6 June 2023
Fantastic news out of Glenwood! The school’s Interact President Lihle Chipeya has been named the winner of the City Nature Challenge 2023 eThekwini competition.
Lihle is clearly a driven individual. He’s in grade 10, but he’s already taken on the leadership of the Interact Club, and he’s not standing back. He’s leading by example.
Not only did he bag exciting prizes for his work, but Glenwood, too, were richly rewarded because of his excellence.
Lihle’s personal haul included a laptop, tickets to uShaka Marine World, movie tickets, and books. Glenwood, meanwhile, received a computer, a data projector, recycling bins, indigenous plants, and garden equipment, as well as books, which have been donated to Gibson House.
A fantastic initiative, especially as Mother Nature comes under ever-increasing pressure, and a worthy winner!
The City Nature Challenge
What is the City Nature Challenge, you might ask? The website states: “Cities around the world collaborate to share observations of nature”.
The event, which ran from 28 April to 1 May, encouraged participants to see who has the most biodiversity in their regions. This was done by residents photographing animals and plants. These were, then, logged on an app or via a web browser.
The competition, which began in 2016 as a contest between Los Angeles and San Francisco, featured at least 28 southern African cities, and more than 400 cities globally.
The annual event is run by Community Science teams at the California Academy of Sciences and the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County (NHM). One of its key aims is to see what can be achieved in the spirit of friendly competition, when there is a common goal.
eThekwini’s performance
With Lihle leading the way, Ethekwini improved from fourth on the southern African leaderboard in 2022 to second this time around.
The eThekwini numbers spoke volumes: this year, there were 15 152 observations, compared to 12 965 in 2022. The number of observers increased from 136 to 191, and the number of species rose from 2 161 to 2 188.
On the global leaderboard, eThekwini held steady in 27th place, which was a strong performance, especially when one considers the increase of the number of global observations, from 1 591 564 to 1 848 908.
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