Photo by Krista Schlyer

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.

Gina LaRocco talks about the Gulf Oil Spill Response and Recovery site

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!

Spotted bat. Photo courtesy of the National Park Service.

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.

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.

America beaver, Castor canadensis

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.

Worker deploying boom in the Gulf. Photo by Krista Schlyer.

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.

Deployed boom. Photo by Krista Schlyer

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.

Zebra mussel

In its second year, the Idaho State Department of Agriculture’s boat inspection program has already stopped–and cleaned–a boat infested with Zebra mussels. The motorist towing the infested boat was from Nevada and the Zebra mussels were cleaned off the boat at no charge, in a process that took about an hour. Read full article here.

Zebra mussels
These tiny invaders were originally from lakes in southeast Russia, but have since hitchhiked their way into American lakes and rivers by attaching themselves to boats, anchors, even ballast water. A Zebra mussel infestation can out compete native freshwater mussels and cause algae overgrowth, but by far their greatest damage is done to human infrastructure. They can grow so densely they clog pipes in municipal water works and hydroelectric facilities, as well as cover any structure or object in an infested areas, such as boats and docks. Zebra mussel infestations in North America occur in the Great Lakes, the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, and are quickly making their way west–often on the hulls of pleasure craft.

Comparative size of mussel.

Invasive Species Prevention Sticker Law
Idaho has put in place nineteen inspection stations along key highways and entry points to the state. The program is funded by the Invasive Species Prevention Sticker Law which requires motorized and non-motorized boats to have an Invasive Species Sticker in order to launch and operate in Idaho. The cost of a sticker is $10–cheap protection from a costly invader!

View an Idaho inspection station map with links to some weekly updates. Go to Idaho’s Invasive Species Council web page.

Map of Zebra mussel locations. Courtesy of USGS.

Dutcher's Cove, Pierce County, Washington

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Pacific Region (Region 1) released a portal on the Conservation Registry which tracks and maps the Section 6 Cooperative Endangered Species Conservation Fund land acquisition projects in the Region 1 states of Hawaii, Idaho, Oregon and Washington, and National Coastal Wetlands projects as a pilot in Washington. A feature of the portal is to highlight the accomplishments of partners in each project. View portal here.

The Cooperative Endangered Species Fund is part of Section 6 of the Endangered Species Act, which makes grants to U.S. states and territories who are undertaking voluntary projects to protect candidate, threatened and endangered species. These awards include conservation grants, recovery land acquisitions and habitat conservation plans. Read about this program here. The National Coastal Wetlands Project grants are used to acquire and restore coastal wetlands and adjacent uplands for the conservation of fish, wildlife and their habitat. Read more.

“We chose to use the Registry to track and map our National Coastal Wetlands Project grants and Section 6 land acquisition grants as a pilot project for these nationwide programs because the Registry is ready to use and available nationally,” said Joanne Stellini, biologist with the USFWS in Washington state, who is heading up the use of the Conservation Registry for the Pacific region. “Our Registry portal allows us and our state agency partners to showcase our accomplishments and keep the public up to date on conservation where they live.”

USFWS project polygons (purple) in context with other Registry projects.

The Conservation Registry is a preferred tracking and visualization tool for federal and state agencies and organizations with portals because of the Registry’s ease of use and ability to present project locations and data in context with other efforts being undertaken in the region. It also presents partnership information so users can see how private, state and federal dollars are working together to preserve and protect out treasured natural resources.

View Lily Point Acquisition project: See what almost a dozen partner organizations and agencies can do when they work together in Washington state.

Zumwalt Prairie: In one of the most delicate prairie habitats, USFWS and The Nature Conservancy are working together to preserve habitats for the federally threatened Spalding’s catchfly plant and Snake River steelhead.

National Fish and Wildlife Foundation

Kemp's Ridley hatchling on a Florida beach. Photo: National Park Service.

at work in the Gulf protecting sea turtles.

The National Fish and Wildlife’s portal in the Conservation Registry features over 200 conservation projects. NFWF’s projects in the Registry range from Maine to Texas, and almost every state in between.

With the Deepwater Horizon oil spill continuing to spread, conservationists are concerned about many species that are native to or pass through the sensitive coastal areas of the Gulf of Mexico. One of the most vulnerable is Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle, a species that has been of special concern to NFWF since 1986. The Registry currently contains projects focusing on protecting the turtle, featuring partnerships with Shell Oil through the Shell Marine Habitat Program, the National Park Service, Padre Island National Seashore, Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission, among others.

NFWF and partners have made special efforts in Texas, particularly Padre Island National Seashore, which is the most important Kemp’s Ridley nesting site in the United States.

Observations of Kemp's Ridley sea turtles off the coast of Louisiana and Texas. Photo: Duke University's OBIS Seamap.

For 25 years NFWF’s commitment to innovative public-private partnerships has addressed the challenges of habitat degradation and species decline. Make a needed contribution to the conservation and protection of wildlife and habitat by going to NFWF’s web site.

Check out the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle projects in the Conservation Registry.

NFWF has over 100 projects in the southeastern United States. See them all here.

Where are the Bluefin tuna?
See NFWF’s project using satellite telemetry to track Bluefin tuna in the Gulf of Mexico.

Partners from the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board and the Conservation Registry published 9,872 projects from the Oregon Watershed Restoration Inventory database on the Conservation Registry in April. View data by going to the Oregon portal to browse by map or by clicking here.

The Oregon Watershed Restoration Inventory is the single largest database of restoration projects in the western United States. It is managed by the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board (OWEB), a state agency that provides grants to help Oregonians take care of local streams, rivers and wetlands. The addition of this dataset contributes to an overall view of conservation in Oregon.

Crosswalking data
The Oregon Watershed Restoration Inventory data fields were matched–or crosswalked–to fields the Registry captures and displays. Because the Registry supports a broader view of conservation work, there was some data in the Oregon Watershed Restoration Inventory that the Registry did not incorporate.

By choosing to focus on conservation across the landscape, the Conservation Registry provides a user-friendly format where it is possible to visualize the broadest extent of Oregon’s investments in habitat and wildlife.

“The Registry requires less detail, while we capture a lot of treatment information,” said Bobbi Riggers, the Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board’s Monitoring Data Coordinator. Users interested in viewing a full representation of all the collected data can download an Access file from the Oregon Explorer, home of the Oregon Spatial Data Library.

“The goal is to make the data available to the public in a user-friendly format,” says Renee Davis-Born, Ecosystem Services Coordinator for OWEB.  “The Conservation Registry is a nice compliment to what OWEB has released on the Explorer site. The Registry displays collaborative projects and other restoration activities which are not visualized on Explorer. It gives a broader view and shows acquisitions and educational components.”

Ideal Users?
“Ideal users of this data on the Registry are project collaborators, partners and the interested public, people who may not be resource professionals but who want to know what’s going on in the neighborhood and watershed, and possibly support the effort, get involved, or simply find better understanding,” says Ms. Davis-Born. “The Registry has a chance to reach those people.”

“It’s especially useful for projects with multiple partners, so that all collaborators can see their contributions to the work,” says Ms. Riggers. “The Registry’s visualization is particularly good for a national audience, because the Registry’s broadly-defined data standards are not specific to one agency.”

Beyond Restoration
The Registry has always worked collaboratively with partners, including other developing databases, by filling a niche between ease of use for the interested public and the more demanding requirements of conservation professionals.

“This data import gives everyone a much better sense about the range of conservation-related activities occurring in Oregon. Best of all, it shows what priorities are being met and where new investments need to be made,” says Sara Vickerman, Senior Director of Biodiversity Partnerships for Defenders of Wildlife and main force behind the creation of the Registry. “There is still a lot of work to be done.”

Our favorite places to visit:
Deschutes area: many highly collaborative projects.
Oregon’s North Coast: major investments in watersheds and habitat.
Southeastern Oregon: because it’s beautiful.

Check out:
Oregon Watershed Enhancement Board
Oregon Watershed Restoration Inventory
Oregon Explorer