The urban campus of Rutgers University, is home to about 12,000 students and a few thousand faculty and staff. But the humans aren’t the only inhabitants. The campus is a unique urban wilderness habitat, a hotspot for biodiversity; more than 140 bird species and more than 100 wild plants already have been identified on campus. Come Sept. 18, the campus hopes to find more by conducting a “BioBlitz,” a sort of census to determine how many plant and animal species share the campus with the humans.
WHO: A team of students and faculty from the Rutgers-Newark/New Jersey Institute of Technology Federated Department of Biological Sciences will swarm across the Rutgers campus to count how many different species of plants and animals live here.
WHAT: The BioBlitz will include special activities and experts who will answer questions at hourly “field labs,” from 8 a.m. – 5 p.m., on the Norman Samuels Plaza in front of John Cotton Dana Library.
WHEN: Wed., Sept. 18, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m. (rain date Sept. 25)
WHERE: Throughout the campus and the Paul Robeson Campus Center, 350 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd., at Rutgers University, Newark
BACKGROUND: The Sept. 18 BioBlitz has three main goals:
- Help to raise awareness on campus of how nature actually lives here
- Help the campus evaluate the value of our urban wilderness and the success of our ongoing urban nature restoration efforts
- Involve the campus in the fun of looking for plants, insects, spiders, birds and others
Media contact: Carla Capizzi, capizzi@rutgers.edu