Registration opens for the fifth Carrizo Colloquium
This year’s event features a post-conference hike
– The 2022 Carrizo Colloquium will take place on Friday, May 6 at the Atascadero Library’s Polin Community Room from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
The event features presentations on contemporary field science and research on the diverse flora and fauna of the Carrizo Plain, which is the largest single native grassland remaining in California and is located in San Luis Obispo County.
Topics this year include monitoring of endangered species at the California Valley Solar Ranch and Topaz Solar Farms, the proposed expansion of the Carrizo Plain National Monument, management strategies to combat habitat loss and a presentation and book signing by Chuck Graham for his book Carrizo Plain: Where the Mountains Meet the Grasslands. The winners of the Carrizo Plain Photography Contest will also be announced. Tom Maloney, Executive Director of the Ojai Valley Land Conservancy, will be the event’s emcee.
New this year will be a post-conference, docent-led hike on May 7 focusing on the geology and the history of the plain. Hikers will visit the newly expanded Goodwin Education Center, observe and learn about Painted Rock and other Native American and early European history of the area, check out Soda Lake and its unusual clay dunes, visit Wallace Creek offset of the San Andreas Fault, check out some old Mormon tea scrub stands and look for remnants of the old shoreline of the Pleistocene Lake Carrizo.
Anybody interested may visit http://www.carrizocolloquium.org/ to register online.
For more information, call 805-548-0597 or email [email protected].