By Sadie Shields

Due to the donation of 2.5 million dollars in funding from the California Department of Fish and Wildlife’s (CDFW) Cannabis Program, the United States Geological Survey California Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit (USGS) partnered with Cal Poly Humboldt professors have been able to add 30 new biodiversity monitoring sites across the county — two of which are run by Cal Poly Humboldt. Wildlife Professor and Project Lead Micaela Szykman Gunther works with co-Project Lead and Adjunct Professor  Nicholas Son to facilitate learning experiences for wildlife students as they view camera footage from the sites located around Humboldt County, which allows for a better survey of what wildlife lives around the area.

 “Each of our  sites is associated with a California State University partner campus, and we are very excited to have one of our Humboldt sites located at the L.W. Schatz Demonstration tree farm,” Szykman Gunther said. “We see this as a great opportunity to track biodiversity data in our unique forest ecosystem while also promoting educational and training opportunities for students to learn a variety of data collection techniques, practice analysis of the resulting data, and take advantage of research opportunities.

The two partner campuses run by Cal Poly Humboldt are the Schatz Experimental Tree Farm and the Lamphere Dunes, which is part of the Sentinel Sites for Nature Project. Student involvement is currently through graduate wildlife classes that students can take at the school and are active this semester.  

Sadie is a reporter who has an interest in covering and taking photos for sports and science. She can be reached at sls331@humboldt.edu.