May 28 @ 5:30 pm - 6:30 pm

Dr. Dustin Lynch, Aquatic Biologist, AR Natural Heritage Commission, will discuss the commission’s work to protect the plants and animals along Arkansas’s waterways.  His comments regarding the presentation:

“The Arkansas Natural Heritage Commission has been working since 1973 to conserve Arkansas’s natural communities and the rare, threatened, and endangered species that comprise them. Out of the 972 rare species of plants and animals that ANHC currently tracks, 291 species (around 30%) are primarily aquatic for all or part of their life cycle. In the first part of my presentation, I will provide an overview of ANHC’s role in protection of our state’s aquatic resources, including examples of imperiled aquatic species in different ecoregions and the unique conservation challenges facing them. In the second part of my presentation, I will explore a variety of species from the major taxonomic groups that make up life in an Ozark Highland stream such as the Buffalo River. I will take the audience on a photographic tour of such groups as darters, madtoms, crayfish, salamanders, and mayflies as we learn about the unique and amazing species that call our Ozark streams home.”