We wrapped up Pollinator Week by heading over to Minnesota for the 2019 Tallgrass Prairie BioBlitz at Big Stone Lake State Park for a bit of citizen science.
This was the fourth prairie bioblitz organized by Clean Up the River Environment (CURE) and the Land Stewardship Project--in partnership with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), and the MN Department of Natural Resources (DNR), in conjunction with local livestock farmers.
Livestock farmers and tallgrass prairies? Land Stewardship Project's page about the event explains:
Not sure what a BioBlitz is?
A BioBlitz is an intense period of biological surveying in an attempt to record as many living species possible in a designated area. Groups of scientists, naturalists, and volunteers conduct this survey over a specific period of time. This BioBlitz focuses on learning about our local prairies and teaching each other about what lives there, about understanding the biological wealth that we have in our western Minnesota communities, and about sharing our excitement and passion for this precious resource. Our goal is to create a species list for the prairie parcels at this event, with the challenge of finding as much diversity as possible. We will catalog our findings on the citizen science website iNaturalist.org, where our project name will be Tallgrass Prairie BioBlitz 2019.
Why do we hold a BioBlitz?
We know that healthy farming communities make rural living better on many levels, but we don't usually connect the importance of diverse, sustainable farming operations that have livestock with the care and management of public lands and native prairie. The BioBlitz originated from the desire to help the general non-farming public understand the vital part that well-managed grazing livestock play in maintaining our public lands and native prairies. Not only are grazing animals good for native prairie, but they are key in some plant, insect and animal life cycles, as well as an important tool for managing invasive species and sequestering carbon back into the soil. We want to raise up the great relationships between public land managers and graziers, the benefits of grazing public land to both public and private pastures, as well as underline that public lands need healthy farming communities around them to provide livestock management services.
Another critical piece of this event is species monitoring on these parcels. Throughout the day as we survey the native prairie parcels, we create as diverse of a species list as possible and register it on iNaturalist. This list serves as a monitoring tool for land managers and as public record for species recorded in the area.
Still a work in progress as the dozens of participants upload their findings, the 2019 Tallgrass Prairie BioBlitz at Big Stone Lake State Park is viewable here.
But an album of photos from CURE's Facebook page most caught our fancy--especially the photos of children netting insects and awing at larger creatures found on the prairie:
It was a fun outing and we wished we had had more time to spend in the field. Closer to home, we've been growing interested in citizen science and just discovered the site Amphibians and Reptiles of South Dakota, after finding a red-bellied snake near our tomato patch. We were happy the little snake's diet is mostly slugs, which like to eat tomatoes.
The site offered the opportunity to upload our observations to the HerpMapper database--a nifty citizen-science project that's "designed to gather and share information about reptile and amphibian observations across the planet." Minnesota turtle champion Christopher E. Smith is Director of Public Affairs for HerpMapper.
We're eager to introduce herpmapping to the beau's grandchildren and their friends, along with the notion these critters are best observed, rather than taken home as temporary pets.
Photo: Some kids at the BioBlitz marvel at a creature of the prairie. Credit: Erik Hatlestad for CURE.
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