A new way to get involved
The list of projects that rely on volunteers is long and getting longer, and some focus on less showy creatures. Under the North American Amphibious Monitoring Program, USGS scientists facilitate and coordinate state projects using volunteers to monitor frog populations. Each participant listens for calling frogs at 10 to 15 sites four times a year, and some have been doing so since the mid1990s. “That lets us see trends and set conservation priorities,” says Sam Droege, a USGS wildlife biologist in Laurel, Maryland. More recently, Droege enlisted about 20 volunteers to catch, bag, and tag native bees in a pilot study designed