Workshops

Upcoming Workshops

Urban San Joaquin kit fox workshop – Spring 2024

Past Workshops

Small Mammal trapping Workshop – November 2-4, 2023

The workshop was a huge success!  We had one day of lectures covering all of the special status small mammals that occur in the San Joaquin Valley and the adjacent foothills. These include the Giant kangaroo rat, the San Joaquin kangaroo rat group, the San Joaquin antelope squirrel, the Buena Vista Lake shrew, and the San Joaquin pocket mouse.  We also covered non-listed bycatch small mammals and federal / state permits.  After the species and regulatory talks we traveled to the Lokern Reserve and set traps for nighttime kangaroo rat trapping.  Each student was able to handle giant kangaroo rat and short-nosed kangaroo rat under the guidance of a permitted handler.  The next day we ventured back into the field and set traps to catch San Joaquin antelope squirrels and each student was able to experience handling the squirrel under the guidance of a permitted handler.  We repeated the field class again the following night and day.  Click here for a photo collage.

Blunt-Nosed Leopard Lizard Workshop – 19-20 May 2022

Blunt-Nosed Leopard Lizard Workshop – 18-19 May 2018

The Blunt-nosed leopard lizard workshop was a huge success.  We had lectures by species experts and nearly 40 students and 8 instructors, and California Department of Fish and Wildlife staff, conducted surveys on the Semitropic Ecological Reserve.  The Reserve is approximately 14,900 acres. Vegetative communities are primarily non-native grassland shadscale scrub and alkali sink scrub. Each team detected anywhere from 1 to 4 blunt-nosed leopard lizards, with handling demonstrations by Department staff.  We thank everyone who attended, and hope everyone had a great time.

Tracking workshop – 10-11 November 2017
Jim Lowery and Mary Brooks of Earth Skills, along with the San Joaquin Valley Chapter of The Wildlife Society, hosted a tracking workshop at the River Ridge Ranch in Springville. View the past flyer for more information.
Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizard Workshop – 6 May 2016 and 3 June 2016
The 2016 Blunt-nosed Leopard Lizard (BNLL) Workshop was a huge success.  The classroom portion was completed on Friday, May 6th, however, the field portion was postponed to June 3, 2016, due to poor weather.  On June 3rd, 4 instructors and 20+ students arrived at the Semi-Tropic Ridge Preserve in Kern County (near Lost Hills, CA) and set out to survey for BNLL (following the BNLL survey protocol established by the California Department of Fish and Wildlife). Instructors showed students how to take soil and air temperatures, how to scan for lizards and other reptiles, while at the same time not stepping on rattlesnakes. Surveys were conducted between 08:30 and 12:00.  Each group detected anywhere from 1 to 6 BNLL, as well as other lizard species, including Tiger Whiptails and Common Side-blotched Lizards.  In all, it was a successful workshop, albeit in two parts.  Click here for some photographic highlights of the field portion of the workshop.
Mammal Track & Sign Workshop – 14-15 November 2015
Information on the track and sign workshop is available here.

We hosted a San Joaquin kit fox workshop on 21-23 May 2012 and a Sensitive Small Mammal Species of the San Joaquin Valley Workshop on 5-6 October 2012. Both were major successes and provided a great opportunity for local biologists to learn about our native species. We thank the coordinators and instructors for a job well done!

Sensitive Small Mammal Species of the San Joaquin Valley – 5-6 October 2012
The workshop consisted of a day in the classroom, starting with talks about the ecology and conservation of listed and other special status rodent species. The speakers for these presentations included researchers and consultants, all with a history of working in the San Joaquin Valley and with a great understanding of local species populations, threats, and conservation strategies. In between these talks, questions led to impromptu discussions among presenters and workshop participants about research ideas, habitat fragmentation, and additional potential threats to species related to climate change. We rounded out our day in the classroom with presentations from US Fish and Wildlife Service and California Department of Fish and Game staff about permits needed to conduct research, the State and Federal environmental review process for projects, the process of attaining incidental take coverage, and related agency wildlife programs. In the evening we moved to our field location to bait and open traps that were set up in a large grid on a property owned by the Bureau of Land Management. Traps were checked the next morning. Check out the pictures of workshop participants processing captures! We are very pleased with how this workshop turned out! The participants had a lot of good questions, and we received a lot of positive feedback throughout. We were very surprised when the workshop sold out as quickly as it did.