Colonial National Historical Park
Jamestown and Yorktown, VA
Grab your smartphone, camera or binoculars and explore nature in like never before! On Saturday September 24, 2016, Colonial National Historical Park will participate in the National Parks BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a fun, fast-paced biological survey of a park’s creepers and crawlers, plants and pollinators, mammals and more! The National Park Service is celebrating its 100th birthday with more than 100 Bio Blitzes across the country.
During this free, one-day event at Colonial National Historical Park, teams of scientists, naturalists, students and volunteers will discover and document as many types of butterflies as we can find in the park. Teams will go out into the park’s fields, woods and along historic earthworks to see how many species of butterflies they can find in the park.
Volunteers will have the opportunity use an exciting new smartphone app, iNaturalist, to take a photograph of a butterfly and download it into a global citizen science database. Volunteers will also be needed to take camera photos and to document species on a sheet. Inventory work will be done in tandem with the Historic River’s Master Naturalists annual American Butterfly count.
American Express is the national sponsor of the 2016 National Parks BioBlitz. The Historic Rivers Master Naturalists have partnered with the park in this event and will provide much field and identification expertise.
Explorers of all ages are needed. The park is organizing the event into a morning and afternoon shift. Children under the age of 16 must be accompanied by an adult. This event engages the whole family.
To learn more about the National Parks BioBlitz and activities visit these websites:
- National Park Service - go.nps.gov/2016bioblitz
- National Geographic Society - natgeo.org/bioblitz
- iNaturalist - inaturalist.org
