Originally published in Outpost Magazine

Who knew where the wild things are. It all started with a centipede, next thing, hundreds of botanists, ornithologists, ichthyologists and others converged on New York's Central Park for its first ever bio blitz.

As visitors clicked their camaras at the sight of the Empire State Building, and Wall Street gurus delved into market strategy over Starbucks fuel, another type of exploration was being undertaken in New York's urban jungle. This past June hundreds of scientists, volunteers and amateurs joined together in the first BioBlitz of Central Park's 150-year history.

"It's a 24-hour snapshot of all the species we can find," says Suzi Zetkus, chair of the Explorers Club Conservation Committee and event organizer. "One of the goals is to let people know that you don't have to go to tropical rainforests for biodiversity, it's right there in your backyard."

The tallying began at noon on Friday, June 27, and as scuba divers submerged themselves in the murky depths of the park's lakes, novice and expert field hands combed the rest, looking for birds, insects, fungi and everything in between. In addition to logging as many species as possible, this was also about education. "It's a social and educational awareness activity," says Dr. Brian Boom, a tropical botanist at Columbia University. Boom, with the aid of botany manuals, hand lenses, plastic bags and plant presses, led small groups in three four-hour sessions into the green heart of the 843-acre world-famous park that an estimated 20 million people visit annually.

With the help of Microsoft, who supplied computer tablets and specially designed software, participants were able to make entries and transfer data immediately to a central database. For Boom, who thought getting a waterproof paper notebook was high tech, this was impressive. Participants logged 838 different species in a 24-hour period. Who would have thought that the catalyst for such an event was a new discovery only half an inch in length, with 41 pairs of legs.

"Its name is Nannarrup hoffmani," says Elizabeth Johnson from the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation at the American Museum of Natural History - one of the 10 partners involved in the event. Found recently among leaf litter in Central Park as part of a woodlands restoration effort, it's a genus of centipede never before seen, and reportedly the first new species discovered in the park in more than a century. "When the discovery of the centipede was made, and it became public knowledge, people were really intrigued," says Johnson. "Who would have known that a new species would have been found right in the middle of a big city."

This turned out to be the first of many unique finds. The BioBlitz list included at least one interesting organism that scientists were surprised to uncover. "We love tardigrades, they are microscopic organisms that can live in the most extreme conditions," says Zetkus with enthusiasm. "These would be the organisms we send into space." Tardigrades are aquatic life forms that are resistant to vacuums, boiling alcohol and pressures six times greater than the bottom of the deepest ocean, and can survive in -272.95 degrees Celsius for 20 hours and -200 degrees Celsius for 20 months.

With the first park BioBlitzed in Washington in 1996, New York has now added itself to the growing list of American and international cities striving to show that biodiversity and environmental consciousness should start at home. "It's really important to see what's there," says Zetkus, "so you can determine the health of the environment." Ten years from now if cities continue to hold events like this, they will be able to see the effects of pollution on the natural landscape in large urban centres.

Canada has already joined the BioBlitz movement; Ottawa's Vincent Massey Park, which has both landscaped and semi-wild areas and borders the Rideau River, was the first place north of the border to be scoured for species in 1998. About 20 specialists took part and over 700 species were logged in one day. Since then, events have been held by the David Suzuki Foundation in Vancouver, BC, by the Kingston Field Foundation Naturalist Club in Kingston, Ontario, by the Rainy River First Nations in Fort Frances, Ontario and the Canadian Biodiversity Institute.

For the Explorers Club the next round of urban discovery will take place at a BioBlitz scheduled for St. Louis in 2005. For Boom, who has lived in New York for the past 22 years, and had never really spent much time in Central Park, it was an eyeopener. "What was new to me was finding out the diversity of plants that are in there. I had never really thought about it before."