In 1947, the United States Atomic Energy Commision selected 550 square acres of land in central Washington to serve the war effort by producing plutonium for the Manhattan Project. The large acreage chosen for the site is made up of shrub-steppe habitat, the dominant type of land in the arid northwest. This area was closed to the public, and has remained largely untouched by agriculture and other development for 50 years. This has resulted in the preservation of a large tract of shrub-steppe habitat that has become extremey rare in North America. At the end of the cold war, much of the nation's resources that were invested in defense became re-directed, and this large area of land that had been top secret is now gaining a new role.

The Nature Conservancy, under the auspices of the Department of Energy, conducted a biodiversity survey of plants, mammals, reptiles and amphibians, birds, and insects between 1994 to 1998. The James Museum personell have enjoyed a prominant role in this undertaking, and have contributed significantly to our understanding of the Hanford entomo-fauna. Chris Looney has conducted pitfall trap surveys on the site since March 1998, which have generated particularly refined seasonal data for the families Tenebrionidae and Carabidae, as well as other Coleoptera and Araneae. Blacklight trapping has revealed much about resident Neuroptera, especially the Myrmeleontidae. The Lepidoptera have also been well documented, and many of the new species from the site are in moth families. In all, the study has generated 142 state records, discovered 43 species previously unknown to science, and added greatly to our knowledge of shrub-steppe insects. See the resources page for a list of publications resulting from the biodiversity project.