PARS annual meeting
Oct. 26th, 2025 06:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI went up to Bellefonte yesterday for the annual PARS meeting. This is a state-run thing where Fish and Boat is trying to get some idea of the relative abundance of herps (amphibians and reptiles) in PA.
It was really informative, coffee was good, there were snacks, and they fed us lunch. Aces, really.
Attendance was white (mostly, I didn't see anyone other than white folks but I also wasn't, like, glaring at people to see if they looked non-white "enough" to be a minority of some kind) but happily looked to be about a third women. Yay for women doing nerdy stuff with nerdy animals. One lady (who works in the field) brought along her educational-outreach rattlesnake Peewee, so we also had a herp in attendance. (Peewee was safely contained in a lid-locking rubbermaid bin container of some sort, no worries. Her handler also had a snake hook just in case, but honestly, timber rattlers are sort of inert at the best of times and Peewee just hung out under the table in her plastic bin, quietly.)
There are a variety of reasons people are interested in observing/reporting herps to the state of PA. For some people it is part of their work. Maybe they work for Fish and Boat (in PA, all herps -- turtles, snakes, salamanders, lizards, frogs, toads --are "fish" because that's how the law treats them. As such they fall under the authority of the Fish and Boat Commission. Other states do things differently.) or DCNR. Could be they're involved in education/conservation through a county or city park or system of parks. Maybe they do wildlife rescue and rehab. There are jobs out there doing this stuff, and a lot of the PARS people have those jobs. But there are also other people who are more like me, in that it's not their job and they're just... outside doing things and kind of incidentally take pictures of herps and submit them.
I mean, I'm not out there flipping over rocks and stuff. I just take pictures of things when I happen upon them. But I'm outside a fair amount and I always have my phone, so... yeah. My pictures are potato-quality compared to the really fine work some of the other people do, like their stuff is quite good, wildlife-photographer good, super nice. I do not have either the patience or the gear to do that well at it, and that's OK. I do what I can.
So, one of the focal points of this meeting was kind of a How are things going with PARS? in terms of state wide coverage. It's not too bad, they have a little more than half of the state surveyed "enough". (These are metrics arbitrarily set by the PARS organizers, a block (the USGS quad maps are the "blocks") needs 10 species to be "closed".) They would really like folks to go work on the blocks with no species or fewer than ten species so that they have at least some data for every block statewide.
I have previously talked about the problems of measurement of the natural world (here among other places) and today was very enlightening on how science people think about measuring species abundance and stuff. Learning about this was one of the reasons I went to the meeting. (Sure, I know that the meeting was not particularly *about* sampling methods and the problems of trying to find out what lives where and how much of it lives there. Don't care. Boots is also not particularly ABOUT how entertainment media depicts closeted gayness and I'm still watching it for that reason.)
Anyway, to get this to happen, they want you to look at blocks near you or somewhere you want to go and find places you can scout for herps and go do ten species for those empty blocks. Right. Now I've mostly done, like, where I live. It's all one block, where I live (I am pausing now to reset my VPN to the United States -- the PARS website doesn't work if you're in Japan or Australia or something), because that's generally where I am out in the woods doing shit. I have five hundred acres of woods, why on earth would I go somewhere else to be on other people's woods when I have my own perfectly good woods right outside my front door. But I do live in Greater Rednecklandia, so there are pretty empty blocks right near me where I wouldn't have to go very far to see things.
I will have to make an effort on this when the weather gets fit in the spring. Perhaps I can take a boy along with me. Betcha the Mordecai would enjoy this.
Watch this space for developments.
It was really informative, coffee was good, there were snacks, and they fed us lunch. Aces, really.
Attendance was white (mostly, I didn't see anyone other than white folks but I also wasn't, like, glaring at people to see if they looked non-white "enough" to be a minority of some kind) but happily looked to be about a third women. Yay for women doing nerdy stuff with nerdy animals. One lady (who works in the field) brought along her educational-outreach rattlesnake Peewee, so we also had a herp in attendance. (Peewee was safely contained in a lid-locking rubbermaid bin container of some sort, no worries. Her handler also had a snake hook just in case, but honestly, timber rattlers are sort of inert at the best of times and Peewee just hung out under the table in her plastic bin, quietly.)
There are a variety of reasons people are interested in observing/reporting herps to the state of PA. For some people it is part of their work. Maybe they work for Fish and Boat (in PA, all herps -- turtles, snakes, salamanders, lizards, frogs, toads --are "fish" because that's how the law treats them. As such they fall under the authority of the Fish and Boat Commission. Other states do things differently.) or DCNR. Could be they're involved in education/conservation through a county or city park or system of parks. Maybe they do wildlife rescue and rehab. There are jobs out there doing this stuff, and a lot of the PARS people have those jobs. But there are also other people who are more like me, in that it's not their job and they're just... outside doing things and kind of incidentally take pictures of herps and submit them.
I mean, I'm not out there flipping over rocks and stuff. I just take pictures of things when I happen upon them. But I'm outside a fair amount and I always have my phone, so... yeah. My pictures are potato-quality compared to the really fine work some of the other people do, like their stuff is quite good, wildlife-photographer good, super nice. I do not have either the patience or the gear to do that well at it, and that's OK. I do what I can.
So, one of the focal points of this meeting was kind of a How are things going with PARS? in terms of state wide coverage. It's not too bad, they have a little more than half of the state surveyed "enough". (These are metrics arbitrarily set by the PARS organizers, a block (the USGS quad maps are the "blocks") needs 10 species to be "closed".) They would really like folks to go work on the blocks with no species or fewer than ten species so that they have at least some data for every block statewide.
I have previously talked about the problems of measurement of the natural world (here among other places) and today was very enlightening on how science people think about measuring species abundance and stuff. Learning about this was one of the reasons I went to the meeting. (Sure, I know that the meeting was not particularly *about* sampling methods and the problems of trying to find out what lives where and how much of it lives there. Don't care. Boots is also not particularly ABOUT how entertainment media depicts closeted gayness and I'm still watching it for that reason.)
Anyway, to get this to happen, they want you to look at blocks near you or somewhere you want to go and find places you can scout for herps and go do ten species for those empty blocks. Right. Now I've mostly done, like, where I live. It's all one block, where I live (I am pausing now to reset my VPN to the United States -- the PARS website doesn't work if you're in Japan or Australia or something), because that's generally where I am out in the woods doing shit. I have five hundred acres of woods, why on earth would I go somewhere else to be on other people's woods when I have my own perfectly good woods right outside my front door. But I do live in Greater Rednecklandia, so there are pretty empty blocks right near me where I wouldn't have to go very far to see things.
I will have to make an effort on this when the weather gets fit in the spring. Perhaps I can take a boy along with me. Betcha the Mordecai would enjoy this.
Watch this space for developments.
