Bob Jenkins Visits CNHP

By Dave Anderson, CNHP Director and Chief Scientist

We recently had a very special guest visit CNHP! We were visited by Bob Jenkins, who is famous within the world of conservation for inventing much of the methodology used by natural heritage programs, and for starting the network of natural heritage programs, of which CNHP is a part. When he was the Chief Scientist of The Nature Conservancy, Bob pretty much single-handedly created the network of natural heritage programs and got many of them started as components of state governments (a number of the programs, like CNHP, are instead affiliated with universities). His innovation and determination has led to the creation of an international enterprise that employs thousands of scientists working in 82 programs throughout the Western Hemisphere, and unified by the methods he developed as member programs of NatureServe.

Bob Jenkins (red plaid) talks to CNHP folks in our conference room.

Bob coined the term "element" to collectively recognize species and natural communities as fundamental units of conservation. He was the first person to see a way to prioritize elements based on their rarity, distribution, and qualities of their populations, and use that prioritization as a framework to guide conservation efforts. His work transformed the way that The Nature Conservancy makes decisions about land acquisitions and management.

Bob shared several stories with us about the formation of the Natural Heritage Network. It was great to hear the personal side of his moments of discovery (his "Eureka" moments). Bob had several of these during his career that led to transformative and monumental changes in the way we view conservation. Bob also talked with us about our challenges and successes and how our program is doing. It was such a treat to have one of the conservation community's greatest thinkers in our midst to ponder these with us. And somehow, having a visit from our founding father was incredibly validating and inspiring. Thank you so much Bob! I hope we will see you again soon.

Bob at the whiteboard

At the Biodiversity Without Boundaries Conference in Austin Texas in April, NatureServe awarded Bob the first NatureServe Conservation Award for his achievements. He said that of all the awards he's received, this one meant the most to him. Read more about Bob's award and the text of his acceptance speech, in which he tells the story of the formation of the network of heritage programs.

CNHP in the Pikes Peak Courier View

Teller County's local paper, the Pikes Peak Courier View has a great article about our Teller County survey of critical biological resources happening right now. Teller County is the 34th major inventory project  since CNHP began these projects in 1992. This kind of inventory work is what forms the core of our mission to build and maintain Colorado's most comprehensive biodiversity database.

Be sure to check out this excellent summary of the project with pictures of and quotes from CNHP ecologists Denise Culver and Allison Shaw. These two, along with a number of other CNHP employees, are hard at work surveying the rare and imperiled animals, plants, and natural communities that call Teller County home.

Job Opening - Conservation Data Services Research Associate

CNHP has a new job opening! The Conservation Data Services Research Associate will work closely with other members of the Conservation Data Services Team to manage CNHP's conservation database (BIOTICS), promote the use and continued funding of CNHP data through the development of projects and partnerships, and facilitate yearly information exchanges with NatureServe. The incumbent will also provide database design, programming, and support services for both internal CNHP and external partner data management projects, and oversee systems administration and website development.

This is a full-time position, contingent upon available funding. The incumbent is expected to collaborate with other staff and CNHP partners to develop and submit proposals for grants and projects to ensure continued funding of their position. This position has the potential for advancement into a leadership position within CNHP.

Closing date is July 23, 2010. For more information about the position and how to apply, please see the announcement on the Employment and Volunteering page of our website.

SE Colorado Canyonlands Bioblitz - Results

Earlier this month CNHP ecologist Renée Rondeau and Denver Botanic Gardens Curator Dina Clark coordinated a bioblitz of the JE Canyon Ranch in southeast Colorado. A bioblitz is an intensive survey of the biodiversity of an area. For this one, more than 50 participants, including botanists, entomologists, mycologists, zoologists, ecologists, ranchers and others converged on the ranch for about 24 hours, documenting every species they could find. The final tally was 924 species:

•        Plants: 322
•        Mammals 20
•        Birds: 62
•        Amphibians and Reptiles: 18
•        Fish: 3
•        Moths: 181
•        Butterflies: 29
•        Other Insects: 280

Participants had a pool to guess the final tally, which was won by CNHP director Dave Anderson with a guesstimate of 940. The prize was a guided trip, led by Dina Clark, to the Denver Botanic Gardens for him and his family.

The Denver Botanic Gardens has posted Renée's summary of some preliminary highlights on their blog.

Here are some additional photos from Dave Anderson:

Buffalo grass (Buchloë dactyloides) in flower. This important shortgrass prairie species has both male and female plants.

A native species of brome (Bromopsis pumpelliana). Nice to see the native species instead of the common introduced species.

Dalea jamesii, a member of the pea family, found on sandstone rimrock and sandy arroyos in southeastern Colorado.

A wild buckwheat (Eriogonum tenellum), also common on rocky areas in southeastern Colorado.

The spectacular Gunnison's mariposa lily (Calochortus gunnisonii)

Hoptree (Ptelea trifoliata) fruits.

The small-flowered mock-orange (Philadelphus microphyllus).

The only red-flowered penstemon on Colorado's eastern slope (Penstemon barbatus).

More photos soon! (Inlcuding some people and animal shots, we promise!)

Thanks again to all the participants! Special thanks go to Jerry Wenger and his family, Ralph and Curtis Tichnor, Jim Davis, and Chris West. This effort wouldn't have been possible without you.  Thanks also to the Denver Botanic Gardens and the Colorado Cattlemen's Agricultural Land Trust for all the help with planning and logistics.

 Meteor shower in a sky full of stars over southeast Colorado.

Groundtruthing wetland mapping

As a part of our Setting Mitigation in the Watershed Context project, we are attempting to use aerial imagery to not only locate wetlands, but to classify them by type. Wetlands are frequently difficult to identify from a distance, and manual photo interpretation can be very time consuming. We hope to eventually use our manual photo interpretation results as training data for pattern recognition software. For our imagery, we are using National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) digital aerial photos taken in 2009. The images are at 1 meter resolution and cover about 1,300 square miles of the Cache La Poudre, Big Thompson, and South Platte River watersheds in northern Colorado. The near infra-red color band of these photos is especially helpful in identifying wetlands, however, NAIP flight-lines are typically flown in the summer, when the leaves on deciduous trees can obscure what occurs underneath.

An example of NAIP near-infrared imagery overlaid with mapped wetlands
identified by type.

Because even the best photo interpreter can have false positives (identifying irrigated hayfields or stock ponds as wetlands), or false negatives (missing wetlands due to leaves obscuring the image), we have been groundtruthing several locations within the project area in order to help refine our search pattern.

One of the wetlands recently visited during groundtruthing.

CNHP GIS Analyst Zack Reams and Ecology Technician Ellen Heath recently went out on a groundtruthing excursion. Using their trusty GPS for navigation, they visited several tentative wetland signatures near urban areas. The first area they went to, east of the Centerra Mall in Windsor, turned out to be a stormwater catchment area and not an actual wetland, but they were able to confirm the remaining sites as actual wetlands.

Zack consulting a print-out of NAIP imagery to see if he's near
the wetland he's looking for. Photo by Ellen Heath.

Zack linked his collected GPS coordinates with the digital photos Ellen took at each site so that pictures of the visited areas can be stored with their spatial coordinates in a Geographic Information System as a part of the groundtruthing validation process.

Zack getting a GPS waypoint. (Ellen has the camera, so there aren't any pictures of her!)

Photo by Ellen Heath.

Two new zoology publications

CNHP Zoologist Brad Lambert is an author on two newly published, peer-reviewed papers;

Pilliod, D.S., Muths, E., R.D. Scherer, P.E. Bartelt, P.S. Corn, B.R. Hossack, B.A. Lambert, R. McCaffery, and C. Gaughan. 2010. Effects of amphibian chytrid fungus on individual survival probability in wild boreal toads. Conservation Biology, published online: Apr 20 2010.

Muths, E., R.D. Scherer, and B.A. Lambert. 2010. Unbiased survival estimates and evidence for skipped breeding opportunities in females. Methods in Ecology and Evolution, 1, 123-130.

Brad has been studying boreal toads (Bufo boreas) in Colorado since 1999, and has contributed a great deal of information about the species and the threats it faces. This information is very valuable to the scientific, natural resource management, and conservation communities. These two papers use data from Brad's studies and were written in collaboration with the U.S. Geological Society, CSU faculty, and others, and add to Brad's growing list of publications. Congratulations Brad!

Biodiversity without boundaries conference in Austin, TX

CNHP Botanist Susan Panjabi and Director Dave Anderson attended the Biodiversity Without Boundaries Conference, hosted by NatureServe, in Austin Texas in April. Susan gave a presentation on the Rare Plant Conservation Initiative and Dave gave a panel presentation on the Biodiversity Scorecard Project. It was a great chance to get to know others from around the network of heritage programs! And they had a great time exploring Austin too.

One thing Austin is famous for (besides its music scene) are its bats! The evening emergence of 1-2 million Brazilian Free Tailed Bats from the bridge on Congress Avenue has become famous and hundreds of people come to see this spectacle every night.

Bats emerging from the Congress Avenue Bridge in Austin

About an hour south of Austin is Bracken Cave. This cave is home to over 20 million Brazilian Free Tailed Bats and is the single biggest congregation of mammals on Earth (except perhaps Tokyo?).

The bat exodus from Bracken Cave on April 25, 2010

This cave is on private property that is owned by Bat Conservation International who carefully manages the property and controls visitation. The bat emergence from this cave is one of the most spectacular natural phenomena in the animal world. Below is a video of the emergence on April 25th, taken by Dave Anderson:

Volunteering for conservation

It's a small world in Colorado conservation. Over the years many of our staff (and former staff) have served in volunteer positions with a number of other Colorado non-profits and coalitions, including the Colorado Native Plant Society, the Colorado Natural Areas Program, the Colorado Rare Plant Technical Committee, the Colorado chapter of the Wildlife Society, local Audubon chapters, the Colorado Fourteeners Initiative, the Shortgrass Prairie Partnership, the Colorado Renewables and Conservation Collaborative, the Colorado Noxious Weed Advisory Committee, and more.

When they aren't working or playing in Colorado's beautiful environment, CNHP staff keep busy by lending their expertise to other organizations, leading field trips, giving presentations and workshops, and working to build and strengthen our state's conservation community.

CNHP Ecologist Renée Rondeau recently led a Colorado Native Plant Society field trip to Pueblo Chemical Depot to identify prairie plants and view a riparian restoration project.

Renée (red shirt) discusses plant identification with members of the Colorado Native Plant Society.

Photo by K.M. Canestorp, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.