Rifle and Carbondale Bioblitzes

By Riley Reed

What is a bioblitz?
Last week as a CNHP intern I had the opportunity to participate in two bioblitzes in Rifle and Carbondale, Colorado! A bioblitz is when a team of scientists travels to a designated area to best identify all the flora and fauna species. The scientists are given a twenty four hour period to find, identify, and document all the species that they can. Pictures or live samples are taken of each species that is documented. The purpose of the bioblitz is to gather information about the biodiversity of the area. This can help landowners manage their property more efficiently and promotes the best land use practices. It can also bring attention to any threatened and endangered species that are on the property.

First time? Won't be your last!
For many of the interns and volunteers, including myself, it was our first time learning about and helping with a bioblitz. It was a great learning opportunity that allowed us to get hands-on experience in a relaxed and fun manner. Many different fields of natural resources' work were covered, such as zoology, botany, restoration ecology, and human dimensions. All of the CNHP scientists were very helpful and passionate about spreading their knowledge and teaching the interns and volunteers.

Where did we go?
A large group from CNHP consisting of zoologists, botanists, interns, and volunteers left Fort Collins and headed west to the bioblitz location on a ranch in Rifle. The Ranch had a wide range of habitats that provided a high biodiversity rate relative to the size of the property. The data that was collected on the property was achieved through a variety of different methods. Birds and other wildlife were spotted during flash surveys of the property; camera traps were also set up at various locations. Bats were documented using a sonogram that was set up near the pond at night. Insects were captured with insect nets and a UV light trap at night. Fish were documented with the help of Colorado Parks and Wildlife and one of their fish shocking experts. (I would like to note that no fish were hurt during the fish shocking studies.) Trees, forbs, and grasses were identified and keyed out by the botany teams by walking the property. One specialist group of individuals from the botany team focused their entire time searching and identifying mosses and lichens. Once all of the species were identified to the best of our ability, we packed up and headed to our next location 45 minutes from Rifle around Carbondale.

Change it up?
The Ranch in Carbondale offered a good change of scenery and a new challenge to identify all the species on this section of land. Methods that were used in Rifle were repeated with slight modification to suit the new landscape. The zoologist team had wonderful success catching and identifying a wide variety of new butterflies, and the botany team had great achievements monitoring a rare species of plant known as good-neighbor bladderpod.

Overall, this was a life changing event, and I look forward to participating in future bioblitzes.

Kira and Toryn's Bat Blog

What are Kira and Toryn doing?
We’re following bats! Rob and Jeremy placed radio transmitters on the backs of nine female and one male little brown bats. We are using radio telemeters to track the signal emitted by the radio transmitter to the bats’ locations. When we find the bats, we collect data on their roosting site, including what type of structure they’re roosting in (such as a building or a tree), temperature, roost opening height, total structure height, slope, aspect, elevation, UTM, and other descriptors depending upon the structure type.

Little brown bats in a bat box at Rehder Ranch. 

Roosting little brown bat.

What does a normal day look like?

Since we’re studying bats, many people think we collect our data at night. However, the majority of our data is collected during the day, with a few observations at night. During the day, we find the bats and collect data on their roost sites. Finding some of the bats is easy; others . . . not so much. The transmitter signals can bounce in weird ways in a valley, forest, or building wall. Some signals can't be heard until you are right on top of them; other times you can hear the signal from every direction and have a hard time pinpointing its location. So it occasionally boils down to good luck when finding some of these bats.

One method for tracking bats is using a car-mounted antenna for radio telemetry.

Kira and Toryn locating bats with radio telemetry.

What do we do at night? 

The field work we do at night consists of mist netting, bat counts, and going around to roosting sites to check if the bats have left their day roost site. On June 21st, Rob accompanied us to Sarvis Creek to mist net for bats. A mist net was placed near an unused cabin, and night vision cameras and infrared lights were set up and aimed at the suspected exit roost site to get video of bats. We completed our setup around 8:00 p.m. and didn’t start seeing bats around 9:00 p.m. Kira kept seeing bats that Rob and Toryn didn’t see. Kira may have excellent eyesight or is a liar. Rob and Toryn were going crazy trying to spot the bats Kira ‘saw.’ Unfortunately, we didn’t catch any. However, we saw a ton of them swooping down the river catching bugs.

We also got permission from a private landowner to do a bat count on his property on 06/27. We set up night vision cameras and infrared lights at his doorstep at 9:00 p.m. where there was a pile of guano. We visually counted bats until 11:30 p.m. Kira is probably better at spotting bats than Toryn. The bats can be hard to count because they are difficult to see and you don’t know if you’re counting the same bat. This is why a night vision camera is set up because we will later review the video recording to see the amount of error of visually counting bats versus video recording of the bats. It was fun doing a bat count at night. We lounged in chairs watching the sunset and the stars come out, chit chatting and drinking tea. We also heard mountain lions in the distance, which was cool until Kira decided to tell stories of mountain lion attacks. Thanks Kira. 

The other type of night work we do is visiting the day roost sites. Currently the bats seem to return to the same day roost site every day. This has us worried because we aren’t sure if the radio telemeters fell off the bats or if the females have pups. So we visit the day roost sites at night to see if the bats are moving. Sometimes the bats are moving and aren’t at their sites, and sometimes they are still there.

Setting up for mist netting at Sarvis Creek Cabin. 

Nighttime setup for a roost count. 

What do we do in our free time? 

Nap! We nap a lot. Kira’s favorite napping spot is in the hammock. We also swim and fish in the stream (Kira’s better at fishing), explore the downtown, read books, and watch The Hobbit when we are trying to stay awake until 3 a.m. to check on the bats. We plan on inner tubing down the Yampa River and going hiking.

Kira's rainbow trout.

Toryn's first monstrous catch of the day!