Plant and Animal Inventories

An inventory is simply a record of all the species of a particular type of living thing that you can find in an area, like the ISK Community Forest or the entire ISK campus.  You can focus on species of trees, shrubs, birds, butterflies, insects, mammals, etc.  It is important to note the species (use scientific names to avoid confusion) and the date, time and location of the sighting.  If you can, take a good photo and share this in the records of your inventory.

All you need to do is look and listen (for birds, reptiles (like lizards and geckos), amphibians (like frogs, toads or salamanders), or mammals (like squirrels) and use either experts, field guides and other sources of information (like Wikispecies) to help you identify what you find.  Take photos if you can and upload them with descriptions to a citizen/community science project, such as iNaturalist or another similar international biodiversity inventory project (iSpot, Observation.org, Pl@ntnet, ebird, Great Backyard Bird Count, HerpMapper, , .  Why not start your own web-based inventory project and invite others at ISK to participate.

Why not try some Wildlife Tracking.  Either simply look for tracks (foot prints and any other evidence like scat, or animal feces, in the forest OR better yet, set up some ways to capture the wildlife tracks yourself.  This can be as simple as laying out fresh sand or even wet mud/clay and checking each day for footprints.  Or, better yet, set up a bait station with a way to capture tracks around it, using either the sand method or white poster paper or even white contact paper (sticky side up) to collect muddy paw prints on.  One final method is to use an acetylene torch to create black soot on a piece of wood or metal so the animals pick up black soot on their feet and remove it.  Even better is to make the animal cross the black soot and then walk over a white sticky contact sheet to leave behind their tracks on.  You can find track identification resources online or ask an expert?

Guess who left these tracks behind in the Forest:

You guessed it:  A white tailed mongoose.  What else might live in the forest?