Plitvice joins City Nature Challenge

Plitvice Lakes National Park and the wider Lika-Senj County will join the 2026 City Nature Challenge on April 24-27, asking residents and visitors to record wild species they find. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) The park said participants can submit photos or sound recordings of plants, animals and fungi through iNaturalist during the four-day count. The global challenge then shifts to an identification period from April 28 to May 10, with results due on May 13. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr, citynaturechallenge.org) City Nature Challenge is a worldwide biodiversity count built around local observation areas. iNaturalist describes the 2026 event as “the largest community science biodiversity census in the world,” with observations collected from April 24 to April 27. (inaturalist.org, citynaturechallenge.org) Croatia’s 2026 edition is being organized by the Institute for Environment and Nature of the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Green Transition, and Plitvice said this year’s network of co-organizers now covers 12 counties. The park and all of Lika-Senj County are among the added areas this year. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) That expands the challenge beyond a single tourist site to a larger stretch of mountain, forest and karst terrain in central Croatia. Lika-Senj County’s tourism materials highlight Plitvice’s waterfalls alongside Velebit, Paklenica and Pag’s rocky landscapes. (lika.croatia.hr) Plitvice is one of Croatia’s best-known protected areas and one of its most species-rich landscapes. Official park materials say the area is home to 58 orchid species, while its forests support bear, wolf, lynx, otter and Ural owl. (parkovihrvatske.hr) The park is also old by European standards. Regional tourism listings describe Plitvice as Croatia’s oldest national park, declared in 1949, and note that it was added to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization World Heritage List in 1979. (lika-destination.hr) The challenge is designed to turn casual sightings into usable records. City Nature Challenge rules say entries must document wild organisms rather than planted or captive ones, so a phone photo of a roadside flower or a bird call in the woods can become part of a shared species map. (citynaturechallenge.org) For Plitvice, the late-April weekend will now serve two jobs at once: a visitor outing in one of Croatia’s busiest nature destinations, and a four-day inventory of what is living there right now. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr, np-plitvicka-jezera.hr)