The Wildlife Badge

The Wildlife Badge

BACKGROUND

One Tam is piloting a training program for our Tam Van volunteers in order to provide richer educational content for our community. A few select volunteers will participate in this pilot effort, and the training will focus one or more key areas relating to the conservation priorities established through One Tam’s Peak Health study. Our initial training effort will focus on wildlife (mostly mammals) and our wildlife camera study; volunteers who complete this training program will receive the One Tam "Wildlife Badge" certification.

With this specialized training, One Tam docent volunteers will be able to offer enriched educational content that could include short talks from the Tam Van, craft-type activities for families with young children, and/ or short hikes. In addition to supporting our community outreach goals, this program also supports One Tam's community science program by sharing findings from One Tam’s research and by recruiting community science volunteers.

This webpage is intended for private use by selected volunteers. If you've come across this webpage by accident, and have questions about this program, please contact Monica Stafford at mstafford@onetam.org.

Our mobile visitor center provides information about Mt. Tam's wildlife and our research findings

THE WILDLIFE BADGE TRAINING PROGRAM

The One Tam "Wildlife Badge" training program centers around One Tam's wildlife camera study and consists of a collection of online resources coupled with a few in-person or online meetings. We begin with a few general topics about outreach, the One Tam partnership and the Peak Health research which forms the foundation for our community science work. Following that, we have a selection of readings and activities that relate to our wildlife camera study.

Our training program is listed below. Each component falls into one of three categories: (1) those that can be reviewed independently; (2) those that we will cover together online; and (3) those that we will cover together onsite.

General Information:

  • Attend General Outreach Orientation
    • We will complete online, together
    • Approximately 1 hour, 15 minutes
    • This introductory orientation covers the One Tam partnership, outreach strategies, conflict management tips and COVID-19-related safety information
  • Review Background Information for Ambassadors & Docents- an online folder of information
    • To be reviewed independently
    • Approximately 30 minutes
    • Review the contents of this folder without necessarily reading the individual documents (although of course you are welcome to read as much as you like). This will help you become familiar with what informational resources are currently available. In particular, please be sure to take at least a quick look at "Tam Van Talking Points," "Tam Van Set Up" and the "wildlife info" folder.

The Peak Health project (setting the context for our wildlife camera study):

  • Review Peak Health project website
    • To be reviewed independently
    • Approximately 25 minutes, including 5 minute video
    • Background: When One Tam was formed as a partnership, in order to identify and prioritize conservation efforts, the land managers and scientists from the five organizations came together to try to answer the question, "What is the health of the mountain?" From this question came a year's worth of meetings and research that culminated in a 300-page report about the health of Mt. Tam's natural resources. Thankfully, you don't have to read this report (but if you'd like to see it, here you go) because the report's findings have been summarized in these interactive "peak-health" pages. The study identified key ecological indicators ranging from individual species, such as the coho salmon, to large scale landscapes, such as oak woodlands, that we can use to better understand the health of the ecological health of Mt. Tam as a whole. The health of each ecological indicator was graded as "good", "fair", or "poor." 
      • Read the Peak Health landing page and watch the 5 minute video
      • Click on the links for the "Wildlife", "Plants" and "Landscape" pages, and read those three pages as well. As an example, note that when you click on "Wildlife" you will see a list of animals identified as indicator species, and you will see whether our land managers think each population is in good, fair or poor health.    
      • Note that from the Wildlife, Plants and Landscapes page you can continue to click on more specific levels of biodiversity and see a "grade" or rank for each organizational level.
      • This study also identified important data gaps that have been prioritized for research. This Peak Health work led to our community science projects on bees, bats and mammals (through our wildlife camera study). Read about the data gaps here. 

Marin Wildlife Picture Index Project (also called MWPIP, or informally, our "wildlife camera study"):

  • Review People, Science and Nature at One Tam, minutes 13 to 21
    • To be reviewed independently
    • 8 minutes
    • This presentation by Dr. Lisette Arellano provides an overview of all of One Tam's Community Science programs. Listen to minutes 13 to 21 to learn about the wildlife camera study and the initial findings from the wildlife study.  If interested, listen to the whole presentation to learn more about One Tam's community science work outside of the MWPIP.

Guides to identifying our wildlife images:

  • Review MWPIP Mammal Guide
    • To be reviewed independently
    • 25 minutes
    • This is a collection of the mammals that we have captured in our camera study and it provides identification tips
  • Review Wildlife Poster Cheat Sheets- These are the four posters that we commonly use for outreach, along with the names of the animals in the photos
    • 5 minutes - just a quick look; this is better reviewed in person at the Tam Van 

Bay Area Wide Context:

There is a lot of great community science work happening in the Bay Area. It's good to have passing familiarity with the names of some of the other wildlife camera studies out there including those by Felidae, the River Otter Project, and Audubon Canyon Ranch.

  • To be reviewed independently
  • 10 minutes
  • You don't necessarily need to read these webpages, just take a quick look around so that you are familiar with the organizations and have an idea of their work

ACTIVITIES: DEVELOPMENT and TRAINING

To share educational information about wildlife with the public, we’ll use a range of interactive activities that we will continue to modify and develop over time. Volunteers can choose which activities they'd like to use and get trained on, or they can develop their own material. Training for each of these activities will be completed on site and will be supplemented with the following background information that can be reviewed independently:

  • Skulls: we have four different replica skulls that can be displayed from Tam Van and shared with visitors. With the skulls we can examine morphological traits that describe some animals as predators and some as herbivores.
  • Badger: we have a stuffed badger at the Tam Van named Dr. Ian Austin. This write up provides some basic badger know-how.
  • Play-dough animal tracks activity: (in development) we have a collection of animal track molds and play-dough so that kids can make their own tracks and learn about reading tracks.
  • Sound Safari (in development); we have a collection of animal sound recordings that we can play. It's fun to have people learn to recognize animals by sound as well as by sight.