Idaho Inspection Stations

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.

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.

Ready to Use and Available Nationally

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.”

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

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.

Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle is the smallest of the sea turtles, averaging about 99 pounds and two to three feet in length. Their population was first reduced by hunting, but today’s threats include pollution, shrimp net entanglement and habitat loss. Add to that the Gulf oil spill which has the potential to devastate many species in sensitive coastal areas.

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.

Washington’s Department of Natural Resources is now accepting proposals for 2012 Forest Legacy projects. Applications are due by 4:30 pm on July 16, 2010. Please visit the Washington State Forest Legacy web page for application materials and contact information.

Take a Look at Oregon: The Conservation Registry publishes new dataset.

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