Plitvice joins City Nature Challenge

Plitvice Lakes National Park will join the 2026 City Nature Challenge, turning part of Croatia’s best-known protected landscape into a four-day biodiversity count. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) The park said observations will be collected from April 24 to April 27, 2026, across both the park and the wider Lika-Senj County area. Participants are being asked to photograph or record wild plants, animals and fungi they find. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) The City Nature Challenge is a global community-science event run through iNaturalist and partner institutions. The 2026 challenge sets April 24 to 27 for finding wildlife, then April 28 to May 10 for uploading observations and identifying species, with results due on May 13. (inaturalist.org) (citynaturechallenge.org) Plitvice’s announcement places the park inside a broader Croatian push this year. The Croatian version of the notice said the country’s 2026 effort is organized by the Institute for Environment and Nature Protection at the Ministry of Environmental Protection and Green Transition, with co-organizers now covering 12 counties. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) That makes this more than a tourism-side event for one park. It links Plitvice and Lika-Senj County to a worldwide species census that iNaturalist describes as the largest community-science biodiversity survey in the world. (inaturalist.org) Plitvice is Croatia’s oldest and largest national park, and the site says it was proclaimed a national park on April 8, 1949. UNESCO added it to the World Heritage List in 1979, citing the lake, cave and waterfall system created by ongoing travertine-forming processes. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) (whc.unesco.org) The park is also a practical fit for a species-counting event because it spans a large protected area with marked visitor routes and hiking trails open year-round. Its official visitor information lists seven lake-tour routes and four hiking trails. (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr) For visitors, the mechanics are simple: find wild organisms, take a photo or sound recording, and upload the observation through iNaturalist so others can help identify it. For Plitvice, the payoff is a public record of what was seen in the park and surrounding county during those four days in late April. (citynaturechallenge.org) (np-plitvicka-jezera.hr)