Site Profile: Trickle Mountain, Saguache County

B2: Very High Biodiversity Significance

The Trickle Mountain site was identified during the 1997 Closed Basin Inventory in Saguache and Alamosa Counties. Here, a scenic landscape of mesas and small mountains dissected by short canyons supports a mosaic of montane woodlands and grasslands. In Colorado, this type of terrain is more typical of lower elevations to the west

The vegetation of the Trickle Mountain area reflects its unusual setting. The mesa tops are dominated by an arid mixed-grass grassland of ring muhly (Muhlenbergia filiculmis) and lichen. The higher elevations of Trickle mountain are covered by Bristle cone pine (Pinus aristata) with Arizona fescue (Festuca arizonica), while ponderosa pine (Pinus ponderosa) with Arizona fescue or grasslands of mountain muhly (Muhlenbergia montana), ring muhly, and Arizona fescue dominate the lower slopes. The valleys between the plateaus are mostly a winterfat/blue grama (Krascheninnikovia lanata/Bouteloua gracilis) short-grass shrub-steppe that provides good habitat for Gunnison prairie dogs (Cynomys gunnisoni gunnisoni). The site also supports populations of two Colorado endemic plants: Weber’s catseye (Cryptantha weberi) and rock-loving aletes (Neoparrya lithophila).

2010 is the International Year of Biodiversity

We are happy to see that the United Nations has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. Events will be hosted all over the world, with the North American launch happening February 10th in New York. Other sites with information include Countdown2010 and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature.

Our core mission here at the Colorado Natural Heritage Program centers around tracking and preserving our state's biodiversity. We applaud the U.N.'s recognition of the value of biodiversity and how seriously it is threatened.

Sixth Annual Rare Plant Symposium presentations now online

Presentations for the Rare Plant Symposium held in September 2009 are now available on the Botany Team page of our website.  The meeting agenda and reviews of past meetings are also now available.  Meeting minutes will be available shortly, so check back soon.

Job Opening - Lead Ecologist/Botanist

CNHP currently has a new job opening. The Lead Ecologist/Botanist will conduct inventories of high-quality upland and wetland plant communities, as well as rare plants within a study area. This work involves interpretation of aerial photos and other pertinent information to select sites, determining land ownership and contacting landowners regarding access, describing and demarcating plant communities, collecting vegetation, soils, identifying plant species, collecting voucher specimens of unknown plant species, and completing Heritage Program field survey forms. This position will require extensive travel and long days in the field. This position requires proficiency in scientific report writing, as well as experience using Microsoft Office programs and ArcGIS.

Closing date is February 28, 2010. For more information about the position and how to apply, please see the announcement on the Employment and Volunteering page of our website.

North Platte wetland report now available

Our first report of 2010 is now complete and on our reports page. We first posted about this project back in October, when the field crew was finishing up. Now the final report, Identification and Assessment of Important Wetlands within the North Platte River Watershed 2009-2010, is available.

CNHP surveyed 13 private properties that constituted 45% of the private lands within the watershed. The site visits resulted in 68 new element occurrences; these data combined with existing data resulted in the formation of 32 Potential Conservation Areas. In addition to the fieldwork conducted in 2009, this project benefited from collaboration with the North Platte Basinwide Wetland Profile and Condition Assessment project also being conducted by CNHP which is a part of the Statewide Wetlands Strategy to quantitatively assess wetland condition for Colorado’ s wetlands.

John Sovell samples a pond for aquatic invertebrates

Riparian shrublands are the dominate wetland type in the North Platte River Watershed; more important is the fact that these wetland complexes are presently intact and contiguous, providing migration corridors and habitat for animals (including aquatic vertebrates and invertebrates), as well as contributing to the health of aquatic systems by purifying water, filtering runoff, abating floods and decreasing erosion. These riparian wetlands are highly functioning due to the absence of any major hydrological modifications and consequently, the presence of intact floodplains.

Site profile: Hay Gulch, Rio Blanco County

B2: Very High Biodiversity Significance

This site was visited in 2007 during the Rio Blanco County Inventory. Hay Gulch is a large draw southwest of Meeker, on the south side of the White River. Here the Parachute Creek member of the Green River Formation (oil shale, marlstone and siltstone) is exposed. This geologic formation includes the Mahogany ledge, one of the richest oil-shale zones in the basin, as well as potentially valuable deposits of nahcolite and dawsonite. The Parachute Creek substrate supports a good (B-ranked ) occurrence of the Colorado endemic Piceance Twinpod (Physaria obcordata), a plant that is critically imperiled globally (G1G2/S1S2) and that is Federally listed as Threatened. The site also includes a good (B-ranked) occurrence of a bluebunch wheatgrass (Pseudoroegneria spicata) grassland community, considered globally imperiled (G2/S2?).

Piceance Twinpod (Physaria obcordata)

Biodiversity Scorecard - measuring effective conservation for Colorado species

Conservationists and planners need methods to identify priority areas for conservation, information on how to characterize the relative importance, quality, and urgency of these areas, and a means to measure conservation success on a regional or statewide basis over time. In order to assist the Colorado office of The Nature Conservancy with their "Measures of Success" program, and to provide biodiversity status information to other organizations in Colorado, the Colorado Natural Heritage Program has developed a prototype analysis of the status of Colorado's biodiversity, using a "scorecard" approach.

There are over 2,500 native plant species within Colorado. CNHP tracks over 500 of the rarest of these plants. The 103 most at-risk of these species for which we have sufficient data were included in this initial biodiversity scorecard. Likewise, out of the 500 native vertebrate animal species in Colorado, we evaluated 113 of the most at-risk species (our knowledge of the rarest invertebrates is still sadly lacking).

At-risk status does not translate directly into federal legal protection. Of all the at-risk species in our state, a much smaller number are listed as threatened or endangered under the Endangered Species Act:

• Amphibians = 0
• Birds = 5
• Fish = 5
• Mammals = 5
• Reptiles = 0
• Plants = 13

Level of effective conservation for Colorado species of concern

Plants, animals, and ecological systems can only be considered effectively conserved when their biodiversity status is viable, threats have been abated, and land management/protection is sufficient to ensure the long-term persistence of the element. For more information about how we calculated these scores and which species we evaluated, see our draft Biodiversity Scorecard.

Natural Heritage Methodology Training at CNHP in March

The Colorado Natural Heritage Program will be hosting Natural Heritage Methodology Training (NHMT) at Colorado State University March 2-5, 2010.  NHMT provides employees of NatureServe member programs (and partner organizations that work closely with natural heritage data) the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of all aspects of natural heritage methodology—from data collection to data management and data use. It also provides a foundation for understanding the different roles and functions of natural heritage programs.

The curriculum will include:

• Day 1: Element Methodology (species and ecological data)
• Day 2: Data Collection and Element Occurrence Methodology (includes introduction to Biotics)
• Day 3: Viability and Integrity (Element Occurrence Ranking) Methodology; Data Sensitivity and Data Applications; field trip
• Day 4: In-depth topics in Ecology, Botany, Zoology, and Data Management; Element Distribution Modeling; Conservation Planning

Participants may select one of three sites to attend: NatureServe headquarters in Arlington, VA; the Colorado Natural Heritage Program in Fort Collins, CO; or the Massachusetts Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program in Westborough, MA.

All three sites will be connected via online meeting services, including audio and video. Portions of each day will be "live" in each site.

For more information and to register for the training, please visit: http://www.natureserve.org/visitLocal/nhmtraining.jsp

Update: It looks like registration is full for the Fort Collins location, but as of 02/04 there are still a few spaces at the Virginia and Massachusetts locations.