Scores of kids will descend on an often-overlooked Concord property this Saturday and spend hours hunting down every bug, beast and plant they can find, all for a good cause. Actually, two good causes.

“There’s the scientific – trying to inventory species on a property, which is super important right now.  With climate change, monitoring what’s there and what’s changing is crucial,” said Stephanie Bowser, who runs Project SEE for the Concord School System. “Then there’s community. Just getting people involved and learning about their local resources, that’s so important.” 

The event at the Project SEE building next to the White Farm is called a BioBlitz, a citizen science project that “works like a big nature scavenger hunt.”

“Basically it involves going out to identify as many animals, plants, fungi as you can on a given piece of land, and a given amount of time,” said Bowser.

BioBlitzes have been around for decades – the term was coined by a National Park Service naturalist in 1996  – and are held in various forms in multiple countries, but they took off when the free app iNaturalist became involved and then really took off during COVID lockdowns.

“It was advertised during the pandemic … and I got addicted,” admitted Bowser. “They keep a leaderboard on iNaturalist of who’s recording the most species and at one point I was in the top 10 globally, which I was really excited about.”

The program has become so well-established that the data is often used by researchers and wildlife biologists to get a sense of what is, and isn’t, living in certain places.

New Hampshire Cooperative Extension, which is co-sponsored Saturday’s event, has a whole BioBlitz package that helps people organize and run the programs. This is the first one being held by the Concord School District.

Another advantage of the program is that it will introduce a lot of people – 44 families had pre-registered as of Thursday – to a place they probably didn’t know existed, tucked between Clinton Street and the Turkey River.

“We wanted to get people out on this land, which I don’t think a lot of people know is a public resource – 30 acres owned by the Concord School District that is open for anybody at any time. I don’t think a lot of people realize that,” said Bowser.

Project SEE (Science and Environmental Education) is a science enrichment program that Concord has been running since 1970 to give hands-on science and assist in problem-solving and critical thinking skills. It operates field trips and nature classrooms at the Clinton Road building and also does events in classrooms.

Saturday’s event starts at 8 a.m. and runs through noon, with events indoors as well as guided naturalist walks to inventory species.

Parking is at the White Farm, adjacent to the Project SEE house. Pre-registration isn’t necessary but parents must stay with their children; no drop-offs!

For more information, see www.sau8.org/page/project-see-white-farm