YESBioBlitz2024's Boletim

Thanks to everyone who is helping with identification. Today is out last day and next week I will check the results but it is easy to see we have more species and diversity than previous years - it looks great.

Please let me know the iNat user names of any school groups. I know Woodhaven is one. And if you are associated with and would like to work on involving more schools next year., please let me know. I know it needs a lot more up front preparation.

YES BioBlitz 2024
The Yellow Point Ecological Society BioBlitz for 2024 is officially over and thank you to all our participants and identifiers for making it so much fun and so successful. So far we have 610 species of which 332 are research grade thanks to the support of the wider iNaturalist community helping ID the entries.

Our results compared to last three years (given in brackets) are as follows:
Observations 2085 (1847, 2004, 2289)
Species 610 (538, 556, 508)
Identifiers 191 (165, 178, 252)
Observers 38 (38, 47, 62)

The most observed species were
Scotch Broom (Cytisus scoparium) – sorry, I did combine broom busting with BioBlitzing
Pacific Banana Slug (Ariolimax columbianus)
Pacific Trillium (Trillium ovatum) was out in most places.
Salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) was in bloom everywhere
Western Red Cedar (Thuja plicata) a definite favorite of the Stz’iminus Community school kids.

One focus this year was Cable Bay area and a wonderful record of the meadow plants was made by a team of bryologists and naturalists. Thanks to their work, some is in iNat thanks to @perki2, we have over 100 species in the fungi/lichen categories needing the help of experiences iNattters to check IDs. Please message any you know to help.

Thank you to our book prize winners - @ammlmt and @liamsteele, for the quantity of observations and identifications. The runners up were equally dedicated and captured some wonderful shots plants, owls, birds in flight, and under water life. They are @deevlish, @ebenezer_bugbee and @jenniferleighj. We have sets of Briony Penn’s nature cards to offer these naturalists. Our only school entry @woodhaven, will receive Briony Penn posters to supplement their collection.

Thank you also to those who helped ID species, @emilynel (for the early help), @rambryum, @frondsinhighplaces, @steveansell, @stewartwechsler, @sidalcea, @marcel_pepin, @lauren_bosch, @rharbo, @beespeaker, @shanemicroscope and the many others who contributed so much to identifying species and making this event successful.

See you same time, same place next year!