“It’s just a concept,” explains Sam Droege, a wildlife monitoring expert with the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland and architect of the first bioblitz in the Washington area. “Others have repurposed it to fit their needs, and I think that’s great. We don’t even need to be involved.” In addition to Droege, Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson and Massachusetts naturalist Peter Alden are most often credited as the unofficial creators of the bioblitz. “Each one is very different,” Droege adds. “Some groups make it more of a celebration, others are out to find new things, and sometimes museums will sponsor a bioblitz to get visibility for their natural history departments. In my mind those are all totally valid reasons.”

In the end, he says, it’s all about having fun with science. Bioblitzes were never intended to be absolute tools for tracking changes in plant and animal populations. “The objective,” says Droege, “is more about discovery—bringing together scientists, land managers, and the general public to mix it up.”

And that’s the attraction for many field researchers. The events appeal to their basic desire to get out in the woods and look for living things. The opportunity to hang out with other like-minded scientists, show off their identification chops, and stay up all night is just a bonus. “For most of these scientists, the thing that attracted them to this work in the first place was finding and watching animals,” Droege says. “That was always the really fun and exciting part. But when you get plugged into academia it becomes drier and drier in some ways. You don’t have that sense of ‘I’m going to go out and find as many salamanders as I can.’ So with a bioblitz you can go back and harness that.”

“I think of bioblitzes as part science, part celebration, and part education,” says consulting naturalist and author Bryan Pfeiffer, who coordinated the 2004 Vermont Bioblitz in Quechee, Vt. “They’re not necessarily about documenting absolutely every species that you can find, although the importance of bioblitzes certainly includes discovery. Instead they’re about camaraderie and the spirit of the group effort.”

And that’s the thing with these events: although they exist as a way to gather hard scientific data, they’re as much about fun and outreach as they are about cataloging new and existing species. They’re usually held overnight—which contributes to the carnival-like atmosphere —and are generally about as close as you’re going to get to an actual grown-up science fair. “The more we can learn about what is growing, crawling, flying, walking or just sitting there in any given place, the more we care about those places,” says Pfeiffer. “And I think bioblitzes help us care about places that are familiar or even unusual, and the more familiar we can become with what’s there, the more we’ll care about it and the more we’ll want to protect it."

The Public Library
Every bioblitz is unique. Some are designed to encourage conservation in a specific area while others are more focused on outreach, offering scientists a chance to kick back and interact with interested members of the general public. “From a pure public education standpoint, which I think is at least as important as the scientific standpoint, bioblitzes raise awareness about the diversity of plants and animals in their communities,” says Ken Pruitt, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of Conservation Commissions, which sponsors a bioblitz every year as part of the state’s Biodiversity Days celebration.

 And that’s important, he explains, because biodiversity isn’t just limited to the wilds of Africa or Brazil. It exists everywhere. “When you talk about biodiversity a lot of people think about the Amazon rain forest,” says Pruitt, “but they don’t think about that undeveloped lot just down the street from their house. It’s not just a green area with some trees growing, it’s vibrant mix of different life forms.”

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