CNDDB News Blog

California is a biodiversity hotpot. A large part of California’s biodiversity is a result of the exceptional number of native plant species in the state. California currently boasts over 6,500 native plant taxa with about 30% of those plants occurring nowhere else in the world. In conjunction with the large number of native plants in California comes a large number of rare plants as well. The CNDDB currently tracks nearly 2,400 rare plant taxa.

To celebrate this amazing array of botanical diversity, the California State Legislature designated the third week of April to be California Native Plant Week. See the California Native Plant Society website for activities in your area or simply venture outside for a hike to take in and appreciate all the native plant diversity California has to offer!

The quarterly update of the Barred Owl Observations Database is available in the BIOS Viewer for CNDDB Subscribers. The barred owl database includes barred owl (Strix varia), Strix hybrid, and unknown Strix detections.

Many of the records represent incidental detections made during spotted owl surveys; therefore, this dataset may not accurately represent the current distribution of barred owls in California. Furthermore, this dataset is only available to CNDDB subscribers because it contains references to sensitive spotted owl locations. A public version will be available in the future.

For a copy of the geodatabase or for site-specific inquiries, contact the database manager at owlobs@wildlife.ca.gov.

The Spotted Owl Observations Database Management Framework (PDF) is now available. It provides information on key database topics including:

• Database contents
• Database limitations
• Activity center information
• Addressing data issues
• Contributing Data
• Barred Owl Observations Database

The framework may be updated to reflect future changes to spotted owl management or regulatory guidelines. Substantial updates will be announced here on the CNDDB News page.