The City Nature competition involved cities across New Zealand taking photos of plants, animals and fungi and logging them through iNaturalist.
There were 5727 entries for Dunedin, almost 500 more than Auckland (5288).
Dunedin’s success was largely down to beekeeper Otto Hyink, who made 1097 entries.
‘‘This year I wanted to take it seriously since Dunedin is back to being a listed city for it,’’ Mr Hyink said.
‘‘I probably got into that during lockdown ... my son who was at intermediate was quite keen; that’s something we went out and did.’’
Mr Hyink took his camera whenever he walked the dogs, ‘‘mostly focusing on mushrooms, but slime moulds have become a pet interest of mine.’’
‘‘The time of year coincided nicely, there were lots of mushrooms around.’’
Mr Hyink grew a passion for fungi due to his background as a microbiologist, holding a PhD in that field.
City Nature was a worldwide competition. New Zealand began participating in 2018 — Christchurch and Wellington the first cities to take part.
Dunedin joined in 2022, but was not consistently participating.
Wild Dunedin programme director Lesley Smith wanted to change that.
‘‘I signed Dunedin up to participate this year ... it’s been embraced.’’
She described the community response as ‘‘absolutely fantastic’’.
Although the event was a ‘‘friendly competition’’, Ms Smith tried to push Dunedin residents as much as possible so the city could climb the leader board.
She paid credit to Mr Hyink for Dunedin’s success.
‘‘It’s got to start somewhere ... but that’s not why I do it,’’ Mr Hyink said.
He hopes that more people will participate next year.
‘‘If people are keen, hopefully it builds and in future years you get more people doing more observations.’’
He sees it as an opportunity for people to educate themselves, especially when it comes to species that harm our native environment.
Mr Hyink set himself a goal of 1000 entries. Next year he hopes to log 500 different species.
City Nature ran from April 24 to April 27. Christchurch had the most entries with 21,268.
