Entomology Instructor Partners With Historic Cane Hill for Second 'Bug Crawl' Educational Bioblitz

David Collins

Logo for Historic Cane Hill Bug Crawl Event

In 2021 the folks at Historic Cane Hill, an amazingly restored historic community roughly 20 minutes southwest of Fayetteville, reached out to U of A entomologist Austin Jones to survey their site for insect and arthropod life. Their hope was to generate an educational display of what was found for their Visitors Center, but what came from that initial meeting metamorphosized into something more — the idea to host an event where community members could become involved in the collection and cataloging of insects and arthropods found at Historic Cane Hill.

David Collins, the public programs manager for Cane Hill, took this idea one step further by brainchilding the concept of a family-friendly version of the classic pub crawl. Instead of bars and pubs, participants visit different habitats while exploring the grounds. The area encompassed by Historic Cane Hill includes wonderful natural areas of many habitat types typical to Northwest Arkansas, including limestone bluffs, old fields, forested patches with trees old enough to have witnessed the Trail of Tears, and Jordan Creek, a first-order Ozark stream. Instead of imbibing beverages at each stop of the crawl, folks could visit an educational waypoint relating to insects and other arthropods and attempt to catch some from the habitat. After visiting the stops, participants could turn in their bugs to recieve prizes. The Ozarks Bug Crawl had officially been born! 

Now in its second year, The Ozarks Bug Crawl is planned to be bigger and better than the inaugural! This event will begin at 10 a.m. on Saturday, Aug. 19, with a brief presentation by Jones on the goals of the Bug Crawl, ways to collect and what might be found. A limited number of nets and containers for bug collecting will be provided to participants to explore the stops on the crawl at their leisure.

This year, some of these stops  have been set up with community partners from the NWACC Living Laboratory, Amazeum and Diana Frittilary Project. Deep South BBQ will be on hand to handle afternoon hunger, and participants can turn in their bugs for identification and prizes anytime before 2 p.m. Jones will also be demonstrating pinning and curation of insects collected last year.

To register for the event, please visit historiccanehillar.org. See you there!