Thursday, July 3, 2008

Go herping!

The folks at Fieldherpforum.com and the North American Field Herping Association are organizing an unofficial trial run at a continent-wide Field Herping Day. The purpose is to get as many people across North America as possible out herping on one day or weekend, and see what we can tally up. If you have no plans this Sunday, July 6th - go outside and start herping!

The big benefit of such a day (besides getting outside and observing wildlife, always a plus) is to generate data for the NAHerp database, the herpetological equivalent of eBird. Since this Field Herping Day is a trial run, there is no consensus yet on how it should be organized in terms of census style and data collection (see the discussion). Any finds should at a minimum be documented with a photo voucher, and every bit of additional data you collect for each individual counts. For examples of data to collect, see forms here and here.

I strongly encourage anyone, anywhere, with an interest in herps to get outside this weekend, go herping, and most importantly, enter your data! Signing up for NAHerp and fieldherpforum is quite straightforward. The more people participating, the more this can snowball into an official, organized event, and the more robust and useful the NAHerp database becomes. If you do participate this weekend, let me know and tell the people on the forum that slygecko sent you. Happy Herping!

2 comments:

  1. It has been a while since I have visited the Fieldherpforum site! Wonder if I still remember my password!

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  2. Even if you can't log on, go herping this weekend! Shorthead Garters, Longtailed and Wehrle's Salamanders, man if I were where you are I'd go herping every day. I can always add your tallies for you.

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