Vox creators and New York City officials installed two [1] large insect traps in Central Park and Prospect Park this summer to find undocumented species.

The initiative aims to catalogue biodiversity within urban environments before local wildlife disappears. Scientists believe that urban green spaces often harbor hidden biological diversity that remains unrecorded by official databases.

The project is a collaboration between Vox, NYC Parks, the Central Park Conservancy, and the Prospect Park Alliance [1]. By deploying these traps, the team hopes to capture specimens that could represent entirely new species to science.

This effort is driven by the belief that the urban landscape is not a biological wasteland. Researchers estimate that hundreds, if not thousands [2], of undiscovered animal species currently live within the parks of New York City.

Documenting these creatures is a race against time. Habitat loss and urban development continue to threaten the survival of small organisms, many of which are invisible to the naked eye, before they can be formally identified.

The traps are designed to attract a wide variety of insects, allowing researchers to sort through the collected samples. This process helps bridge the gap between city infrastructure and the natural world that persists despite the surrounding concrete.

“Two large insect traps were deployed in Central Park and Prospect Park”

This project highlights a growing movement in urban ecology to recognize cities as critical hubs of biodiversity. By partnering with media creators and city conservancies, the initiative brings public attention to the 'taxonomic impediment'—the gap between the number of species that exist and those that have been formally described by science.