Scott Loarie

We're seeing people use it to organize.

So a BioBlitz is a community-led nature inventory where people come together in real life to inventory nature.

These are the kind of engines for grassroots capacity building that we need to end the extinction crisis.

And when people see that they're doing something that's bigger than themselves, that's part of a global effort, that's when we believe that our actions really can make a difference.

So the City Nature Challenge, it started out as a friendly competition between Los Angeles and San Francisco, saying, hey, let's hold BioBlitzes on the same day in April.

And then totally organically, it's grown into this annual event where thousands of groups across hundreds of cities all conduct simultaneous BioBlitzes.

It's now the largest annual census of life on Earth.

But it's more than that.

To me, this is a celebration that our actions really can make a difference.

It's think globally, act locally in action.

Because at this local scale, there really is this connection between noticing to actually stewarding and improving habitat.

This is Heather Holm.

She was leading efforts to monitor pollinators, bees and butterflies in Minnesota.

And she started noticing that these rusty patch bumblebees were declining.

So she rallied her community to do something about it.

So they are coming out to actually restore the habitats that the bees depend on.

So that's pulling out invasive buckthorn, planting wildflowers, attracting the bees.

So it's going from noticing to actually stewarding and protecting.

In California, Sally Gale, she couldn't bear noticing all these newts and frogs that were getting hit by cars as they crossed the roads to breed, so she rallied her community as amphibian crossing guards.

So they go out on rainy nights and they shepherd newts and frogs across the roads.