The Natural Heritage & Endangered Species Program maintains a list of
all documented MESA-listed species observations in the Commonwealth.
Please select a town if you would like to see a table showing which
listed species have been observed in that town. The selected town will
also be highlighted on the map. Alternatively you can specify either
the Common Name or Scientific Name of a species to see it's distribution
on the map and table showing the towns it has been observed in. Clicking
on a column header in the table will sort the column. Clicking again
on the same column heading will reverse the sort order.
The Town List and Species Viewer will be updated at regular intervals
as new data is accepted and entered into the NHESP database.
This field represents the most recent observation of that species in
a town. However, because they are rare, many MESA-listed species are
difficult to detect even when they are present. Natural Heritage does
not have the resources to be able to conduct methodical species surveys
in each town on a regular basis. Therefore, the fact that the 'Most
Recent Observation' recorded for a species may be several years old
should not be interpreted as meaning that the species no longer occurs
in a town. However, Natural Heritage regards records older than twenty-five
years historic.
