Things That Help
July 12, 2008
Over the last week I’ve been digging through maps, reports, and emails and running up the minutes on my cell phone trying to find areas where it may be possible to capture the endangered Indiana Bat. I received the basics along with the project protocol -a report noting the capture points of two Indiana bats last year, a small map with the bats’ capture location and small access road noted, and an address with two phone numbers.
I don’t know how people went about things in the past… but there are a few things that have helped me tremendously in securing the permission of several landowners to work in what looks like some really great areas. I thought I would post them here.
- www.maps.live.com - Ok, so on the surface it just looks like Microsoft is trying to keep up with Google… but try the “birds eye view” around a major US city… it’s a little scary… but very helpful if your looking good bat hangouts.
- www.whitepages.com - How do you look in a phone book you’ll never have in a place you’ll never live for people you’ve never heard of before…? Thank goodness for this web service… The reverse phone # look-up works too… it’s occasionally even correct.
- water.usgs.gov - Did you know you can get real-time data on stream/lake/river levels… maybe it doesn’t make much difference to you… but it’s pretty helpful if you plan on standing in the middle of one.
- maps.yahoo.com - I know everyone knows about online directions already -but they can be incredibly helpful if your constantly heading to places you’ve never heard of before. The reason yahoo is my personal choice at the moment is their maps seem to load much faster than others and I like the way you can just click and drag to adjust the desired path of travel. But a word of caution here -trying to follow online generated directions through a major downtown area can leave you a little turned around… use with adequate backup (sometimes called a paper map).
