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U.S. Forest Service


Eastern Region Implementation - North American Butterfly Association MOU

By jan schultz on Apr 4, 2009

The following text describes this image.

North American Butterfly Association patch

NABA provides R9 butterfly checklists & American Butterflies Magazine requests inventory info from members.

During the winter of 2009 the Forest Service and North American Butterfly Association (NABA) http://www.naba.org/ signed an MOU which is national in scope. Activities include: assessment; inventory; monitoring; data acquisition, management, exchange and dissemination; and other scientific and management activities to conserve butterflies, plants, watersheds, and ecological systems critical to sustaining biological diversity.

NABA, with over 30 chapters and 500 members nationally, is a non profit organization dedicated to the public awareness and conservation of butterflies and their habitats. NABA activities include: American Butterflies Magazine publication; rare and endangered butterfly surveys; habitat management protocols optimal for butterflies; the NABA Butterfly Count Program; and a large- scale monitoring program and database for long- term research studies. NABA has also developed the Butterflies I've Seen (BIS) Database that contains over 1 million entries.

Via this wonderful MOU, NABA has provided Eastern Region with checklists of the butterflies documented or potential within each Forest. NABA's American Butterflies Magazine will also carry a notice requesting NABA members to, when feasible, inventory within R9 forests and log the information gathered in the NABA database. The Eastern Region of the Forest Service will then share this butterfly information with the public via brochures and websites; we hope to have our first Forest butterfly brochure available for the public by the summer of 2009. As we gather more information about this stunning natural resource our management practices and recreation/ interpretation opportunities will continue to develop and improve. Lastly, our butterfly MOU with NABA serves to further implement the North American Pollinator Protection Campaign (NAPPC) http://www.nappc.org/ which was developed to encourage the health of resident and migratory pollinating animals in North America. The Forest Service is an affiliated organization within NAPPC.