World’s cities go head to head in race to spot most urban wildlife

One of Mumbai’s leopards in the Aarey Milk Colony suburb. The competition encourages residents to look for urban wildlife. Photograph: N Khanolkar/NPL

Hundreds of cities are competing this weekend to collect the most plant and wildlife observations in an urban “bioblitz” as part of a global citizen science challenge.

From Dundee windowsills to San Francisco parks, people are being urged to document whatever flora and fauna they can spot around them in urban areas and upload the photos to the iNaturalist app to help identify rare species.