Outdoor Alabama Species Profiles - We Need Your Help!!!!

As many of you may have noticed, ALAPARC has partnered with Outdoor Alabama by linking their fact sheets for Alabama amphibian and reptile species to our website (http://www.alaparc.org/AL_Herps.html). Fact sheets like these seem simple, but they're one of the first lines of defense we have in combating a lack of basic herp awareness in our state, and this can have effects that cascade down to combating species declines, habitat mismanagement, and a whole host of other conservation issues.

But, as many of you may have also noticed, more than a few of those fact sheets are lacking information (like this one: http://www.outdooralabama.com/watchable-wildlife/what/Reptiles/Turtles/amt.cfm). Partnerships obviously run both ways, so ALAPARC would like to give back to Outdoor Alabama by completing these fact sheets - and this is where you come in.

Are you the world's leading expert on Coal Skinks? Has your spouse or significant other ever commented on your unhealthy fascination with Fowler's Toads? Does the mere mention of a chorus of Scaphiopus elevate you to a perverse level of excitement? If your answer to any or all of these questions is yes, then we need your help. Many of the fact sheets we have online have been written by experts, and we're hoping to continue that trend. "Expert" is always a relative term, of course, so don't be shy about contributing even if you're not the world's best researcher on any given species. As long as you're committed to summarizing reliable info on a species in a digestible format for the public and dig herps, we need you. Go to the Outdoor Alabama website, browse the species, and see which ones are lacking info. If you see that "your" species is missing info, then you're the person we're looking for. The fact sheets we're looking to put together will follow the format at this link.

So, if you're interested, shoot Wally Smith an email at whsmith1@crimson.ua.edu and he can give you info on how to help out. Putting a fact sheet together doesn't take much time at all, can be fun (believe it or not), and is an amazingly simple way to give back to Alabama's herps by providing the public with easy-to-digest, helpful information.