Last week we had the pleasure of attending and sponsoring the annual Northeast Partners in Amphibian and Reptile Conservation (NEPARC) meeting that was hosted at the beautiful Canaan Valley State Park Resort in West Virginia. We are proud to support the collaborative work of this incredible partnership of researchers, educators, regulators, and conservationists that all share a passion for protecting some of our most imperiled species. Our research coordinator, John Garrison, gave a presentation for his graduate research on Spotted Turtle nesting in Massachusetts, something we are proud to see as Spotted Turtles have been a special local species to us since we started our organization.
We also got to meet with many of our colleagues we work with here in Maryland and all across the east that were there and provided updates on their work on species like the Wood Turtle, helping to inspire our projects with the latest, up-to-date science.
During our time we also got to experience some of the unique ecosystems of the region that included the Red Spruce forests that is critical to species like the West Virginia Northern Flying Squirrel and the Cheat Mountain Salamander, which is a Federally Threatened endemic species to the area as well as help survey for other mountain snake and salamander species.
