Milazzo first in Italy and third in Europe for biodiversity in 2023.

Milazzo has been elected as the city with the greatest biodiversity in Italy for 2023. A success that places it in third place in Europe and in twenty-second place worldwide. The CIT Nature Nature Challenge 2023 has confirmed the existence of an important network between citizens, institutions and associations and a strong ecological consciousness. The bad weather conditions did not stop the volunteers, who made over 17,000 observations and surveyed 2,110 species. 

2023 is the third consecutive year in which the MuMa Museo del Mare Milazzo coordinated the participation of the city of Milazzo in the CIT Nature Nature Challenge, an international initiative for the census of global biodiversity that takes place annually in thee The great participation and the experience gained in the two previous editions, have allowed Cape town to confirm itself in first place among the participating Italian cities, both for the number of observations made and for the number of species identified. Thanks to these numbers, Milazzo is also third in Europe and even in the world Top 30. The event again provided an opportunity to document and tell the extraordinary biodiversity of the city.

 The Cit Nature Nature Challenge took place within the municipal land boundaries of the whole Municipality and in the waters surrounding the Mamertina peninsula, including the Marine Protected Area of Capo Milazzo. Between April 28th and May 1st, at the same time as what was happening in all the cities of the world, numerous volunteers, nature enthusiasts and simple onlookers, testified to the presence of local biodiversity with photographs and sound recordings concerning wild plants and wild animals in the city center, in the landscapes of the Cape and the Plain, on the coasts and in the depths of the Sea. 

The observations made in thee eekend were collected on the online platform iNaturalist, thanks to which, in collaboration with naturalist enthusiasts from all over the world, the identification of the observed species was carried out. All the data collected were immediately available and constitute an important database usable by scientists and scholars of biodiversity. The latter represents a ‘thermometer', an indicator, able to make us understand the state of health of the environment in which we live. The CIT Nature Nature challenge is an initiative of "Citizen Science“, or" Citizen Science", which allows each participant to become a scientist for a few days and to learn about the biodiversity of their territory, as well as to compete in a fun and friendly way with all the other cities in the world.

It is also important to note that the rankings do not take into account important factors, such as the area of the cities and the number of inhabitants participating in the race. This only makes the data collected in Milazzo even more important, which participated in the census with a far smaller area than that of many other cities with millions of inhabitants. For example, the second Italian for observations and species identified was Rome, which participated with a much larger territorial area and with several million inhabitants.

In Milazzo ,the "Citizen Scientists" managed to make over 17,000 observations, increasing the numbers recorded in 2022. But the most important aspect is related to the number of animal and plant species surveyed, which this year reached 2,110, far higher than the approximately 1,500 species identified in 2022. This is an impressive result, which allowed it to figure in the 22 globale global place, 'overcoming' in the friendly challenge between cities around the world not only Rome, but also metropolises such as Vienna, London, Paris and Ne!