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An Eastern Tiger Swallowtail butterfly, spotted by the butterflies & moths team. © Mark Godfrey/TNC Smithsonian entomologist John W. Brown and a team member search for insects. © Mark Godfrey/TNC   Scientists and volunteers listen to opening instructions at the event base camp, Glen Echo Park, Maryland. © Mark Godfrey/TNC   News and Resource Room Read about how the BioBlitz revealed more than 1,000 species in the joint Conservancy-National Park Service press release.  Download details on the species found on our species list (.pdf, 8.72KB).  Learn more about the event from our BioBlitz poster. (.pdf, 1.95MB). BioBlitz in the News The Washington Post Critter Count Blends Family Fun With Science Potomac Almanac Puttin’ on the Blitz Potomac Gazette Researchers to race the clock to study Potomac Gorge Meet the Researchers Get to know some of the 130 scientists who converged on the Potomac Gorge to take part in the BioBlitz.

Potomac Gorge © Mark Schaefer

Potomac Gorge BioBlitz - More Than 1,000 Species Found!

The Nature Conservancy and the National Park Service; conducted a “BioBlitz” on national park land throughout the Potomac River Gorge—the 15-mile river corridor from Great Falls to Georgetown that includes parts of the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal National Historical Park and George Washington Memorial Parkway.  The BioBlitz was a weekend event that’s part festival, part scientific endeavor, part outdoor classroom.

More than 130 field biologists and experienced naturalists volunteered their expertise for the BioBlitz, an effort to see how many species they could find during a 30-hour survey period from Saturday, June 24, through Sunday, June 25. Eighteen teams raced against the clock to document many of the species that make the Potomac Gorge one of the most distinctive and important natural areas on the East Coast.

Their surveys revealed more than 1,000 species, including:

• A beetle (Strongylium crenatum), new to Virginia, found in Turkey Run and Great Falls for the first time;
  
• The first record of a fly (Scatophila carinata), which has never  before been found east of Iowa;
  
• Two plants (black birch and Deschampsia flexuosa) in Great Falls Park that had not been collected since around 1880, both of which are montane species and usually found west in the Appalachians;
  
• Two rare land snails – a tiny snail (Punctum smithi) and a semi-aquatic snail (Potomapsis lapideria);
  
• And two new seeps in the Gorge with two globally rare species, Pizzini’s amphipod (a crustacean) and Appalachian spring snail (a mollusk).
  
   

An Oasis for People and Nature

Considered the wildest urban river in North America, the Potomac serves as an escape for millions of residents and visitors from the hustle and bustle of city life. Before flowing serenely past Washington D.C.’s national monuments, the Potomac River emerges from a dramatic gorge. Carved by the untamed river over millennia, the 15-mile Potomac Gorge is a monument in its own right to the power and persistence of nature.

More than just a recreational resource, Washington area residents rely on the Potomac as a major source of drinking water for the region. The Gorge also harbors more than 1,400 distinct plant species and is a rugged haven for wildlife ranging from unique invertebrates to American shad and bald eagles.

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