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.