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A couple of days ago, a few of us got talking about bioindicators at Niches. That, in turn, got me thinking about various kinds of surveys that I’ve participated in over the years. For three summers, I worked on a stream survey project in a major watershed of our region. A couple of years ago, I did two frog pond survey routes a week over the spring and early summer in quite a large area in eastern Ontario. I’ve been out on quite a number of fish surveys over the past few summers, and have also been doing casual habitat surveys of my own for several years. It’s always been interesting and enjoyable and I’ve met quite a number of nice people over the years — fellow surveyors, staff from conservation authorities, biologist-research staff from museums, graduate students from the local university, landowners who make survey sites available on their properties, and occasional curious individuals or families who stop to ask questions and see what’s going on.

Consider this post to be something of a public service announcement. If you’ve got some spare time on your hands, or if you would like to spend some time outdoors learning about nature, or if you’re looking for something to do for the environment, give some consideration to participating in some form of survey work. There’s usually a great need for volunteer surveyors from communities in almost every region. There are survey projects to suit just about every interest, from birds and frogs, to water quality. Some are as simple as counting birds in your own backyard, through to spending days along waterways doing stream surveys. You could find yourself working with grad students from a university, going out on evening frog listening surveys at ponds in your region. You might do an owl call survey along a specified route, or gather at a hawk watch location during the spring and fall migrations. You could be working with a crew of people protecting turtle habitat, or you can simply participate in one of the many independent survey projects for creatures ranging from frogs to butterflies. There’s even a spider survey project under development — I’ll have more information about that one sometime soon.

Why do we do surveys? In recent years, those working in conservation are increasingly making use of bioindicators — organisms that tell us something about the state of the environment. One example would be the benthic studies of the invertebrates found in watersheds. Certain creatures require varying degrees of water quality. Some cannot survive in the presence of certain pollutants. The presence or absence of some of these creatures can tell us a lot about a watershed. The same applies to many other organisms as well. However, it takes time to get around to a wide range of locations to study populations. That’s where volunteer surveyors come into the picture. With enough participation, it’s possible to learn about the ecology of a place, and even to track its health over a number of years. Some sites have been surveyed for many years and are providing valuable long range data to those scientists who are studying such things as climate change.

So, what can you do to become involved? If you’re interested in participating in some kind of program, the internet is a great place to begin your search. Today, I’m just going to give you a small assortment of “watch” programs, but sometime soon, I’ll be posting a page of information that I’m compiling. For now, this will give you some idea of the possibilities if you’re not familiar with some of these programs. I’m not going to separate these into lists of Canadian and U.S. programs as some are international.

Here are some of the independent programs that anyone can do from any place in North America:
There is FrogWatch in Canada, and FrogwatchUSA in the states. Cornell University maintains the international programs, Great Backyard Bird Count which is an annual event, and eBird, which is a year-round bird reporting program. Here in Canada, we have PlantWatch for studying bloom dates of certain plants, WormWatch for the study of earthworm populations, and IceWatch for studying ice development on watersheds. Again, I’ll try to compile a longer list sometime soon.

At a local level, many watershed conservation authorities now organize stream survey or stream watch programs that depend on volunteer surveyors from the community. There is usually an orientation workshop during which volunteers learn about the organisms they will be looking for, along with how to fill out survey sheets. Provincial, state or regional birding organizations may need survey volunteers for hawk watches, owl call surveys, and breeding bird survey. Universities often have a need for volunteers to do survey work such as the frog pond surveys mentioned above. Some are doing projects such as turtle nest monitoring. The biology, environment, or landscape ecology programs of the university may be able to direct you to someone who is in need of volunteer surveyors. Also, many research people at institutions from natural history museums to agriculture departments are most interested in making contact with people who like to study certain creatures such as sawflies, grasshoppers, spiders, etc…

Anyhow, more about all of this coming up sometime soon. My main point in mentioning these volunteer opportunities is that it’s the time of year when many of these programs are beginning to look for volunteers here in North America. If you’re interested in getting involved, now is as good a time as any to find information on programs and get involved.