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Outdoor Nova Scotia: "The Best Way to be Informed."
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Croak and Be Counted:
"Herpetology Atlas" Launched at Antigonish Conference! by Kevin MacDonell, Cape Breton Bureau June 8th, 1998 Antigonish, N. S. - Some residents of Antigonish County - four green frogs and one spring peeper - had the honor, early in June, of becoming the first specimens to be recorded in a new province-wide project, the Nova Scotia Herpetology Atlas. The project will eventually involve volunteers of every age in every area of the province, recording information that will someday help biologists track the health of populations of reptiles and amphibians. "This is a huge project," says Tom Herman, professor and head of the biology department at Acadia University in Wolfville, N.S. "The geographic scope is huge. It's the sort of thing that can only be done with a volunteer organization. The cost would be prohibitive to have to pay someone to do this." The organization working to provide those volunteers is the Federation of Nova Scotia Naturalists which held its annual meeting and conference in the town of Antigonish, June 5-7. Besides the inaugural field trip to gather data for the Herp Atlas, naturalists took in hikes, field trips and seminars focussing on areas of interest along the shorelines of Antigonish Harbour. The Federation is made up of ten naturalists' clubs throughout Nova Scotia - from the Cape Breton Naturalist Society in the north to the Tusket River Environmental Protection Association in the south - and groups such as the Nova Scotia Wildflora Society. "The purpose of the Federation, fundamentally,
is education," says Herman, who is also the Federation's vice-president. "In
other words, education of the general public, education of the members of its affiliated
groups, and education of decision-makers - people making policy in government,
politicians, civil servants and so on." The Federation's governing board meets
several times a year to monitor developments in The Herp Atlas, Herman says, fits in well with the Federation's mission. "We have this organization of talented individuals spread across the province, with tremendous potential to do something of provincial significance that would contribute directly to our understanding and appreciation of natural history," he says. "At the same time, we were looking for something that could involve children. We saw a definite lack of a program in natural history that could involve children broadly." The Herp Atlas is the right thing to do, for several reasons. "One, it's provincial in scope. It calls on the groups from across the province to get involved. It's of definite interest to children, who have a fondness for reptiles and amphibians to begin with. And finally, it's a group of organisms over which there is considerable concern both regionally and globally - the health and populations of amphibians, and reptiles by the way. Most people have heard about amphibian declines; few people are aware that there are significant reptile declines going on globally. We know very little about the status of our populations of reptiles and amphibians in the province." "It's loosely modelled after the Breeding Bird Atlas," says Mark Pulsifer, regional biologist with the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources who led the first Herpetology Atlas field trip in Pomquet, just outside Antigonish. In the Breeding Bird project, people were assigned predetermined squares of territory to survey, each ten kilometers to a side. Regional co-ordinators gathered data from observers and sent it on to the Nova Scotia Museum in Halifax. The aim was full coverage of the entire province. Unlike the Breeding Bird Atlas, the Herp project will allow volunteers to select their own areas. Coverage and accuracy will improve over time - the project has no set deadline. Although Acadia will maintain a database and publish information at regular intervals, Tom Herman says, the project is intended to be ongoing: "Over the long term, it will give us an opportunity to monitor the health of populations." Observers will record their observations on provided cards . One side of the card is for location and other information. On the other side is a table that lists all the reptile and amphibian species that are found in Nova Scotia - frogs, toads, turtles, salamanders and snakes. The observer indicates how many of each he or she has seen, alive or dead. Or how many were heard, in the case of some frogs and toads. Some species on the list have an asterisk beside them - including bullfrog, blue-spotted salamander, wood turtle, Atlantic loggerhead turtle, leatherback turtle, and ribbon snake - indicating relatively little is known about them, or that they have a limited range of habitation in this province. For sightings of any of these, an observer will be asked to provide additional information on habitat, breeding and other behaviors, deformities, precise location, and whether or not a picture was taken. "For instance, bullfrogs aren't to be found on Cape Breton Island," Mark Pulsifer says. "So if somebody should find one on Cape Breton Island, that would be quite a thing." Anybody can do it. Pulsifer says he takes his children along on field trips because it's easy for them to learn what to look for. Because there are relatively few species of reptiles and amphibians in Nova Scotia, there is little danger of wrongly identifying a species. (The Breeding Bird project, on the other hand, involved sorting out "dozens and dozens" of species of birds, many of which could be easily confused.) "I envision this involving a large number of schools," Herman says. "If teachers want to pick up on this, we will make all the resources available to them." The main players in the project besides the Federation are the Center for Wildlife and Conservation Biology at Acadia University and the Nova Scotia Museum. Reporting and identification cards are available from
Acadia University, c/o N.S. Herpetology Atlas, Department of Biology, Acadia University,
Wolfville, N.S. B0P 1X0. Finding "herps" was only one aspect of the Federation's conference, the theme of which was "Shorelines - Life on the Edge." Tony Miller of the Biology Department at Antigonish's St. Francis Xavier University spoke on the life of an
estuary, using slides taken on his many walks and canoe trips in the estuaries of
Antigonish County. Glenis Gibson of Acadia University's biology department, in a
presentation titled "Sex on the Beach," described the challenges faced by marine
invertebrates in intertidal zones - how they cope with extreme conditions caused by daily
tides, and how living on the edge of land and "It went well," says May Lauff, treasurer of the Eastern Mainland Field Naturalists, which hosted the Federation meeting. "The field trips were popular, even the early morning ones. The weather was so-so - we had a little drizzle once in a while, but no one's spirit seemed to be dampened by that, they were all eager to get out there anyway." Visitors saw the harbor and wildlife-rich estuary, bald eagle nests, barrier beaches, and important natural sites such as nearby Pomquet Beach, which has a growing dune system protected by a provincial park. "The equivalent of thousands of dumptruck-sized loads of sand are added to that beach each year," Lauff says. "Except for one storm in 1993, which took away some of the beach, it's fairly consistently building. Unusual local features include "karst topography" - landforms created by the gypsum that lies under much of the area and forms light-colored cliffs around the harbour. Lauff says the area is not well-known by naturalists
elsewhere in the province. "I had some comments from people who said, 'Gee, we're
going to come up again now that we know what's here'."
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