The SRJC Campus Biodiversity Initiative is a collaborative endeavor between faculty, staff, students and community partners. Together, we seek to increase awareness of and deepen our knowledge of the species found on our campus and engage with campus biodiversity through course-based learning, stewardship, and research.

With this website, we aim to:

• Provide information about the species found on campus, including species lists and photographs
• Highlight past and current student research, including internships, independent study, and course-based research
• Provide links to resources that promote urban biodiversity, including how community members can increase biodiversity in their own urban landscapes 
• Create a space to highlight engagement with campus biodiversity by SRJC writers and artists

Why Care About Campus Biodiversity?

As development increasingly expands into wild areas, the future of biodiversity will depend not just on conservation of species in more remote wild areas, but also on our ability to provide habitat in our cities. Cities can provide valuable habitat for the native plants, insects, reptiles, amphibians, small mammals, and birds that make up most of a region's total biodiversity. 

Cities have been shown to harbor high levels of native biodiversity. For example, one study of 110 cities found that almost all regional native plant and bird species were retained in cities, though native plants were found at only 25% of their original abundance, and birds were found at only 8% of their original abundance. 

Through the SRJC Campus Biodiversity Initiative, we will begin the task of documenting the biodiversity within our campuses, learn what has been retained, what has been lost, and hopefully, we can begin the work of restoring native plant diversity that will support the native insects and birds that depend upon them.