Sonoma Developmental Center natural history's Boletim

Gentlepeople,

Richard Dale from SEC has arranged for us to have permission to access the otherwise closed east end of the SDC this coming Friday-Sunday. While the fate of much of the SDC lands are already agreed in principle, much of this eastern end could be developed, or not, and with different uses. What we find may therefore make a real difference to the fate of this land, which is critical for connectivity between Sonoma Mountain and the Mayacamas, and includes some lovely oak woodland, wetlands, and riparian areas. This part of the property has been closed to the public because of un-remediated foundations of burned buildings. We have permission to bring up to six adults and two minors onto that closed east end for those three days as long as we stay away from the remains of buildings.

I will spend as much of those three days there as I can get away with, and could desperately use help. We are lucky enough to have many of Sonoma County's most talented and prolific naturalists interested in this project, and I'm confident we will be able to find some hundreds of taxa in the east end this weekend. Please let me know if you can join me out there for any part of the weekend. Even if you can't make it to the field, help IDing will be gratefully received. Thank you!

Best wishes,
Dan

Fellow naturalists,

The Sonoma Ecology Center is working on getting some local news stories about the biodiversity at SDC, particularly our work and initial findings there. As part of that, they'd like to have some of our best SDC photos to share with journalists, "a manageable assortment of 20 or so. Journalists tend to like photos that are well composed and visually arresting but also “tell the story." Horizontal images with people in them are preferred, though rare species also are of interest."

If you have any SDC photos that you think should be included, please send them to me (or tell me which observation they are attached to!). I'd like to give them a list by June 7th. Thank you!

Best wishes,
Dan