2017 Amargosa River BioBlitz is happening in just nine days!

Hi Everyone!

I look forward to seeing you in the field for this year's Amargosa River BioBlitz. Please come ready to record all of your finds! The information you collect will be used to help conservation efforts in this region.

Here's some background: Since the early 1970s, The Nature Conservancy has worked in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management to protect the biodiversity found within the Amargosa River Watershed. These efforts have included land acquisition, restoration, scientific study, and conservation-focused management of lands along the Amargosa River. The Bureau of Land Management designated the vicinity as an Area of Critical Environmental Concern in 1983. In 2009, Congress designated a 26-mile stretch of the Amargosa in California as a Wild and Scenic River, and in 2016, the completion of the Desert Renewable Energy and Conservation Plan’s Land Use Planning Amendment designates the majority of the lands surrounding the California portion of the river as California Desert National Conservation Lands.

With these protections comes a need to effectively inform the conservation management of these lands, and that in turn requires knowledge gained through scientific inquiry. While we recognize that a select suite of ongoing research and surveys involving a number of agencies, institutions, and organizations is currently underway along the Amargosa River, we also have a need to foster a comprehensive, multi-taxa understanding of the unique biodiversity of this place. Thus, we’ve arranged for a BioBlitz to explore this area to gain additional information about the suite of organisms that occupy the Amargosa Canyon area. This short-term, high intensity survey effort will involve a broad suite of experts skilled in the identification of plants, animals, and natural communities and resources.

The 2017 Bioblitz is timed to occur 45 years after the original 1972 multi-taxon surveys conducted by various entities and documented by the Desert Pupfish Preservation Committee. This will give us an opportunity to compare findings across time, and see if any changes have occurred in the species present in this location.

Sophie

Posted on March 30, 2017 01:48 AM by sophieparker