Conservation Science

Bucknell student Isaac Buabeng, who is pursuing his master’s degree, is investigating the genetic diversity and phylogenetic relationships among Canby’s mountain-lover populations. His research could help us identify genetically healthy populations that could help save the species from extinction.

Scott connected Isaac and Bucknell postdoctoral fellow Dr. Melody Sain with land managers, stewardship practitioners and field botanists who monitor Canby’s mountain-lover populations and sites in Pennsylvania and West Virginia that support them.

Conservancy scientists scaled cliffs, slogged through wetlands, knelt in fields and navigated forests to assess the locations of native, rare and endangered plants and animals. In 2022, through our partnership with the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program, whose partners include the Conservancy, PA Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, PA Game Commission and PA Fish and Boat Commission, conservation science staff reported 113 field surveys. The outcomes of this important work help inform conservation and development decisions statewide.

The importance of protecting native species was underscored in 2022 with the celebration on June 17 of the first Pennsylvania Native Species Day. The day highlights and recognizes the need to protect our state’s diverse native plants, trees, insects, fish, birds and mammals that originated thousands of years ago and thrive in mutual dependence.

Some of the greatest endeavors have simple beginnings…as did the Pennsylvania Natural Heritage Program. In 1982, GIS and GPS were still military secrets; instead, directions to field sites were scribbled on coffee-stained, folded paper maps. Certainly, no one carried cell phones. And data lived in stacks of folders in desks and file cabinets.

What began 40 years ago as a conversation among colleagues at the Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, The Nature Conservancy and the PA Department of Environmental Resources (now DCNR) developed into a program that guides our conservation work and helps set the state’s conservation agenda. Offices staffed by two or three people evolved into an integrated, 45-plus person and increasingly sophisticated program managed by a four-way partnership between WPC, DCNR, PGC and PFBC.

Technology has evolved, but the mission and focus remain the same. The program continues to guide the Conservancy’s land and water conservation work, helps set the conservation agenda for the state and maintains the Conservation Explorer and the Pennsylvania Natural Diversity Inventory database, with records of thousands of species and communities of special concern, and information on rare plants, animals and natural communities.

WPC’s PNHP botanist Scott Schuette worked with researchers at Bucknell University to conduct genetic assessments of three globally rare plant species, including Canby’s mountain-lover, found on limestone cliffs and outcrops in a few areas in central Appalachian states. Its low numbers and subsequent reduced genetic diversity make it less resilient to threats such as loss of habitat, deer browsing, woodrat foraging and climate change.

PNHP staff entered 894 new records for plants, animals or communities of conservation interest in the conservation database.

PNHP staff surveyed sites in 12 Northwest Pennsylvania counties to identify which invasive weeds could find their way to Lake Erie watershed.

About 1,4oo invasive weed presences were recorded within 491 individual survey areas and 136 survey sites.