email : Webview : Celebrating a New Book, the Value of Pollinators, and Two New Commissioners

JUNE 2014

Committee Publishes Comprehensive Guide to Arkansas's Flora

June 16-22 Is Pollinator Week

New Commissioners Have Past ANHC Associations

Endangered Species Day Art Contest Winners Announced

RCW Spring Update

Committee Publishes Comprehensive Guide to Arkansas's Flora

The Arkansas Vascular Flora Committee (AVFC) recently announced the release of a new book: the “Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Arkansas”! If you are a plant enthusiast in this region, you can probably appreciate why there is an exclamation point at the end of that sentence, but, for others, it may take some additional explanation to understand all the excitement. For one thing, we’re excited here at ANHC because both our botanists – Brent Baker and Theo Witsell – are members of the AVFC and are two of the editors that have worked for years on the project. For another, this is the most comprehensive accounting of the wild plants of Arkansas ever published and summarizes nearly 200 years of data on the state’s flora.

New Commissioners Have Past ANHC Associations

Hugh Earnest of Fayetteville and Ellen Turner of Rogers have been appointed by Gov. Mike Beebe to fill vacant positions on the Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission (ANHC). Earnest replaces the position vacated by Curtis Adams, Jr. and Turner replaces the position vacated by James “Manuel” Barnes.

Learn more here.

Photo courtesy of Michael Linz. A Red-cockaded woodpecker is flying to its cavity in a tree on Warren Prairie NA.

June 16-22 Is Pollinator Week

Seven years ago, Pollinator Partnership (P2) initiated a National Pollinator Week to focus on the importance of pollinating animals and the urgent issue of their declining numbers. Occurring annually during the second week of June, this international celebration focuses on how vital these pollinating animals (such as bees, butterflies, bats, and beetles) are to our ecosystem.

Click here to read more about pollinators and National Pollinator Week.

Endangered Species Day Art Contest Winners Announced

The Endangered Species Day Art Contest, sponsored by the Arkansas Ecological Services Field Office of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, is an annual art contest that provides students in grades K-12 an opportunity to learn about Arkansas’s threatened, endangered, and candidate species.

In its fifth year, this year’s contest had 380 entries from 23 schools and 2 home schools. More than 39 Arkansas species were represented. Once again ANHC partnered to support the contest and help judge the artwork.

A list of the winners, as well as photos of their artwork, can be viewed on the USFWS website.

Photo, by Michael Linz, of a RCW on Warren Prairie NA

RCW Spring Update

This spring started out well for the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers (RCW) on Warren Prairie Natural Area with an all-time high of eight active clusters. Six pairs are nesting at Warren Prairie and three pairs are nesting at Pine City Natural Area.

Staff are monitoring the nests and banding this week and we should know soon if the recent heavy rains affected the nest success.

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