Publications
Volunteers,
Keep in mind that Blue Thumb has brochures that you might find good to share with people you know. Or maybe you would like to have these handouts with you for people you do not know. Two pamphlets focus on riparian zone protection, with one having an emphasis on cities and towns, and the other being more for rural areas.
An additional pamphlet is "Co-existing with Nature." It is similarly themed, but is good for people everywhere.
Two new publications are "Modern Conservationist: Strategies for Strong, Healthy, Resilient Communities." One is for citizens, the other for municipalities. Ask the Blue Thumb staff with whom you work closely to bring you some pamphlets - if you can use them.
A pamphlet alone will not get conservation philosophies/practices implemented, but it can be a starting place, a conversation starter. Look around at the place you call home. How can you help make better things happen - in your own yard, your neighborhood, the whole communitiy?
Let's talk about it. The moment is upon us to make better things happen for our world. In addition to being in touch with your Blue Thumb contact, remember you can access Cheryl Cheadle, your Volunteer Coordinator.
To our Monthly Monitors:
Howdy Howdy from your QA Officer,
I'm going to switch this up from QA topics I usually write about, to briefly inform you about our fish results from last summer as I was pleased to see how they compare. Pretty recently I worked with the raw fish results from 2019. I took the raw results through some basic statistics: number of species, sensitive species, population diversity, etc. I was pleased to see that overall, the results were quite good. In 2019, we fished 18 sites in the Central Great Plains Ecoregion; more specifically, in Lawton, OKC metro, Weatherford, El Reno, Yukon, and Stillwater. Six of the sites were newer sites that we had never fished before, making it tough to look at these fish results and say much just by themselves. These scores averaged 74% with a range of 57-91%, when compared to reference conditions (the average of high quality sites in the Central Great Plains Ecoregion).
Most of the other sites we fished in 2014, and the majority received better scores in 2019; 6 of the sites scored better in 2019, 4 of the sites scored the same as their last fish collections score, and 2 sites scored slightly lower in 2019 (from 109% in 2014 to 100% in 2019). There were some big storms and flooding events between 2014 and 2019, and that can be good and bad. We are thinking that the flooded creeks created bigger "roads" for the fish to move in and maybe that is why we caught more fish species in some places that we hadn't before. Big storms can also lead to erosion and negatively impacting the physical habitat.
But this is just one page of information in the entire book/story of each creek site. The rest of the book/story includes pages of macroinvertebrate results, physical habitat results, the other fish results, and chemical results. Look at all this data together and you can really understand the book/story of each creek site. Some of our Blue Thumb volunteers have done this. Check out our website and read a volunteer written data report in your area. Share your new knowledge with someone else. This map will be updated with new fish results and data reports before the end of this year. Please keep sending in your chemical data so it can add to your creek's book/story.
Kim Shaw
Blue Thumb QA Officer
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