About 80 students from Detroit’s Western International High School gathered to conduct a biodiversity survey on Belle Isle with the help of U-M students from multiple schools and programs, including graduate students from the School of Natural Resources & Environment.

The event’s purpose was to promote local ecological knowledge and increase participation of underrepresented groups in ecological education. It was part of BioBlitz, a series of rapid biodiversity surveys being conducted on college campuses across the country, coordinated by local chapters of the Ecological Society of America’s SEEDS (Strategies for Ecology Education, Diversity and Sustainability) program. Tiffany Carey,  a Program in the Environment student, served as the event organizer and is SEED leader at U-M.

The students began to locate and identify mammals and birds; trees, shrubs and other plants; amphibians; reptiles; insects; and fungi. But, even the best laid plans sometimes fall victim to the weather. Unfortunately, it was a cold and rainy (sometimes snowy) morning and so between creatures taking cover and worksheets getting soggy, not to mention cold and wet students, the group detoured into the Belle Isle Nature Zoo and the Anna Scripps Whitcomb Conservatory to make the most of the day. They did manage to gather some useful information, mostly on birds and plants, which will be entered into the inaturalist database.

(The video below was produced the University of Michigan News Service.)

Other event sponsors were the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, the Detroit Zoological Society, and Belle Isle Conservancy.

Special thanks also goes out to EEB and biology student volunteers: Beatriz Otero Jimenez, one of the primary event coordinators and a graduate student mentor with SEEDS; Marcella Baiz, Katy Lazarus (undergraduate), Naim Edwards, Thomas Jenkinson, Clarisse Betancourt, John Marino, Tatia Bauer, (undergraduate), Mariana Valencia Mestre, and Omar Bonilla.