YES BioBlitz 2021 – It’s Over!

Our BioBlitz is over, at least for this year! To see all 533 different species that were identified, see below, or click here.

We would like to celebrate our book prize winners and all the participants who made the event so much fun and such a great success. Nikki would especially like to thank Carrie Robinson who organized the event and made it more fun by adding the book prizes. They are such great BC wildlife books and everyone did such great work.  They were awarded to the following:

• Liam Steele, Plants of Coastal British Columbia
• Greg Roberts, Amphibians of Oregon, Washington and British Columbia
• Coco van Zyl, Birds of South Western British Columbia
• North Oyster School, The Mammals of British Columbia
• Sense of Place, The Mammals of British Columbia

Liam Steele, age 11, is clearly an I-Naturalist super-user and worth following on I-Naturalist under Pacificwhitesideddolphin.We were so fortunate to have him join our event. Not only did he have the top number of observations; he also ID’d over a hundred species for other participants and had some amazing shots, like the Plainfin Midshipman (the fish that sings) and the American Mink (by Transfer Beach). He started his career as an i-Naturalist in June 2019 at the age of 9, when he used it as a guide for listing species on his summer vacation in Vernon and Osoyoos. He was 10 ¾ before he knew he could join i-Naturalist and he has now made over ten thousand observations. We are sure he will achieve his goal of becoming a wildlife biologist, and hope he finds the Pojar and MacKinnon Plant book useful in this quest. 

Greg Roberts, unlike Liam, started with the Pojar and MacKinnon Plant book and he has been using it for years. Through our YES BioBlitz he has just been introduced to i-Naturalist. He was one of our most enthusiastic participants. He was there at the meeting asking the tough questions and was the first one onto the field on Day 1 of the BioBlitz.  Greg has accumulated a lifetime of great wildlife pictures from his career as a trained geographer who spent most of his working life behind a desk in park and land planning but most of his free time canoeing, camping, and exploring. He has now started to upload his images into i-Naturalist and is really enjoying the help the app gives with IDs.

Coco van Zyl knows every inch of the land she has been stewarding for the past six years.  She has repeatedly removed invasive and non-native species, encouraging and protecting native plants until they are robust enough to thrive. We are so lucky to have her record some of these species and to ID species for others. She needs little help from I-Naturalist to ID plants, and could probably help improve their App in this area.

Desiree Ferdinandi signed up North Oyster School for the BioBlitz and worked with her colleagues, Camille Paradis and Heather Trawick, and students in Grades 2, 3 and 6/7 to participate. They organized classes so that students took pictures and the grade 6/7 class uploaded them to her i-Naturalist account. She spent the week trying to ID them. Desiree is quick to point out that Camille Paradis and Heather Trawick put a lot of time and effort into getting North Oyster involved in the BioBlitz and did the lion’s share of the organizing. The end results were very respectable, and it was great fun for all. We would love to invite Desiree, Camille and Heather to our BioBlitz meeting next year to share how schools and groups can collate their observations. 

Patti Gisborne signed up the Sense of Place Youth Project Outdoor Explorers. Amanda McDonough, their outdoor exploration manager, said they “were thrilled to photograph and record the diversity of life on the Gisborne property. The children learn about the plants and creatures here seasonally, and they found great joy in sharing that data in the BioBlitz. Children took turns discovering and photographing their favourite plants throughout the forest, field, orchard, and pond. They loved being able to identify unknown species through the i-Naturalist app. We will definitely be utilizing this app in the future for our programming!“

YES plans to host the BioBlitz as a regular annual event, and we are keen to hear suggestions on how we can make it even better next year. Please email us or post comments on our website and please continue to browse the YES BioBlitz project on I-Naturalist to see and ID the wonderful species in our area.

– Nikki Toxopeus