Volunteer Opportunity: Spring Equinox Self-Guided BioBlitz at the Refuge

Interested in a volunteer opportunity you can do on your own? Are you looking for an activity you can do safely with your family? Want to find a new way to celebrate the start of Spring?

Join us for a self-guided BioBlitz event in honor of the upcoming Spring Equinox, from Sunday, March 19th to Saturday, March 25th. Register here.

The Alviso Unit of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge is an excellent location for viewing local wildlife and checking out native plant species. Join the project here.

The restoration and upkeep of our upland and salt marsh habitats is an ongoing project. We need your help to track and identify the California native plant and animal species that call the refuge home. We also need help observing which non-native or invasive plants have found their way into the area. In short, we are so happy to have you join us and are excited for you to get out on the trail and observe as many species as you can! We are looking to get as many quality observations as possible – please check out iNaturalist’s recommendations for making observations via your smartphone.

As the Mallard Slough Trail is closed around pond A16, we recommend doing your self-guided BioBlitz hike in our Butterfly Garden, on the Marsh View Trail, and on the New Chicago Marsh Trail (boardwalk). There will be signage at the EEC to point you in the right direction!

New to iNaturalist? Follow this link for instructions for setting up your iNaturalist account and how to make observations via your smartphone: https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/getting+started. Once you create a username and password, you are good to go out and explore the trail. To join our weeklong project, please visit https://tinyurl.com/springvolunteerbioblitz, or search for “Spring Equinox Self-Guided Volunteer BioBlitz at the Refuge” and join! This way, all of your observations will make it into our project for the week.

The information you are helping us to collect makes a difference! As we actively restore our upland habitats, the healthier and more resilient our ecosystems will be, and the more we can reduce water runoff and urban runoff pollution. For information on how you can help keep our watersheds and the Bay clean by preventing urban runoff pollution, visit: http://www.mywatershedwatch.org/.

This program is brought to you by the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, the San Francisco Bay Wildlife Society (SFBWS), and the Santa Clara Valley Urban Runoff Pollution Prevention Program (SCVURPPP).