SPP at Save the Frogs!
SPP at Save the Frogs!
On Saturday, April 28, SPP Graduate Research Associates Dennis Aubrey, Andrea Martin, and Brittany Gallagher took part in the Save the Frogs Day 5K at Seward Park in Seattle. SPP Undergrad Interns Jaal Mann and Caitlin Fate also made the trip and ran SPP’s information booth at the event.
It was a beautiful sunny day to run around the park and chat with interested amphibian lovers about restoration through incarceration. SPP partner Marc Hayes gave a short lecture at the event after the 256 runners had completed the course.
Save the Frogs is an amphibian conservation organization at work in more than 200 countries. For more information on them, see https://www.savethefrogs.com/index.html.
To find out more about the event in Seattle (and future STF events), visit https://www.savethefrogs.com/day/2012/seattle/index.html.
To see more pictures of SPP at the event (and to hear what else we’re up to), check out SPP on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/sustainableprisons.
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- SPP Graduate Research Associates Andrea, Brittany and Dennis after the race with the Save the Frogs Frog.
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- SPP intern Jaal Mann sharing the information at our booth with interested animal lovers at Save the Frogs Day 5K in Seward Park.
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Stormwater presentation at WCCW: Inmate blog
“Stormwater: Life in the Gutter” at WCCW: Inmate blog
Editor’s note: This post was written by an inmate at Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW), where SPP hosts a monthly Science & Sustainability lecture series. On May 1, Stokley Towles, a performance artist and faculty member at The Evergreen State College, gave a highly entertaining presentation called “Stormwater: Life in the Gutter” to a group of nearly 40 inmates at WCCW.
Mr. Towles will be performing this piece for the public starting this Friday, May 4, at the Seattle Center. For more information, please see http://www.stokleytowles.com/.
Today I attended a 2 hour presentation of “Storm Watch” which took place in A Building at Purdy Prison, also known as WCCW, or vice versa.
WOW! Talk about an out-of-body experience! Not only was I able to get out of my cramped cell and leave the unit I live in; this is the first time in 5 years of being incarcerated here in WCCW that I actually felt like being part of a community.
Who would ever guess that hearing about bowel excretion could feel like connecting with one’s community?! No, really! This guy from the Sustainability in Prisons Project was showing us diagrams from a laptop and projector on one of the walls in the visiting room on how storm water and sewage is piped underground from neighborhoods, and pretty soon before I knew it, I was enthralled in the dialog of communication from offenders. This guy whose nickname was “Street” was beautiful – no kidding – he even showed us the hot pink socks he was wearing! Yeah, right there in the visiting room he props up his leg onto a table with the heel of his black, soft leather , worn dress shoe on the edge of the table and hikes up his beige chino slacks and displays his HOT PINK SOCKS! He, aka Street, says “I spend a lot of time with the sewage plant workers and garbage collectors, getting to know what they do on their jobs, actually walking around with them all day, seeing and hearing how they feel and what they think about what they’re doing. Everyone who works for the Seattle Sewage Plant gets a nickname. It’s for security reasons, because working for the City of Seattle is like being one big happy family and using an alias protects their identity out in the field”.
Today for just a minute I was out there – out in the field with Street, watching the sky for oncoming storms and climbing down storm drains (with a gas mask), checking out neighborhood ponds for “beaver workaholics”. Huh. Yeah. I felt like being connected to something other than being an offender incarcerated here in Prison. I sure the heck wasn’t thinking about all that chaos and drama back in the unit I live in during those brief 110 minutes or so.
Thank you, Sustainability-in-Prisons-Project!
Thank you Stokley Towles!
Thank you Brittany Gallagher!
Thank you AA Paula Andrew!
Please come back!!
Stokley Towles performs "Stormwater: Life in the Gutter" as part of SPP's Science and Sustainability Lecture Series at WCCW on May 1, 2012.
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To donate to SPP and support science and sustainability education in unlikely places, please click here.
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New Frog Rearing Practices at Cedar Creek
New Frog Rearing Practices at Cedar Creek
By Graduate Research Associate Andrea Martin
Frog season has arrived in Western Washington! Cedar Creek Corrections Center is now home to 315 tadpoles. Oregon spotted frog eggs were brought into the prison from Black River and Conboy Lake Wildlife Refuge by Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife biologists. There was a significant die-off initially of the Black River eggs; we lost 54 of the initial 158. Happily, the organisms from Conboy have had a much higher success rate; only four of the original eggs never hatched.
Cedar Creek is undergoing several significant changes in rearing protocol this season. These changes are designed to provide consistency amongst all of the institutions raising Oregon Spotted Frogs, of which SPP and Cedar Creek are only one of four.
The most significant change is the implementation of net pens to raise the eggs and tadpoles. In the last 3 years, the eggs have been raised in shoebox-sized plastic bins until they were big enough to be moved to tubs large enough to hold up to 200 growing frogs.
The net pens are a square foot in area, and provide floating habitats for the growing tadpoles. SPP staff made 20 of the pens using PVC piping to create the enclosure. The nets were clipped onto the pipes so that they would hang through the middle, and floating mats were cut into strips and secured with zip ties to give the pens extra buoyancy. Between 15 and 20 tadpoles live in each net pen.
The shoeboxes required much more attention to water quality than the nets. In the net pens, fecal matter and most extra uneaten food falls through the nets and into the larger tubs, making water changing a less demanding and less frequent chore. The shoeboxes require multiple water changes every day. Our rearing partners switched to the net pens last year.
While frequent water changing wasn’t a problem for Cedar Creek, water temperature was problematic. The shoeboxes were kept inside the shed where the inmates raise crickets. Because of the small space and the multiple heat lamps, the room is usually at least 70 degrees, and sometimes would get much hotter. It was nearly impossible to get the water temperature below 70 for the tadpoles, when 65 would be a more preferable.
In the net pens submersible water heaters can keep the large outdoor tubs regulated at 65 degrees, which provides a more realistic environment, and also has a higher oxygen concentration for the growing tadpoles.
So far the transition has been a success, with no tadpole mortalities. It has been a fun learning process for all parties to record the successes and drawbacks of this new rearing protocol. We all hope this is the beginning to another successful frog season!
A Cedar Creek frog technician inmate cleans out the net pens with a turkey baster. Photo by A. Martin.
The net pens float in the larger tubs, making water changes less frequent, and water temperature more consistent..JPG The net pens float in the larger tubs, making water changes less frequent, and water temperature more consistent. Photo by A.Martin.
The net pens float in the larger tubs, making water changes less frequent, and water temperature more consistent..JPG The net pens float in the larger tubs, making water changes less frequent, and water temperature more consistent. Photo by A. Martin.
To donate to SPP and support the rearing of Oregon spotted frogs in Washington state, click here.
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59 Frogs released at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in March!
59 Frogs released at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in March!
By: Graduate Research Associate Andrea Martin
In November, Oregon spotted frogs raised at Cedar Creek Corrections Center, the Oregon Zoo, Woodland Park Zoo and Northwest Trek Wildlife Park were released at Joint Base Lewis-McChord. Sixty-three frogs that were too small to survive in the wild were brought to Cedar Creek to live the good life for the winter.
Four of the original frogs died, but the majority grew fat and healthy throughout the coldest time of the year. The frogs weathered the January snowstorm very well, as generators kept their tanks near 70 degrees even as more than 15 inches of snow covered the prison grounds.
This group of frogs was the first at Cedar Creek to vary their diet with the Jamaican Black crickets the inmates have blogged about in the past. Unfortunately, the heavy snowfall insulated the hot cricket shack in January, raising the temperature to 113 degrees and killing a large portion of the crickets. Luckily, the frogs didn’t starve.
On March 14th, SPP Project Manager Kelli Bush, Graduate Interns Dennis Aubrey and Andrea Martin, DOC Classification Counselor Marko Anderson, and JBLM Field Biologists Jim Lynch, John Richardson and Nick Miller released the 59 frogs that had survived the winter onto the military base.
Hopefully they are continuing to thrive through this very cold and wet spring!
Figure 1. SPP Frog Intern Andrea Martin releases an Oregon spotted frog. Photo by D. Aubrey.
Figure 2. DOC staff Marko Anderson tries to pick just one OSF at a time to release at JBLM. Photo by A. Martin.
Figure 3. Graduate Research Associate Dennis Aubrey and several frogs about to be released. Photo by A. Martin.
To donate to SPP and support the rearing of Oregon spotted frogs in Washington state, click here.
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Newly arrived Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies thriving at MCCCW
Newly arrived Taylor’s checkerspot butterflies thriving at MCCCW
By Graduate Research Associate Dennis Aubrey
After a more than a year of preparation, the butterfly program at Mission Creek Corrections Center for Women is finally rearing endangered butterflies! Mary Jo Andersen brought 755 post diapause Taylor’s checkerspot larvae from the Oregon Zoo in early March, and when they emerged from their blue cooler, they found that they had been transported directly to caterpillar paradise. Cool nights and warm bright days, no rain but perfect moisture, tender hand-picked leaves delivered fresh every morning, no predators, vehicles, or hard freezes; what more could a caterpillar ask for? Many of them headed directly for the fresh leaves and began eating vigorously, much to Mary Jo’s amazement.
Part of the beauty of the new facility is the quality of the light. One of the limiting variables in rearing butterflies is UV light exposure, and the structure was built with that in mind. When the caterpillars arrived conditions were perfect and they responded immediately.
Of the 755 that Mary Jo brought, 600 were released a week later onto a Joint Base Lewis-McChord reintroduction site and 155 continue to develop at the prison. Because of the conditions, they have been growing and molting more quickly than at the Oregon Zoo, and some have already pupated. If anything, conditions may be too perfect!
As one way of assessing the “quality” of the conditions, inmates will be weighing and measuring adult butterflies when they emerge. This will be used to compare their weights with historic averages from the Oregon Zoo, because it is generally very challenging to rear full sized adults in captivity. One of the original goals of the facility design was to more closely mimic natural conditions in order to produce butterflies as large as wild-caught individuals, something Oregon Zoo has been unable to accomplish.
Another part of what we hope is our formula for success is the constant and thorough care that inmates can provide. The four currently involved with the project care for their charges meticulously, and we hope that also helps to produce natural-sized, healthy animals.
In addition to TLC, inmates also keep highly detailed records of their observations. In fact, they are now filling their third notebook with records beyond those they are asked for. They even hand-draw spreadsheets with rulers when details they want to record are not covered by the official forms.
This careful manner will soon become critical when they undertake an upcoming research project examining host plant preference. This will attempt to show which native prairie plants are most valuable to the butterfly as a resource in restoration plots. Not only is this critical, relevant research, but it also involves a second endangered species! One of the plants to be examined is state-endangered golden paintbrush (Castilleja levisecta), so this spring inmates will be caring for two endangered species at Mission Creek!
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- Biologist Mary Linders releases Taylors checkerspot butterflies at JBLM.
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- Graduate Research Associate Dennis Aubrey on release day at JBLM.
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- Happy caterpillars.
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- Hard at work in the butterfly house at MCCCW.
To donate to SPP and support the rearing of endangered butterflies in Washington state, click here.
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