NVC Students Earn Top Spot in 2025 iNaturalist Campus Nature Challenge

NVC Students Earn Top Spot in 2025 iNaturalist Campus Nature Challenge

Thanks to their dedication and keen observation skills, NVC students have come out on top in this year’s iNaturalist Campus Nature Challenge. iNaturalist is an online social network of individuals who share biodiversity information. The nonprofit organization helps people identify the plants and animals in their community while generating data for science and conservation.

NVC Assistant Professor of Biology, Jose L. Egremy, enrolled more than 50 students in this project which took place April 25 through April 28. Participants were instructed to observe and record the nature around them, and NVC students were more than up for the challenge which consisted of two categories: the Campus Nature Challenge and the City Nature Challenge.

In the Campus Nature Challenge, NVC beat other participating campuses in the San Antonio metro area by making 4,753 observations compared to 3,162 observations made by St. Mary’s University students, and 1,867 at Trinity University.

“My students were stellar and superb ambassadors for San Antonio and absolutely represented our campus with impressive numbers of documented observations,” said Egremy. “One student contributed 701 observations with a total of 399 species, and another student uploaded 591 observations and recorded 281 species.”

Observers from all over the world participated in the 2025 City Nature Challenge. While San Antonio finished second behind the city of La Paz in Bolivia, Egremy said that for three of the four days of the challenge, San Antonio was No.1 in the world. However, San Antonio did rank as the best city in America.