Chapter Goals for 2014

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jonathan
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Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

Some of us were discussing what might be possible for us as a chapter this year. What do you all think of making the following our goals for chapter activity?

* 2 chapter trips
* 1 educational event
* 10 chapter members adding NAHERP app for easy data entry (http://www.naherp.com/app.php)
* 10 chapter members adding data to http://www.naherp.com who didn't add data last year



Nothing big for the chapter trips - just getting a few guys together to herp a place, for a day or a weekend, and opening it up to any other chapter members who want to come. The educational event can likewise be anything - creativity will be key (it's been 20+ years since I did an educational event in the NW, and that was very local). Anyone want to get on board with working towards any of these goals?
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M Wolverton
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by M Wolverton »

I'd like to see one of the trips located central to the NW region. Past trips have mostly been WA folks, I'd like to see it easier for OR folks and ID folks to attend.
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jonathan
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

It's a long way to Idaho, but my dad worked in the Snake River Bird of Prey National Monument for three summers and loved it there. Beautiful area, really remote, a ton of raptors, and he found a lot of new localities for longnose snakes, night snakes, and ground snakes, plus some interesting rattler and gopher snake behavior.

Also, I've mentioned several times the idea of us trying to find the first Longnose Snakes on the Oregon side of the border. You mentioned once that Coachwhip, Patch-nosed Snake, Zebra-Tailed Lizard, and Desert Spiny Lizard are possible new state records waiting to be found there too. The Greater Short-Horned Lizards just got found, of course, and there's other stuff out there (like Ground Snakes, Desert Horned Lizards, Whiptails, Leopard Lizards, Collared Lizards) that you won't find elsewhere in Oregon. Not to mention Spadefoots, Spotted Frogs, Night Snakes, Whipsnakes, Rattlers, Pygmy Short-horned Lizards, and everything else on the dry side.

Joshua Wallace has talked about a trip to the Saddleback Mountain region to look for an undiscovered Oregon population of Van Dyke's Salamanders. Cope's Giant, Coastal Giant, Columbia Torrent, Tailed Frogs, Clouded Salamanders, etc can be found there too for a stream-hunting experience outside of the Columbia Gorge.

A southwest Oregon trip could target Common Kings, Mountain Kings, Yellow-legged Frogs, and 6-7 salis that don't occur further north. There are 4 garter species there too. Skipping just over into the California side adds even more stuff and gives you just about the best salamander hunting on the entire west coast.

Are there any interesting ideas in the Central Cascades?
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TravisK
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by TravisK »

Mike and I were PMing regarding trips a week or two ago. We tossed around doing the Ellensburg area in early Spring. Personally I would rather spend time in areas other than the central WA Gorge for 2014.

Jonathan, the area you referred too sounds pretty nice. What time of year would you say is the best time to go?

I added the app to an old smart phone recently and my personal goal is to register my finds >90% of the time compared to the nearly 0% I usually do. IDK if adding the app should be a goal per se, but getting more people to actually log their data should be. Again I am one of the worst offenders. A data entry contest could be fun. Some of you can already start doing so. LOL, but I am still frozen in snow here in Spokane :(
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Joshua Wallace
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by Joshua Wallace »

I am down for trying to meet up with any Chapter trip this year.
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jonathan
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

I forgot to include Forest Sharptail Snakes as a target for southwest Oregon.

TravisK wrote:Mike and I were PMing regarding trips a week or two ago. We tossed around doing the Ellensburg area in early Spring. Personally I would rather spend time in areas other than the central WA Gorge for 2014.

Jonathan, the area you referred too sounds pretty nice. What time of year would you say is the best time to go?(
Travis - which area are you talking about?
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TravisK
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by TravisK »

jonathan wrote: Travis - which area are you talking about?
The East Oregon/Southwest Idaho area. I personally have never been to that part of the country.
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

Ah, okay. I have very little personal experience in the area - everything I know is from my dad's work 30+ years ago. A quick look at one of the papers they got published on Night Snakes states that the major surface activity started in mid-May and peaks in early July. I know that most of the work they did was right in the summer break from school, and that the stuff they published was on longnose, ground, night, gopher, and rattlesnakes, and that they found all of those in good numbers.

I could ask him for more specifics if people wanted to make the trip a reality. I know that some of their work was done with drift fences, which we obviously wouldn't be employing, but I think that a good bit was also done off of typical rock-flipping, driving, and hiking encounters. (And my dad liked to mix in his falconry interests by climbing up into raptor nests and finding out what pieces of snakes were lying around in there!)
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TravisK
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by TravisK »

Yeah Jonathan, Ask your dad what time of year he would consider to be the most productive for road cruising and hiking/flipping. Then we can see about making it one of two NW event trips.
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sjfriend
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by sjfriend »

If they ever include AK in the chapter I'll host a trip ;) I'm sure we could kick out all the species near me in an hour or less :lol:

I've only done a few short hunts in OR/WA so I can't help otherwise but if I was down that way when a trip is on I'll join.
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by Brian Hubbs »

One goal could be to keep hellihooks from posting any more insulting challenges in your forum... :lol:
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jonathan
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

Just had a good talk with my dad, and this is what he said.

First off, all his work was in the Snake River Bird of Prey Natural Area. Now, take a look at this elevation map of Idaho and guess where the Snake River is:

Image


Did you guess that light streak coming in from the lower left? Good guess! Now see how that's all below 3000 feet, while everything else is over 3000 feet and most is over 4500 feet? My dad spent all his time in that low-elevation area. So what he says goes for that stuff. Anything outside of the Snake River area, if it has snakes, might have significantly later seasons and shorter activity times.

Incidentally, here is an elevation map of Oregon:

Image

Once again note - you have to stay in a pretty specific range in far eastern Oregon if you want to stay below 4000 feet elevation. There may be reptiles in the far southeast corner, but the high elevation may make it less likely that things like coachwhip, patchnose, zebratails, or desert spinys reach that far north from Nevada.

Now, my dad's three years of research work heavily focused on rattlers and gopher snakes. Their peak surface activity periods (at the Snake River elevation) were in late May and early June. Their activity tailed off sharply once the summer gets really hot. Night snakes, which had the most nocturnal activity of any snakes in the area, kept their peak a little later but still were common as early as May. I'm guessing that ground and longnose snakes probably fell in the same range. So late May or early June is probably ideal.

My dad said that since rattlers and gophers were the focus, they hiked most of their snakes. The absolute money spot is on top of canyon rims, which have an interesting broken-up structure in that part of the Great Basin. Getting all the way down to the river could be good, but only where there was no impact from boaters - even a little use seemed to result in most of the rattlers at least getting killed or leaving the area. The more uniform plateaus once you got past the rims did hold snakes, but in lower densities. So they spent most of their time on those canyon rims.

The visible snake activity would start when the sun came out and last a few hours. Mostly rattlers, gophers, racers, and whipsnakes would be seen. Whipsnakes would stay out a little later than the other two. All the lizards (Leopard Lizards, Collared Lizards, Whiptails, and I think Horned Lizards in spots) would also be out in good numbers. The second activity period would be around dusk, and was shorter than the morning activity period, maybe just an hour, and not as productive for the diurnal species.

When my dad was working on the project, most of the other snakes (longnose, ground, and night) were caught via drift fences. Night snakes were completely nocturnal, the other two showed up in daytime occasionally. In other years they did more work with rock flipping, and were successful at least with ground snakes and night snakes, maybe longnose too, but my dad doesn't know the details of that very much. The most important thing to note is that the nights get cold fast in that country, so night cruising would only be effective early in the night. And since the days get really hot as the summer goes, rock flipping is probably only effective closer to the beginning of the season in May and maybe June.

If you can access any of these papers associated with their research, they have even more detailed info. The third especially has some detailed habitat and locality information for the ground, longnose, and night snakes.

Comparative Ecology of Two Snake Species (Crotalus viridus and Pituophis melanoleucus) in Southwestern Idaho http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3 ... 3389824457

Aspects of the Life History and Ecology of the Desert Night Snake in Southwestern Idaho http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/3 ... 3389824457

Additional distribution records and abundance of three species of snakes (Hypsiglena torquata, Rhinocheilus lecontci, and Sonora semiannulata ) in southwestern Idaho https://ojs.lib.byu.edu/spc/index.php/w ... 9461/27924
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Joshua Wallace
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by Joshua Wallace »

Brian: It is amazing just how many threads you win on this forum.

Jonathan: That is some really interesting information. I agree that elevation plays a huge role in the northern distribution limits of the Great Basin species. I do agree with those activity periods. I know from experience that there are brief moments of mass activity down that way that are highly weather dependent. I have been down in the Alvord region in late may and still contended with snow and other cold weather conditions. Also your ID map isn't showing up for me.
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jonathan
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

If you can't see the Idaho map, try this URL:

http://geology.com/topographic-physical-map/idaho.shtml
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by hellihooks »

Brian Hubbs wrote:One goal could be to keep hellihooks from posting any more insulting challenges in your forum... :lol:
http://www.fieldherpforum.com/forum/vie ... 32&t=18652
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TravisK
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by TravisK »

OK, so here are some trip locations so far for 2 Chapter Outings. After we have a decent amount of suggestions we can take a vote on the top two picks.

So far we have...

*Yakima River, Umptanum, Ellensburg
*Snake River area
*Central WA, Vantage, Hanford (personally I have organized trips in this area for the last two years so it's not high on my list)
*WA/OR Columbia River Gorge

What else do we have? Something where we can spend 2-4 days in 75 mile range or so.
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Brian Hubbs
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by Brian Hubbs »

Josh Wallace said:
Brian: It is amazing just how many threads you win on this forum.
Well, I get bored and just practice my creative writing skills everywhere... :lol:

I see helli is still lurking...lurk...lurk...
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jonathan
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by jonathan »

Anyone have any desire for the southwest Oregon idea? It has even better amphibian variety than the Columbia River Gorge, plus plenty of snakes including both species of kings and both species of sharptails. The main issues are that it's a long drive for the Washington folk, and you'd need someone with decent knowledge of the area to figure out your best shot at snakes. You could get 10-15 species of salamanders with just a map though if you hit both sides of the Oregon/California border.
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TravisK
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Re: Chapter Goals for 2014

Post by TravisK »

jonathan wrote:Anyone have any desire for the southwest Oregon idea?
Not out of the question, we can ad it to the Vote.

FYI, I would like to get locations and dates voted on before the end of Feb. :)
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