| Workshop and field demonstration led by Paul Hardy, founder of Feather River Land Trust, focused on amplifying citizen science efforts in the Upper Feather River Watershed. Paul will present about barriers to wildlife movement, facilitate participants’ registration to the California Roadkill Observation System (CROS), and lead a field trip focused on roadkill data collection and its importance at the local level. |
After obtaining degrees in wildlife biology from the Universities of California and Arizona, Paul moved back to the Feather River region in 1998 to help start FRLT. Paul currently works as a consulting conservation biologist with Hardy Conservation.
Roads and highways can have dramatic effects on wildlife movement and landscape connectivity. Some species may have complete aversion to roads, which would limit their movement through landscapes with roads. Other species may try to cross roads even with traffic present resulting in wildlife mortality and risks to drivers. UC Davis’ Road Ecology Center uses the California Roadkill Observation System (CROS), a volunteer driven citizen science database, to study the impact of roads on wildlife movement at multiple geographic scales, from individual animals at road crossing structures, to hypothetical movement pathways at the landscape scale. Information about where wildlife vehicle collisions occur, what animals are involved, on what roads collisions are frequent, and other data can help inform policy, management, and financial investment in reducing roadkill.
Paul will provide participants with a history of the database, context regarding its relationship to wildlife movement and barriers, as well as provide an overview of the state-wide funding environment in relation to this work. Paul will lead people through the CROS application process and explain the data entry process.
Participants will then be split into up to 3 groups to head out into the field to collect data before returning to the library to review the data and enter it into the CROS. Â
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