CNDDB News Blog

Summer is officially here, folks! The snow is melting in the Sierras and the sun is shining throughout the valleys. Thank you to everybody who snapped and submitted photos of species taking full advantage of the California sun. Here are our favorite Online Field Survey Form photo submissions for June:

Taxidea taxus – American badger

Submitted by Matthew Grube

Matthew observed this adult badger crossing a road near San Timoteo Canyon in San Bernardino County. It stopped on its way to an open field just long enough for Matthew to catch its stoic pose. American badgers are a Species of Special Concern. Being one of the most popular mammal submissions we receive, there are currently 590 American badger occurrences across the entire state in the database. Thank you, Matthew for this wonderful submission!

Ceanothus gloriosus var. exaltatus – glory brush
Submitted by Heather Morrison

Heather found this exciting shrub in Mendocino County in an opening of a mixed forest consisting of redwood, Douglas fir, and tanoak trees. It is endemic to California and is commonly found along the northern coast in chaparral. Ceanothus gloriosus var. exaltatus more commonly goes by the name glory brush. It is a California Rare Plant Rank 4.3 plant, and you can see these wonderful poofs of flowers from March to June, with the occasional late bloomers still around in August. So, there is still time to see them before they are gone! Thank you, Heather, for the hard work you do and such an awesome photo!

Do you have some great photos of rare plant or wildlife detections? Submit them along with your findings through our Online Field Survey Form and see if your photos get showcased!

CNDDB staff had the opportunity to join Ben Ewing, the Alpine, Amador, Calaveras, and Lake County District Fisheries Biologist, to conduct a backpack electrofishing survey on a northern tributary to Indian Valley Reservoir. The electrofishing gear would stun the fish long enough for a second person to scoop it up with a dipnet and place it in a bucket of water. The collected fish would then later be identified and measured. This area had never been sampled by CDFW, so our findings were useful in setting a baseline for the stream.

We collected and released largemouth bass, California roach, speckled dace, and incidentally detected a foothill yellow-legged frog. A CNDDB query showed that the last time someone searched and found foothill yellow-legged frog was in 1994. Being able to update this 25-year old occurrence was an exciting bonus.

Thank you, Ben, for sharing your knowledge and expertise with us!

Carrizo Plains Ecological Reserve, over 38,900 acres in size, is located in the Coast Range adjacent to Carrizo Plains National Monument. It was historically established as a cattle ranch in the 1800s and was acquired by CDFW in the early 2000s. The reserve is composed of diverse habitat such as scrubland, oak and juniper woodland, yucca slopes, and expansive annual grassland, which supports a variety of wildlife and plants, including special status species.

With such a large reserve, one may wonder, what’s out there? A number of recurring surveys have been performed over the years to help answer this question. This year, CNDDB staff joined department biologists from the Wildlife Branch and Region 4 to conduct wildlife surveys focused on reptiles and amphibians.

A few creeks run through the reserve with man-made ponds along the drainages. Western pond turtles, western spadefoots, western toads, and chorus frogs have made these waterways and ponds their home. We surveyed the ponds for western pond turtles and western spadefoot, which are both California Species of Special Concern and tracked by the CNDDB.

Large pond along Barrett Creek (left). Spadefoot tadpole (center). Spot the turtle: an adult basking (right)

Over 250 coverboards were placed throughout the reserve in order to capture and record terrestrial herps that occur in the different habitat types. We often found nothing, but with a bit of luck, flipping the boards can reveal snakes, lizards or even small mammals sheltering underneath. Of course, watch out for rattlesnakes!

A coverboard nestled in grass (left). A side-blotched lizard (center) was found this year and small rattlesnake (right) in 2017.

The Carrizo Plain Ecological Reserve is one of 749 CDFW-owned lands throughout the state, and forms part of an important network of reserves and public land in the Carrizo Plain area. The Carrizo Plain is the largest intact native grassland left in California, and the 250,000 acres of public land in this area allow wildlife to range freely and make use of a diversity of habitat types.

Some other animals found on the reserve: elk, golden eagle, great horned owl, mountain lion