Message from Nigel Forshaw, National City Nature Challenge Champion
Photo: Menrad Holm
Congratulations to all our members who actively participated in this year’s Global City Nature Challenge 2025 at the end of April. Over 717 Meerkats, Cubs, Scouts, Rovers, and Scouters explored, photographed, and identified the biodiversity in their neighbourhoods while putting Scouting on the Biodiversity Map!
Even though the final stats are still developing, we wanted to show you through the table below (dated 5 May), the extent to which SCOUTS SA members embraced being citizen scientists!
We were excited to see that for the first time Scouts in ALL of our Regions participated in the City Nature Challenge!
Photo: Zaharah Kayle
In Regions such as Gauteng– SCOUTS SA members made 2 586 observations. The total for all observers in Gauteng including non-SCOUTS SA members was 9 394 observations. 27.5% of all the observations in Gauteng were therefore made by the 147 Gauteng Scouting members!
The Western Cape Region has been participating in the City Nature Challenge since 2019 and once again Scouts came out in numbers to contribute to the observations. This year 468 observers recorded 12 705 observations, which amount to 21% of the total observations in the Region by Scouting and non-Scouting people alike, being 60 421.
As in all years in which we have taken part in the City Nature Challenge, there were some queries when the observations that somebody got on their phone were not seen on the iNaturalist web platform and/or in SCOUTS South Africa Project stats. The reasons for this are including photos of non-in-the-wild animals or plants, photos not taken during the City Nature Challenge date window, photos either didn’t upload or were not synched properly with the web, the locality (latitude and longitude) did not reflect perhaps because the GPS was turned off or hadn’t settled down, or the observations were not assigned to the SCOUTS South Africa project.
This year our National Challenge calls us to explore and embrace our Heritage, including our Natural Heritage. The City Nature Challenge was therefore a perfect fit. SCOUTS South Africa’s members contributed 14.3% nationally!!
Well done to every one of our members who participated in this years’ City Nature Challenge 2025!
| 2025 | Number Observations | Species | Observers | Qualify Badges | Total Observations | % Scouts SA | |||
| Eastern Cape | 651 | 306 | 44 | 34 | 19497 | 3.3 | |||
| Free State | 9 | 4 | 2 | 0 | 780 | 1.2 | |||
| Gauteng | 2586 | 818 | 147 | 112 | 9394 | 27.5 | |||
| KZN | 268 | 154 | 28 | 15 | 20556 | 1.3 | |||
| Limpopo | 85 | 64 | 7 | 5 | 4014 | 2.1 | |||
| Mpumalanga | 77 | 60 | 7 | 4 | 1798 | 4.3 | |||
| North West | 66 | 42 | 9 | 5 | 2017 | 3.3 | |||
| Northern Cape | 13 | 8 | 2 | 1 | 513 | 2.5 | |||
| SCOUTS SA | 16962 | 2769 | 717 | >500 | 118990 | 14.3 | |||
| Western Cape | 12705 | 1973 | 468 | 417 | 60421 | 21.0 | |||
* This is not unique observers. Some SCOUTS SA members shared phones.
We look forward to growing our participation across the entire country once again in 2026!