Nature's 500: Year List of Life and Natural Phenomena (1 Viewer)

Similar in concept to "AlexC Life List of Life", I was thinking about a list that would encourage people to look for as much in nature as possible. I could call it Nature's 500.

The rules are as follows:
-You can include anything that occurs in nature: flora, fauna, astronomical objects, atmospherics optics, mineral species, unusual weather (ie hail storms, cloud formations).
-Catch and release for animals is permitted but not specimens.
-Pets, zoo animals, planted plants etc are not counted, but introduced animals are counted.
-Hybrids and unusual abnormal forms (ie albino) count.
-If you identified an organism to a greater level of precision, the organism identified to a lesser precision is not counted. For example, if you identify a butterfly than a Monarch butterfly than a grasshopper, 'butterfly' doesn't count, but 'grasshopper' would.
-Signs, tracks etc count for half a point. Dead animals also count for half a point. Some animals (particularly small mammals) can be so hard to find that I think there should be some reward if you find signs.
-Identification by songs or calls is permitted.
-Identificaton of organisms you photographed remoted is not permitted.
-Mineralogical species are counted only for surface rocks that are not altered or removed.
-Different forms of atmospheric optics are count, but not different combinations of forms (with the exception of ice halos.
-Astronomical objects with the exception of ordinary stars are counted and astronomical events are counted (i.e. meteor shower, lunar eclipse etc)
-To discourage excessive driving, all your observations must be within a 50 mile circle of where you live.

A variation would be the Green Nature's 250. The rules are the same except you can not use motorized vehicles of any sort. How much can you observe if you had to keep your car at home?

Hmmm, I have been thinking and I believe the Nature's 500 concept is flawed. 500 species in one year is nearly impossible for a new naturalist and can be too easy for very seasoned naturalists. Perhaps a better concept would be to try to find about 100 new things in nature in your local area.

I think it also be a good idea to broaden the scope of what you can include. If, for example, a person where to do this challenge year after year, eventually you would run out of species to find in the most interesting area and be stuck looking at moths, insects, wildflowers, mushrooms and faint fuzzies. But vertebrates (birds, mammals, herps, fish) and some groups of invertebrates have interesting behaviors to look for.

In any case, I believe in any local area (say within a 50 mile radius circle) you can find readily available and not too technical field guides to identify over 4000 different creatures and natural phenomena. This doesn't include the massive numbers of faint fuzzies in the night sky. The Messier catalog is reasonable at 106 different deep sky objects, but there are two Herschel catalogs with 400 objects each and the NGC catalog has at least 10000 objects.