Per Email from Harry LeGrand

Fellow biologists and nature lovers:

I am proud to announce the opening of a new website — an umbrella website called the North Carolina Biodiversity Project, which serves as the home for a number of existing websites on taxonomic groups of animals found in North Carolina, as well as a home for lists/checklists of a large number of taxonomic groups of animals, as well.  Its URL is:

On the homepage, under Taxonomic Groups you can click on a number of “Websites”, as well as several additional “Checklists”, for various taxonomic groups.  You might already have bookmarked existing sites such as Mammals, Butterflies, and Dragonflies and Damselflies.  The Moths website has only recently opened, as has the Hemipteran Hoppers.  The Grasshoppers, Crickets, and Katydids site is still under construction, though a Checklist is available.  Checklists for Amphibians and Reptiles, plus Birds, is also available on the site.

You will also see a number of Related Links on the bottom of the homepage.  These links to other existing websites (not part of the NCBP) should help you learn more about the names, statuses, ranges, and other information about the animals of North Carolina.

A Vascular Plants website is currently being developed and will be uploaded onto the NCBP website in the next month or two, though much work still needs to be done with the plant list (as it contains roughly 4,000 taxa!).  More details on this list will be presented when it goes online.  New checklists will soon be uploaded on groups such as Freshwater Fishes, Coastal/Marine Fishes, Freshwater Mussels, Snails/Gastropods, Crayfishes, and additional taxonomic groups.

So, take a look at the new NCBP site, bookmark it, and use it as an umbrella site so that you can more easily get to the array of existing websites and checklists of the animals of the state.

Steve Hall is the lead biologist of the NCBP and its “founder”, plus the primarily author of the moth website.  Tom Howard and I have authored a number of the sites, though there are seven other current group members who have participated in developing (writing and/or editing) the existing sites.  We can accept new group members, as long as they are authorities on a particular group of organisms and are willing to work on creating a new website (or checklist) or maintaining the ones that already exist (including the upcoming vascular plants website).

Enjoy the site!

Harry LeGrand

retired, and former Zoologist of the NC Natural Heritage Program