Ongoing/Immediate
Exercise Your Native Plant Knowledge at Big Bend Ranch State Park
The grounds at Barton Warnock Visitor Center host a large Desert Garden area. We are in the early stages of redesigning the garden and determining its future layout. Before we begin transplanting and introducing new species to the garden, we need to take a species survey of what is already present onsite.
Would any of the Tierra Grande Master Naturalists be interested in assisting with this plant survey? The Desert Garden pathway can easily be broken into manageable segments so that no one person is responsible for documenting the entire survey area. We are basically looking to identify plants by scientific name and record how many of those plants are present in a given segment.
If you’re interested in this opportunity (and possibly in carpooling to Barton Warnock), contact Lisa Fielder at roundfile57@gmail.com. She’ll coordinate between BBRSP and our volunteers to set up date(s) and carpool(s).
Ongoing/Immediate
Watering Plants & Trees at the Alpine Public Library
Texas Master Naturalists members Cathy Wright & Martha Latta who have been sharing the tree & other plant watering duties at APL will be unable to continue doing so fairly soon. They would be available to explain the duties and show you around the plants and trees. Please contact Don Wetterauer, Library Director, at don@alpinepubliclibrary.org or 432-837-2621 if you are interested.
Onging/Immeditate
Collecting Agave Data for Bat Survey
Kristen Lear at Bat Conservation intends to identify and locate agaves that are blooming or putting up a flower stalk this year.
Once upon a time, the only way to survey bats on agaves was to sit and wait or go through hours of camera footage. With the current gene amplification, swabbing the bloom carries enough genetic material so they can speciate not only the agave pollinating bats, but also the insectivores that hit the bloom in the process of grabbing insects. This provides a significant improvement in identifying bat populations.
In order to identify and locate these agaves for mid summer swabbing, a quick solution is geotagged cell phone photos, or any other device that provides geotagged photos. All that is needed is to have photo location and GPS, with appropriate permissions turned on your phone. Take a photo of the agave and flower stalk/bloom, preferably full frame, but any decent photo will do. On your first photo, confirm that the pic does have location data, typically under info or details. I will be the consolidator of the pics, email them to me at Donde@LBredemeyer.com. I will collect them and sort out some of the duplicates for submission to Kristen.
Kristen will have them loaded in BatCon’s GIS system. They can optimize their swabbing of blooms since they will know location, date and condition/maturity/species of stalk/bloom and approximate counts.
The major agaves are needed, not lechuguilla. Pretty much what we see as the major century plants. Most of these will probably be as domestics planted in specific areas or as ferals in places like old abandoned home sites or dropped in the wild. Catch them wherever you see them. If they are on private property, BatCon will address the access permission as necessary.
This may end up being far more work than I intended. But, I am hoping that taking a geotagged picture of this year’s agave blooms/flower stalks and emailing to me is not an excessive effort for anyone. This will greatly increase the range and coverage of the survey. Feel free to pass this on to any one or group interested. I’ll speak for the bats in that I appreciate your help.
Update: In association with Kristen Lear klear@batcon.org of Bat Conservation International we have provided 185 geotags of blooming agaves. The best grove located is 40 in bloom on lower Oak Springs Trail BBNP. There is secondhand information that Pinto Canyon has a grove that is possibly blooming. Please provide further data on Pinto Canyon if you have any.
Kristen will be attending Marfa Agave Fest 1-4 June. She will be doing bat walks at Coffield Park on June 2 and at Vizcaino Park on June 3. There is also a plan to do bloom swabbing training on the morning of June first. Lindsey Bredemeyer can repeat the training for those interested at a later time.
Kristen has a call for volunteers to swab agave blooms for bat genetic material. The current interest is for weekly swabbing of a range of blooming agaves through their cycle. This allows volunteers to swab their own local agave once a week to reduce effort. It could be that you have agave very close to your house. Contact Lindsey or Kristen if you are interested in participating.
Genetics will be run for Mexican long-nosed bat (endangered), Lesser long-nosed bat and Mexican long-tongued bat to determine range and activity.
Ongoing/Immediate
Zone-tailed Hawks Trap and Tag
Krysta Demere Krysta.Demere@tpwd.texas.gov (432)244-9945 is currently working a radio tag and track project for Zone-tailed hawks. She is looking for nesting pairs and landowner permission to do the trap and tag. If you are aware of this opportunity, please contact her directly.