As the first year of our Citizen Science Monitoring Program at the River Park office comes to an end, the Conservancy and our partners have been busy planning our 2016 Citizen Science surveys, which will take place at Bernardo Mountain starting this January. With help from the Southwestern Field Herping Associates, San Diego Tracking Team, and Palomar Audubon, we spent the month of December hiking and scouting locations for our bird, mammal, and herp surveys.

 

We also created a new iNaturalist Project -- San Dieguito Citizen Science Biodiversity Project -- so you can be a citizen scientist anytime you are in the River Park. It's as easy as creating an account at iNaturalist.org and uploading your plant and wildlife photos. We hope you join in the fun!

On December 17th, three 3rd grade classes from High Tech Elementary in San Marcos joined River Park and Conservancy staff for a fun-filled day of fieldwork.

Students were introduced to native and invasive plants in the River Park, observed some of our local pollinators, and collected seeds for future restoration projects. They also learned how to use GPS units and mapped the locations where they collected seeds. They plan on starting their very own native plant garden back at school and we can't wait to see how it turns out!