April was an exciting month for community members all throughout the San Antonio River Watershed. The River Authority invited several companies to join in keeping our creeks and rivers safe, clean, and enjoyable by scheduling corporate group volunteer events. Throughout the entire month of April, the San Antonio River saw six volunteer groups from different corporate entities participate in a volunteer endeavor, and not all of them involved trash.
Shell Shocked: 100+ Invasive Snails Removed in 2 Hours
In early April, a volunteer group from Hixon Properties joined us on the Museum Reach of the San Antonio River, just a stone’s throw away from their downtown office, to participate in the removal of invasive Apple Snails. This group attended a mandatory virtual training course with one of our Aquatic Biologists the week before, so they were adequately prepared for their removal excursion. A total of 14 volunteers from this group participated, and they collected over 100 snails from the Museum Reach in just two short hours. Learn more about the invasive Apple Snail and their impact on our watershed ecosystems on nuestra página web!
Volunteers from Hixon Properties show off their haul of sticky pink Apple Snail egg sacs (left bucket) and adult snails (right bucket).
Sam’s Club Steps Up: Battling Invasive Weeds on the Mission Reach
We also welcomed team members from Sam’s Club to join us on the Mission Reach of the San Antonio River to take on another challenge—removing invasive plant species from the river ecosystem. Over 40 Sam’s Club team members from stores across San Antonio joined us at Acequia Park, where they collected hundreds of pounds of Common Giant Mustard (Rapistrum rugosum), a common invasive known for its bright yellow flowers and ability to run rampant in hot, humid climates, as well as Spreading Hedge Parsley (Torilis arvensis), an invasive from the carrot family, which overtakes large sections of the Mission Reach.
Invasive vegetation management is an important part of ecosystem restoration, as the removal of invasive species creates more room for natives to grow and thrive. We thank the volunteers from Sam’s Club for joining us in this effort!
Fiesta Flotilla Ready: 2,000 Pounds of Trash Removed from the River
River Warriors and corporate partners alike joined us in the effort of removing trash from the San Antonio River this spring. We thank our partners from USAA, Keep San Antonio Beautiful y Ernst & Young for spending their time on the river collecting a total of over 2,000 pounds of trash, just in time for our Fiesta Flotilla event on April 27th! Across all groups and partners, we had a total of 100 volunteers cleaning up litter on the Mission Reach. What a great turnout for Earth Month!
If you have a group interested in volunteer efforts such as Apple Snail Removal, invasive vegetation removal, or litter pick up, contact our Engagement team at voluntario@sariverauthority.org o join the River Warrior volunteers!
San Antonio Climbs the Global Rankings in 2025 City Nature Challenge
The River Authority was excited to end Earth Month with a bang by helping our partners and community participate in the 2025 City Nature Challenge. The City Nature Challenge is an international effort for people to find and document plants and wildlife in cities across the globe. It’s a bioblitz-style competition where cities are in a friendly contest with each other to see who can make the most observations of nature, who can find the most species, and who can engage the most people. In 2024, the San Antonio Metro Area contributed over 64,000 observations, which placed us third in the entire world. Thanks to the wonderful, hard work of the Regional Coordinators for the San Antonio Metro Area, Pete Hernandez and Jane Weeden, this year we were able to surpass those numbers by a landslide, setting a new personal record for the number of species, observations, and observers.
Peter Hernandez helped lead a guided ‘Walking on the Wild Side’ nature walk at ECP.
This year, the City Nature Challenge took place from Friday, April 25th through Monday, April 28th. In preparation for the four-day event, River Authority staff provided several free virtual training courses on the Aplicación iNaturalista as well as guided nature walks at three of the River Authority’s beautiful nature parks, led by our River Warrior docent and City Nature Challenge Regional Coordinator, Peter Hernandez. During these guided walks, coined the “Walking on the Wild Side” series, community members and volunteers got a chance to test out their new citizen science skills while learning about native flora and fauna.
A volunteer documenting an observation of a tree species for iNaturalist.
The 2025 Results Are In…
Everything’s bigger in Texas, including iNaturalist observations! This year, the San Antonio Metro Area maintained our title as 1st place National Champions and improved our global ranking to 2nd place with more than 134,000 observations—over double last year’s number! We want to give a heartfelt THANK YOU! to everyone that participated in this year’s challenge. Let’s go, San Antonio!
Check out all the results on the Sitio web del City Nature Challenge and take a look at observations made in San Antonio on the CNC-SA website.
A young observer holding a grasshopper he caught at Escondido Creek Parkway in Kenedy, TX.
