Even before spring had really begun, there was a fair amount of wildlife to observe in Saskatoon and area and other Prairie cities during the Nature City Challenge which began around the end of April. One of the local organizers with the Friends of the with the Friends of the Saskatoon Afforestation Areas group, Julia Adamson, says of the eight Canadian Prairie cities, Saskatoon and area came in second. Calgary topped the list with 930 species identified from 17,317 observations. Saskatoon and area had 501 different species from 2,587 observations.

It began in 2016 as a competition between San Francisco and Los Angeles, with the goal of identifying species and engaging residents in nature over a four-day bioblitz.
This year, 445 cities took part including Saskatoon, Calgary, Regina, Winnipeg, Red Deer, Edmonton, Lethbridge and Brandon. Globally, 1,694,877 observations were documented.
Click here for all the numbers: citynaturechallengestatistics