Metro New York Biodiversity

NEW YORK METROPOLITAN REGION - Conserving Natural Areas at Home

The aim of the Metropolitan Biodiversity Program of the Center for Biodiversity and Conservation (CBC) is to enhance understanding of local and regional biodiversity and apply this knowledge to conservation. To accomplish this, the Program integrates information from the American Museum of Natural History's scientific departments and regional collections directly into conservation-related research, education, planning, and management initiatives in the New York region. Since its inception, the Metro Program has also promoted local research and education projects to highlight the importance of invertebrates in conservation.

Program Highlights
In 1999, the CBC's Metro Program, in concert with its partners – the New York State Museum's Biodiversity Research Institute, the New York Natural Heritage Program, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and The Nature Conservancy – launched the New York State Biodiversity Project (NYSBP). The NYSBP works to improve our understanding of the state's biodiversity and to identify both challenges and solutions to protecting that biodiversity. A needs assessment, carried out by the Environmental Law Institute for the Project in 2000, identified gaps in existing knowledge, flagged conservation threats, and helped lay the foundation for future conservation actions within the state. This assessment has since served as a model for similar programs at the national level. In 2002, the NYSBP established a central website (http://www.nybiodiversity.org/), with links to information on New York's biodiversity; and also completed an information dissemination plan to ensure that target audiences are able to assess, understand, and use the project's resources. The website is an important information clearinghouse on biodiversity for New York's citizens, lawmakers, and conservation practitioners.

Metro Program Manager Liz Johnson steered the development and production of the 2000 CBC Spring Symposium, Nature in Fragments: The Legacy of Urban Sprawl, cosponsored by the Wildlife Conservation Society's Metropolitan Conservation Alliance. The conference examined the phenomenon of unplanned development (“sprawl”), and its serious impact on biodiversity. An edited volume, based in part on the symposium proceedings, will be published by Columbia University Press in early 2005. Contributions by experts in planning, ecology, economics, and the social sciences have been included to reach a target audience of land use planners and conservation biologists.

Recognizing the enormous instructional value of the Museum's extensive invertebrate collections, the CBC began organizing annual identification workshops in collaboration with the Division of
Invertebrate Zoology in 1998. Attendees have included biologists, naturalists, land managers, consultants, teachers, and others responsible (directly and indirectly) for the conservation and management of much of the New York region's biodiversity. These two- and three-day workshops enable participants to hone their taxonomicidentification skills in both the laboratory and the field, and to better understand the ecology and conservation requirements for the taxa being studied. Workshops to date have focused on butterflies and moths, dragonflies and damselflies, freshwater mussels and snails, and bees. A Web-based identification guide to local freshwater mussels has been developed based on the 2000 taxonomic workshop, with species checklists, images, and information (available at http://cbc.amnh.org/mussel/). Keys and resources about other invertebrate taxa are also available.

In conjunction with these ongoing educational activities, the CBC published Life in the Leaf Litter, a guide to the diversity of soil organisms and the crucial role that invertebrates play in woodland ecosystems. The booklet was based, in part, on a leaf litter survey conducted by the CBC's Metro Program and the Museum's Division of Invertebrate Zoology in Central Park's woodlands, which led to the discovery of a new genus and species of centipede,Nannarrup hoffmani.

In celebration of Central Park's 150th anniversary, the CBC Metro Program helped organize the Central Park BioBlitz, a twenty-four-hour inventory of the biodiversity of the park on June 27-28, 2003. CBC and Museum staff worked throughout the event as expert identifiers. Over 864 species were identified, including two species of tardigrades, a microscopic invertebrate phylum. The event was organized in partnership with the Explorer's Club and seven other New York-based groups.

Next Steps
Together with its NYSBP partners, the Metropolitan Biodiversity Program will publish a book summarizing what is currently known about the biodiversity of New York State; its natural heritage, critical threats to its biodiversity, and recommendations for future research and conservation (to be released in 2004).

Building on interest generated by the Nature in Fragments
symposium, the Metro Program is developing a series of educational materials, including guides for municipal planners and teachers on combating the effects of sprawl.

The Metro Program will further develop collections-based resources, including, the Metro 100 Series: computer-based, color-photo identification guides to the New York region's 100 most commonly seen species, from selected invertebrate groups, beginning with moths.

With other conservation partners in the New York region, the Metro Program is also seeking to develop new collaborative restoration and management projects with a focus on invertebrate conservation.