12 grants awarded for conservation, research efforts in Pa.

The state’s Department of Conservation and Natural Resources last week awarded grants to several individuals to help support field research and other projects.

The department said the grants are awarded through DCNR’s Wild Resource Conservation Program, which began in 1982 to encourage and support research to conserve Pennsylvania’s diverse native wildlife resources, including bird and mammal species, amphibians and reptiles, insects and wild plants.

Grants, which ranged from nearly $8,000 to more than $45,000 and totaled nearly $360,000, were awarded to the following:

• Rachel Goad, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Allegheny County, for implementing a recovery plan for an endangered plant, the Canby’s mountain lover, $9,468.

• Anna Johnson, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Allegheny County; for an assessment of pollination services to an endangered plant, the white monkshood, $7,905;

• Sarah Kuebbing, University of Pittsburgh, Allegheny County; for assessment of yellow oak-redbud woodlands in the Allegheny plateau, $23,876;

• Betsy Leppo, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Allegheny County; digitizing a legacy slide collection of dragonflies and damselflies of Pennsylvania, $15,000;

• Scott Schuette, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy, Allegheny County; development of a comprehensive checklist for ferns and mosses in Pennsylvania, $28,432;

• Charles Eichelberger, Western Pennsylvania Conservancy/ Shaver’s Creek Environmental Center; Allegheny and Huntingdon counties; for surveys for Pennsylvania’s cave-dwelling crustaceans, $36,415;

• Jean-Francois Therrien, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary Association, Berks County; for efforts to save the American kestrel, a species of falcon, $40,560;

• Brandon Ruhe, the Mid-Atlantic Center for Herpetology and Conservation, Berks County; for assessing fire management impacts of rare reptile species in Pennsylvania barren communities, $48,317;

• Sarah Nilsson and Eric Burkhart, Penn State University, Centre County; to determine how “wild” is Pennsylvania wild ginseng, $45,419;

• Jay Stauffer, Penn State University, Centre County; for an assessment of a rare fish, the Chesapeake logperch, $45,000;

• Julie Ellis, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia; for the effects of rodent poisons on carnivores in Pennsylvania, $26,416; and

• Zachary Loughman, West Liberty University, West Virginia; for a distribution and conservation assessment of the devil crayfish in Pennsylvania, $30,403.