During this season of gratitude, the talented Louie Schwartzberg and Nimo have summed up our feelings nicely in
film
and
song
.
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Happy Thanksgiving, Pollenteers!
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Without the leadership of thousands of passionate pollenteers across the nation, there would be no Bee City USA or Bee Campus USA program.
We want to express our gratitude to each person, community and campus for spreading awareness of the vital role that pollinators play in making our planet bloom and fruit, and expanding and connecting healthy pollinator habitat.
We also want to thank the pollinators! So, this Thanksgiving as you scoot that cranberry sauce onto your bite of turkey, thank a bumble bee. And when you savor that pumpkin pie, thank a squash bee. If it’s served a la mode, thank a leafcutter bee for pollinating the dairy cow’s alfalfa. If you chase it with a cup of coffee, thank a tropical stingless bee or fly. You might even consider capping off the evening with a mead wine toast to our little striped friend, the honey bee.
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By Justin Wheeler, The Xerces Society
Justin Wheeler previously worked for the Xerces Society managing websites and social media, and providing graphic design, writing, and content development. As a Penn State Extension Master Gardener, Justin is engaged with education and outreach to his community on a range of gardening-related subjects such as sustainable and pollinator-friendly gardening practice
s.
Besides
providing the right plants
, and
protecting your garden from pesticides
, one of the next most valuable things you can do to support pollinators and other invertebrates is to provide them with the winter cover they need in the form of fall leaves and standing dead plant material. Frequently however, this is the hardest pill for gardeners to swallow.
It may be habitual, a matter of social conditioning, or a holdover of outdated gardening practices from yesteryear—but for whatever reason, we just can’t seem to help ourselves from wanting to tidy up the garden at the end of the season—raking, mowing, and blowing away a bit of nature that is essential to the survival of moths, butterflies, snails, spiders, and dozens of arthropods. That’s why this year—and every year—we are making the case for leaving the leaves and offering input on what to do with them. Read on!
Must Love Leaves
While monarch migration is a well-known phenomenon, it’s not the norm when it comes to butterflies. In fact, the vast majority of butterflies and moths overwinter in the landscape as an egg, caterpillar, chrysalis, or adult. In all but the warmest climates, these butterflies use leaf litter for winter cover. Great spangled fritillary and wooly bear caterpillars tuck themselves into a pile of leaves for protection from cold weather and predators. Red-banded hairstreaks lay their eggs on fallen oak leaves, which become the first food of the caterpillars when they emerge. Luna moths and swallowtail butterflies disguise their cocoons and chrysalis as dried leaves, blending in with the “real” leaves. There are many such examples.
Beyond butterflies, bumble bees also rely on leaf litter for protection. At the end of summer, mated queen bumble bees burrow only an inch or two into the earth to hibernate for winter. An extra thick layer of leaves is welcome protection from the elements. There are so many animals that live in leaves: spiders, snails, worms, beetles, millipedes, mites, and more—that support the chipmunks, turtles, birds, and amphibians that rely on these insects for food.
It’s easy to see how important leaves really are to sustaining the natural web of life.
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Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count
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This is the 21st year of the Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count. The count runs from November 10 through December 2.
Sadly, monarch populations in the western United States have declined even more than the eastern United States. However, monarch researchers wouldn't be able to track their status without the help of citizen scientists.
Want to help count this year? Visit the
website
to learn how.
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Photo: Phyllis Stiles, Xerces Society
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Xerces Events Coming To Your Area
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Xerces has at least one pollinator conservation presentation or workshop somewhere in the country nearly every week. Check our
Events page
for details. Here's an example,
December 9th – 11th, 2018
MN Association for Soil and Water Conservation Districts (MASWCD) Annual Convention, Bloomington, MN
This is an annual convention for soil and water conservation district employees, state and federal agency staff, and representatives from counties, cities, and townships. The convention offers business meetings, updates on current issues, technical training sessions, and a trade show. Karin Jokela (Xerces Society) and Dan Shaw (Board of Water and Soil Conservation – BWSR) will be offering a two-part training session on December 11th that covers the basics of pollinator habitat planning, state and federal financial assistance programs, and implementation tools.
To receive regular Xerces Events announcements, sign up for Xerces's E-News on the
Events page
.
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Photo: Queen butterfly (Danaus
gilippus
) by Gayenell Rainwater
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Thanks to the Professional Grounds Management Society for allowing us to republish this article by Gaynell Rainwater, grounds manager for Abilene Christian University. The article first appeared in t
he Society's September/October newsletter,
Grounds Management Forum
,
How many of you have ever heard of a Bee Campus? If you listen to the news at all, in the last few years you have no doubt heard about the decline in the monarch migration. You may have heard of Colony Collapse in honeybees? You may have heard about the fact that many species of bees are becoming extinct? All pollinators are facing global decline due to habitat loss, chemical exposure, or poor nutrition. We, as human beings, are causing this decline. You have the power to reverse this decline. Simple changes, in the way you landscape and what plants you choose can have a profound effect on not only pollinators, but on people.
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How many of you have a pollinator garden on campus or choose native species for your landscaping? Then you too, can become an accredited Bee Campus. If I may, I would like to share our story…. While I would like to say that becoming a Bee Campus was intentional, and I would love to take the credit, saying it was my diligence and forward thinking, seeking to forge a name in sustainable environmental practices, I have to admit it was almost an accident. The opportunity came about due to other circumstances. First, I would like to talk about the monarch butterfly a little bit because this is what actually led to us becoming a Bee Campus. About 3 years ago, I heard a speaker at ULMA (the University Landscape Manager Association) meeting. Thea Junt, from University of Texas at Dallas, gave a talk on monarch way stations. She is a very motivating speaker, had great slides, and best of all showed a project that students would be interested in. I came back, very determined for Abilene Christian to have a monarch way station. It started out very simply. We chose Hunter Welcome Center because of its sprawling porch and the fact that we have many visitors here every year, we wanted it to be visible. We had a couple of small beds that had needed a makeover, due to the fact, that many of the plants chosen for that area were not suitable for our soils, climate, or effluent water.
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Monarch Joint Venture (MJV) and Xerces have teamed up to present a
webinar
on November 27: "Where are the Monarchs and Milkweeds? Crowd-sourcing, modeling, and surveying across the West"
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From a few hundred records to nearly 50,000, over the last few years, the Xerces Society and partners have built an interactive, publicly accessible database of monarch and milkweed records across the western U.S. They use crowd-sourcing and existing databases as well as conducting coordinated field surveys and engaging citizen scientists to quickly fill information gaps about where and when monarchs and their habitat are found. The database has already been used to create and improve habitat suitability models for monarchs across seven states which are being incorporated into many conservation planning and monitoring efforts. Other uses of the database include the creation of region-specific nectar guides, a better understanding of where to (and not to) plant milkweed, and influencing the prioritization of on-the-ground restoration efforts. Help us keep gathering data and putting it to good use for western monarch conservation!
Presenters:
Emma Pelton, Conservation Biologist and Candace Fallon, Senior Conservation Biologist, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation
More Webinars!
Bee Campus USA - The University of Illinois at Chicago's Energy Resources Center also has a regular webinar series. The most recent webinar was "
Pollinator Habitat in Practice: Case Studies from Rural Electric Cooperatives." You can watch this excellent webinar as well as others
here
.
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Our National Network Is Growing!
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Photo: University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Pollinatarium Students
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The best part of the Bee City USA network is that we are teaching and learning from one another how to mobilize our communities for pollinator conservation.
Welcome to the most recent affiliates to join our network--Gastonia, Winston-Salem and Appalachian State University (North Carolina); Newport (Oregon); Carson City (Nevada); Beaumont and University of Texas in Dallas (Texas); Norcross (Georgia);
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California State University Channel Islands and California State University Northridge (California); University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (Illinois); and Pennsylvania State University and Dickinson College (Pennsylvania).
Check the current
Bee City
and
Bee Campus
pages to see the most up-to-date lists of our 135 affiliates in 36 states.
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Missed our last newsletter? No worries! You can read it
here
.
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Bee City USA, An Initiative of the Xerces Society | 503-395-5367| beecityusa@xerces.org| www.beecityusa.org
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