Immediately after the Deepwater oil spill began, Defenders of Wildlife initiated a project to use the Conservation Registry platform to track events as the spill unfolded – for example, evidence of oil on beaches and oiled wildlife. Defenders built the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery site, an interactive web site that combined the latest government maps of the locations of oil along with data on important wildlife habitats. Users can track events as they occur, report their activities and ask for volunteers.

Google Earth
As Defenders started developing the site, staff from Google Earth volunteered to film and produce a video about Defenders of Wildlife’s Gulf of Mexico website. Their team wanted to make the video because they liked the way the Gulf Oil Response and recovery web site uses Google’s technology to show the crisis and to help change the outcome of the spill and restoration efforts. Defenders of Wildlife is now featured as a Google Earth Hero.

From Google’s Lat Long Blog: “In the aftermath of the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, environmental groups across the country have been rallying in support of both immediate coastal reparation and long-term solutions for the damage the Gulf Oil Spill has wreaked on the ecosystem. With those goals in mind… Defenders of Wildlife, an organization dedicated to protecting species and the habitats on which they depend, is doing everything it can to raise awareness and action for greater cleanup and conservation.” Read the whole post here.

The video features the Conservation Registry’s own Gina LaRocco, briefly and clearly explaining the Gulf oil disaster and walking viewers through the website and showing how it works. Check it out here.

The Conservation Registry welcomes the state of Arkansas to the list of  states who have established portals in the Registry. Viewers can visit Arkansas’s portal by going to the State Portal pull-down menu on the Registry home page, or by linking directly to the Arkansas portal.

Arkansas Conservation Activities
Get a look at some of the conservation activities happening in Arkansas by visiting the detail page for Restoring Blackland Prairie and Oak Hickory Woodland at Terre Noire Natural Area. This project is a partnership between the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission, Arkansas Game & Fish Commission, The Nature Conservancy, and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock.

And check back often to see what’s happening in Arkansas!

Bat lovers love summer nights for the long twilights and plentiful insect life that attract and support our silent swooping friends, bats. But what if we could hear them too? The Nature Conservancy in Washington state has annual bat surveys that rely on the human ear for detecting the presence of one special species of bat, Euderma maculatum, or spotted bat.

Bats emit high-pitched echolocation calls as they fly, using the echoes that bounce off objects in the environment for navigation and to locate food. Although, most bat calls are too high to be heard by the human ear, the spotted bat produces a low frequency echolocation call that humans can hear. A mere 10 kilohertz, their soft metallic clicks can be heard as the bats fly through the air searching for insects. The spotted bat is a “high flyer”, roosting and foraging at elevations that make them difficult to capture with a standard mist net, the tool most often used to collect data about bats.

Listening for bats
Since 2003, The Nature Conservancy staff and volunteers have conducted annual late summer surveys of the spotted bat at the Moses Coulee Preserve in Douglas County, Washington. Volunteers and staff go to one of seven listening stations where they spend one hour listening for clicks, direction of travel, number of times the rapid increase of clicks or “feeding call” is heard, as well as taking note of weather and other environmental factors.

Conservation Registry project
The project detail page in the Conservation Registry shows the seven survey sites along the base of the coulee walls starting at the south end of Jameson Lake. Moses Coulee Preserve is managed by The Nature Conservancy and covers about 4,000 acres of intact shrub-steppe habitat. The preserve is home to a rich variety of birds and wildlife including 14 of Washington’s 15 known bat species. With much of Washington’s shrub-steppe habitat converted to agriculture and urban development, Moses Coulee Preserve is a critical conservation area in this ecological and geologically remarkable landscape.

The Conservation Registry is an important part of this process. Liz Johnson of The Nature Conservancy’s North Central Washington Field Office agrees. “We hope that by sharing our project data on the Conservation Registry we can make our data more usable for a larger audience, not only to let others know about the work that we are doing, but also to gain feedback and help improve the science behind our own conservation.”

Washington’s TNC offices were among the earliest users of the Conservation Registry by uploading their data to populate the wild and uncharted areas of the Washington portal.

Why do we need to count bats?
Bats are a marvel the world over, yet in the United States they face unique threats to both their habitat and health. White Nose Syndrome, a fungal growth that has attacked and decimated many large bat colonies in the eastern United States, is moving farther west every year. Mortality rates of over 90% in affected bat colonies make some scientists fear we are facing a mass extinction of unthinkable proportions. Learning everything we can about bats—their habits and habitats—may help find a solution to this disease. Even bats that do not live in colonies, such as the spotted bats, have much to teach us about the delicate fabric of our shared world.

Visit bats in more Conservation Registry bat projects:
Townsend’s Big-eared Bat Study
External Bat Surveys of Abandoned Mines
Conserving Rafinesque’s Big-eared Bats and Southeastern Myotis

Learn more about bats and WNS from Bat Conservation International.

By Meg Kenagy
Oregon Conservation Strategy Communications coordinator
Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife

How does the conservation project you are working on fit into your watershed? Who’s fighting invasive species, providing fish passage or trying to bring back beaver in your area? Is anyone else in the state surveying for frogs? Find out here on the Oregon Conservation Registry portal. And, while you’re looking around, think about what project you could add to the website.

The Conservation Registry is free and easy to use. An online database and mapping system, the Registry allows you to enter, search and map your conservation projects. It’s based on Google Maps, which makes it easy to use and provides a familiar platform.

“It only takes about 10 minutes to get an overview of the site and see how it works,” said Kassandra Kelly, Defenders of Wildlife content manager for the Oregon section of the Registry. “It takes about 30 to 45 minutes to enter a project. The software is form-based and data entry goes very quickly if you have the information at hand.”

Today, there are more than 12,000 projects in the Oregon portal of the Registry—a good start but no where near enough. For example, in a search for “frogs,” only two projects were returned. For the website to be successful, a lot more people who are involved with habitat and species conservation will need to contribute.

There are many benefits to participating in the Registry—you can look at your project in the context of other projects, see the progress being made over time in a specific area, find projects in your area of interest and learn out how projects similar to yours are being funded.

By way of example, look at the Yaquina River Beaver Habitat Rehabilitation project. A Google map pinpoints the restoration area, project goals include invasive species removal and riparian replanting designed to attract beaver back to the area for the good of coho salmon. Partners and funding are included. The Conservation Registry is truly easy to use. Unlike many websites that offer geographic maps, no GIS specific knowledge or software is needed. The Registry was launched in 2009 to capture the work being done in support of the Oregon Conservation Strategy and other state’s wildlife action plans.

The Conservation Registry is managed by Defenders of Wildlife with the support of many federal, state and local agencies, foundations and non-profit organizations. Visit the Oregon Portal of the Conservation Registry.

Read On the Ground: The Oregon Conservation Strategy at Work, newsletter of ODFW’s Wildlife Division.

Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery
On April 20, the explosion and sinking of BP’s Deepwater Horizon oil rig, which killed 11 crew members and left many others injured, started one of the worst environmental disasters in U.S. history. In response to this catastrophe, the Conservation Registry launched the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery web site to advance effective efforts to save wildlife and keep track of response and recovery in the Gulf of Mexico.

Conservation Registry for Oil Spill Recovery
In the early days following the explosion, conservationists, media and concerned citizens searched for news, maps, images and up to date information about the Gulf. Defenders of Wildlife and partners turned to the Conservation Registry and its powerful mapping tool to visualize the impacted areas. The Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery site is the result—a way for users to map oil spill impacts, enter recovery projects and observations, share photos, ask for help, track the long term impacts of the spill and see what is being done to protect wildlife and coastal habitats.

Mapping Tool
Built in the familiar Google Maps environment, the mapping tool utilizes geographic imagery and forecasts that focus on the Gulf and are updated daily. Additional map layers show known locations of nesting sites, species concentration areas and other environmentally sensitive resources. Conservation Registry project sites can be viewed as well.

How does the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery web site work?
Users can search the map for impacts and recovery projects by activity type, species and habitats. Impacts and recovery efforts can be viewed in relation to sea turtle nesting sites, manatee locations, high priority federal lands and other relevant map layers. To report an impact or observation, or contribute a new project, users create an account through a simple one-step signup which requires a name and email address.

Types of projects
Observations: Oil slicks or sheen, oiled plants and wildlife, wildlife mortality, oiled beaches. Recovery and mitigation projects: Oil contamination management, boom and barrier placement, beach clean-up, wildlife rescue. Request assistance or search for volunteer opportunities. Post project needs for volunteers, special equipment or funding. Reach out to projects that need help.

Collaboration
As this environmental catastrophe unfolds, and the impacts to wildlife, habitats, human lives and livelihoods stretch from weeks into months, and possibly years, the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery web site connects users and encourages the most effective solutions.

Go to the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery web site.