Las Vegas is turning Floyd Lamb Park at Tule Springs into a giant open-air science lab for a day, inviting families to help catalog the desert oasis's plants, pollinators and wildlife during the Fourth Annual Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz on September 12. The free event runs from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and waives the park's usual entry fee, with food trucks, games, prizes and a bingo card built around spotting local species.
The BioBlitz is Las Vegas's local chapter of a much bigger campaign. According to the City of Las Vegas, the day coincides with Hummingbird Day and invites participants to explore the park's trails and ponds while documenting what they find. Nationally, the Parks for Pollinators BioBlitz is organized by the National Recreation and Park Association in partnership with The Scotts Miracle-Gro Foundation, drawing more than 120 parks departments, zoos and local organizations across the country each September to track biodiversity, per the National Recreation and Park Association.
Locally, last year's event proved just how much data casual parkgoers can generate. Participants logged more than 750 environmental observations at Floyd Lamb Park during the 2025 BioBlitz, with over 600 of those verified as “Research Grade” scientific data on the iNaturalist platform, the city notes. That citizen-science pipeline has real reach: biodiversity photos uploaded during BioBlitz events are checked by the iNaturalist community and folded into the Global Biodiversity Information Facility, a global database that has supported more than 7,000 published scientific studies on climate and ecosystems, according to Middlesex County, New Jersey's parks department, which runs its own version of the event.
New This Year: A Plant Swap Alongside The Bingo
This year's BioBlitz introduces a plant swap, letting participants trade plants, seeds or gardening supplies with neighbors. Attendees can also reserve a spot for the event ahead of time, then spend the day working through BioBlitz bingo, playing games and documenting local plants, pollinators and wildlife around the grounds. The event takes place at the park's address, 9200 Tule Springs Road, in northwest Las Vegas.
A roster of regional wildlife and conservation groups is turning out to staff the event. This year's BioBlitz brings together the Nevada Department of Wildlife, Nevada Division of Forestry, Red Rock Audubon Society, Master Gardeners of Nevada and Protectors of Tule Springs Fossil Beds, according to a City of Las Vegas bulletin distributed through GovDelivery. The Nevada Division of Forestry's presence is fitting: the agency runs its Las Vegas Conservation Nursery inside Floyd Lamb Park, a facility that cultivates native and desert-adapted plants used by public agencies to rehabilitate altered Mojave Desert ecosystems, as detailed by Corrections1.
Why Hummingbirds Matter In A Desert Valley
The Hummingbird Day tie-in isn't incidental. While most hummingbird species that pass through Nevada are seasonal migrants, Anna's and Costa's hummingbirds live year-round in the Las Vegas Valley, leaning heavily on urban gardens and supplemental food sources during winter months when natural nectar dries up, according to Pop's Birding. That makes urban green spaces like Floyd Lamb Park more than recreational amenities — they're functioning habitat for pollinators that never leave the valley.
A Desert Oasis With Deep Roots
Floyd Lamb Park itself spans 680 acres and features four fishing ponds stocked seasonally with rainbow trout and channel catfish, alongside resident populations of peacocks, ducks and geese, per Travel Nevada. The grounds also hold the historic Tule Springs Ranch, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1981, which includes an original 1917 adobe hut and buildings that served in the 1940s as a resort for out-of-state residents establishing Nevada residency for divorces, according to the City of Las Vegas. The park borders the 22,600-acre Tule Springs Fossil Beds National Monument, where ancient spring deposits preserve fossils of Ice Age megafauna including mammoths, ground sloths and American camels alongside evidence of prehistoric human activity, according to the National Park Service.
For anyone planning to visit Floyd Lamb Park outside BioBlitz hours, standard vehicle entry costs $6 and must be paid by credit or debit card, since the gatehouse no longer accepts cash, per the city. Visitors without a card can pay cash in advance at city community centers. During the BioBlitz itself, that entry fee is waived entirely.
Floyd Lamb Park has drawn top billing among Las Vegas parks in past rankings, and the city has used the grounds for other free community gatherings, including a Family Spring Fling earlier this year. The park has also made headlines for less celebratory reasons, including community concern in 2024 over water quality and wildlife deaths at its ponds, and a chase after an escaped exotic bird was spotted nearby earlier this year.
