The Maryland Biodiversity Project: Mobilizing Community to Build a Better Picture of Local Biodiversity

By Garry Rogers @Garry_Rogers

A few years ago, photographer Bill Hubick generously donated the use of his photos in NCC publications. We recently chatted with him about a new project he is also involved with – the Maryland Biodiversity Project.

Source: www.natureconservancy.ca

GR:  This is essential work that governments and volunteers must carry out across the Earth.  As Hubick says, ” We live in a time of unparalleled environmental change. How do we assess impacts if we don’t have baseline data? State and federal agencies work tirelessly with limited resources to monitor just our rarest species. We need to monitor changes across the board for many reasons. First, it is far cheaper to manage for a given species when it is declining slightly than to wait until it requires a captive breeding program. Ecosystems are also complex, so trying to understand issues without information about what was present in the area five, 20, or 50 years ago is often impossible.”

We truly need Citizen Naturalists biodiversity survey projects in every country, state, county and city.