More than 1,230 observers took part in this year’s City Nature Challenge spanning King and Pierce counties, including Everett, Seattle, Bellevue, Tacoma, Snohomish and any place in between! Between April 25 and May 8, community scientists submitted 19,628 nature observations and identified more than 2,138 species showing the world the incredible biodiversity in the region’s home turf. That’s the region’s all-time record!

“This year we had more observers participate, more observations made, and more species identified in the Seattle-Tacoma area than we have since our region joined City Nature Challenge in 2017,” said Zach Hawn, conservation coordinator at Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium. “This data is incredibly important, helps inform habitat management and contributes to research projects around the world.”

Starting in 2025, our iNaturalist project accepts observations of cultivated and non-wild species in addition to wild species. In 2025, these non-wild observations accounted for an estimated 1,500 observations and 275 species. When only counting the “wild” observations, all numbers still increased over last year.

Some of the sightings reported in this area were relatively rare. There were 144 observations of 35 threatened or endangered species, including Oregon Forestsnail, Western toad, sunflower sea stars, and orcas. The most observed species included salmonberry, Western sword fern, and common bracken.

Globally, 363,723 people participated in the challenge across 669 cities. Some of the most rare and endangered species identified world-wide included a hawksbill sea turtle, a velvet spider, and a species of nudibranch not seen in 160 years.

To view all of the observations from the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area this year, Click Here.

What is the City Nature Challenge?

City Nature Challenge is a global community science challenge which encourages people to find, identify and record living things within an area in a set amount of time. City Nature Challenge is organized on a global scale by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County and the California Academy of Sciences. Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium, Northwest Trek Wildlife Park, and Woodland Park Zoo partner to promote the challenge in the Seattle-Tacoma metropolitan area, supporting and coaching the community in how to participate in the challenge, advance science, and discover nature and wildlife for themselves.

You can be a community scientist any day of the week! For more information on how you can help, visit our community science page.