October 1 and 2, from 2 p.m. to 2 p.m., join dozens of volunteer naturalists to count as many species of life as possible at the Mercy Woods Preserve in Cumberland, Rhode Island.

This 24 hour event is the 22nd edition of Rhode Island BioBlitz, the longest running regular bioblitz in the world. Whether you’re a seasoned expert on some specialized taxon or simply someone curious about the world around them, you have something to contribute and you are welcome. Come for an hour or camp over night and stay the 24 hours.

All participants MUST BE PRE-REGISTERED (no walk-ins) and you can register for RI BioBlitz 2021 using this link to a Google Form.

For the 2021 event, the Cumberland Land Trust will be the local host. The Cumberland Land Trust and town of Cumberland, with RIDEM, partner organizations, and private donors, purchased the Preserve in 2019, one of the most significant conservation commitments in recent town history. Taking on such an important new parcel, the Cumberland Land Trust has new stewardship responsibilities including baseline documentation and monitoring, and we’re happy that they’ve invited us to bring BioBlitz there so we can help them document the biological resources.

What can we look forward to at Mercy Woods? The preserve is draped over a north-south running ridge. The eastern facing slope is predominantly mixed hardwood and hardwood/pine forest while the western slope has some mixed forest plus large areas of rough lawn and various edge habitats. The top of the ridge and some knobs have drier-loving scrub and forest plant communities. The terrain is steep in places and several seeps and small wetland areas can be found both in the forest and in the open but there is not a lot of open water, just one large pool in a fold in the top of the ridge south of Sumner Brown Road. The BioBlitz area is bounded by the Mass. line in the north, Wrentham Road to the west, and the Pawtucket Water Supply Board’s watershed preserve to the east.