COLUMBUS JUNCTION, Iowa — From the birds and the bees to the butterflies and beavers in between, wildlife was on full display at Indian Slough just outside of Columbus Junction, Iowa.
The slough in Louisa County was randomly chosen for the 2023 Iowa Multiple Species Inventory and Monitoring Project. Throughout the survey, 231 species were recorded.
MSIM is a collaborative effort between the Iowa Department of Natural Resources and Iowa State University. It's funded by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The state is too big to survey wildlife in each slough, park and prairie. Instead, this survey is standardized and takes a snapshot of each randomly-selected site which researchers can then use to make inferences on larger projects. Essentially, it's a deep-dive snapshot into one location that can give scientists a baseline database to go off of.
"By using a random selection of areas to include and by not choosing areas specifically because species of interest were known to occur there historically, inferences can be made for more areas than are surveyed," the DNR wrote in a press release.
Here's what the survey found in Louisa County. For a full list, with photos, you can click here.
- 12 fish species, including three unidentified shad and shiner species
- 30 reptile species, including four unidentified frog, turtle and snake species
- 12 mammal species, including two unidentified shrew and unknown mammal species
- 108 bird species, including multiple unidentified and/or unknown species
- 31 butterfly species, including six unidentified skipper, nymph, sulfur and blue species
- 38 dragonfly and damselfly species, including seven unidentified skimmer, damselfly and clubtail species
Louisa County Conservation's interim director, Lana Artz-Mccomb, joined The Current on News 8 to discuss the importance of a survey such as this as well as what the findings at Indian Slough told researchers. You can view the full interview in the above video.
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