Discover Nature in Hume

The annual City Nature Challenge is running from Friday 28 April to Monday 1 May 2023. Get out into your garden or visit your local park, creek, or nature reserve to take some photos of wild animals, plants, and fungi. Upload your photos (or sound recordings) as observations to the iNaturalist platform for identification by 7 May, using the phone app or webpage. 

This four day biodiversity blitz is a global effort, with 445 cities from 47 countries involved in 2022, where 1.7 million observations were made and over 50,000 species were recorded. As a friendly competition, cities aim to record as many species possible, and make the most observations by the biggest number of observers, shown on the global tally board.  

Hume City is part of the Greater Melbourne collaboration project with over 25 other local government areas. Let’s showcase Australia’s amazing wildlife to the world! 

Your observations will also be automatically added to Hume City’s Wildlife project, which is an important, ongoing record of the species living in our neighbourhoods. 

An online session about City Nature Challenge and using iNaturalist will be held on Wednesday 26 April 7.30pm to 9pm.

iNaturalist Training Webinar

See Council’s City Nature Challenge guided nature walks to register as spaces are limited.  

Or check out the City Nature Challenge 2023 Flyer(PDF, 516KB) 
and the below associated links:

• Eventbrite Collection
• City Nature Challenge Website
• iNaturalist website
• Hume City CNC Results Board
• Greater Melbourne Results Board
• Hume City's Wildlife iNaturalist Project

Citizen science involves the public contributing to scientific research with an aim to increase scientific knowledge. You can contribute to a range of important citizen science projects by submitting your observations of nature, simply by using your smart phone.

• Join our wildlife project on iNaturalist.
• Record frog calls for Melbourne Water’s frog census.
• Birds sightings for National Bird Week in October using the Birds in Backyards app.
• Platypus sightings to PlatypusSpot.
• Echidna sightings using the Echidna Conservation Science Initiative (CSI) app.
• Wombat sightings.
• How nature is responding to climate change with ClimateWatch.
• Map feral animals in your local area.

The Birds of Hume field guide(PDF, 4MB) has photos of 146 different species to help identify your local birds, and get some tips on where to go birdwatching or how to attract more birds to your place.

The Fauna of Hume field guide (PDF, 905KB)shows many of the native and introduced animals found in Hume, including mammals, reptiles and frogs, with advice on how you can help our native wildlife. 

There are a number of community groups working to protect our natural environment by planting and weeding which complements work undertaken by Council. If you are interested in finding out how you can participate, please visit Community Groups for more information, or contact Council’s Sustainable Environment Department on 9205 2200.

Council runs a range of community environmental workshops and events, visit the Events Calendar to find out more.