo, to observe, search and register biodiversity that habitats cloud forest.

The team found a marvelous variety of insects, amphibians, plants, and other amazing species that live in this place and are protected by the reserve. The research was developed at late hours in the afternoon and night when the forest turned into a beautiful and mysterious location.

The City Nature Challenge is an international participatory science effort to find and document the biodiversity present in various cities around the world. This year, more than 690 cities, including Quito, from 51 countries and 7 continents, participated in this event and competed to be the greatest observatory, the greatest species founder, and the major number of citizens that participated.  

Citizens are invited to observe and record the species in their environment through iNaturalist, a free-to-use citizen science tool. Each photograph or audio recorded is geolocated on this platform, and the data collected is identified by the scientific community and shared on the GBIF Global (Global Biodiversity Information Facility).

If you want to hear how was this experience for this QuitoZoo team, click in this image to get an audio (in spanish) about it.