Natural Heritage New Mexico

Joined: Aug 24, 2023 Last Active: Oct 4, 2024 iNaturalist

Natural Heritage New Mexico (NHNM) serves the people of New Mexico in their efforts to effectively manage and conserve their unique, diverse, and valuable biological resources. We perform conservation biology research in the context of global change, enhance conservation literacy and training, and are a portal for acquiring and disseminating biodiversity conservation information for New Mexico and the Southwest.

NHNM staff, in cooperation with scientists and experts throughout the state, have identified New Mexico's most vulnerable plants, animals, and ecosystems. Information on the biology, conservation status, and individual locations or "occurrences" of each element (including verified observations from iNaturalist) is systematically collected. Each of these rare and endangered species and plant communities is assigned a global and state conservation status rank, according to an objective set of criteria established by the Association for Biodiversity Information. Once identified, these rare elements of biodiversity are "tracked" in NHNMs New Mexico Conservation Information System (NMCIS).

Our program is housed within the Museum of Southwestern Biology and the Biology Department of the University of New Mexico. A major strength of NHNM is our participation in a nationwide database network of biodiversity information as a member of the NatureServe™ network, linking databases from Natural Heritage Programs and Conservation Data Centers in 50 states, 10 Canadian provinces, and 12 Latin American countries.

For more information, visit our website at https://nhnm.unm.edu/.

Check out our conservation tools at https://nhnm.unm.edu/data.

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