In 2021, the Farmscape Ecology Program together with Hawthorne Valley Farm itself began work on a report about the Farm’s biodiversity – which species occur here? how do they interact with agriculture? where are the biodiversity conservation ‘hot spots’? This project involved detailed field observations together with a review of past data.
The report on this work, drafted in November of 2022, is largely organized by taxon. It includes sections on plants, birds, butterflies, dragonflies, fish, bats, amphibians, turtles and other creatures. Each section summarizes what we know about those creatures at Hawthorne Valley, and outlines how their conservation has influenced current Farm management and how it might do so in the future.
While this report is highly farm-specific, we hope it illustrates the work that Hawthorne Valley Farm has already been doing for conservation and perhaps provides an example of how other farms could approach their own role in their own landscape.