Our most popular event of the year is coming up this summer! Join IAE friends, staff and supporters in celebrating native species by taking a bite out of some of those invaders to our native ecosystems.

We are excited to announce this year's Invasive Species Cookoff will be held on August 26th from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. at Common Fields in Corvallis, Oregon.

There will be live music, raffles, and games! In 2023, the Cook-off Contest will feature professional food cart chefs cooking up invasive species and vying for the People’s Choice Award!

The Invasive Species Cookoff is an event to remember, with a community dinner that features all-too-common invasive plants and animals. Guests are frequently surprised that well-known foods are both edible and invasive, usurping resources from our native ecosystems.

This awareness-raising is at the heart of this annual fundraiser for the restoration, research and education work of IAE. Each year is more fun than the last with live music, food and beverages in a festival-like ambience! Click here to watch a great video involving frog-gigging and past Cook-Offs on Oregon Field Guide. Thank you, OPB.

Are you interested in cooking up a dish of your own which incorporates invasive species? This year, we will be hosting an amateur chef contest at Common Fields, and see whose flavors carry the judges favor!

REGISTER your dish with us through a simple online form here, and save the date for August 26 to enter your dish at the competition. We can't wait to see what you come up with! Please visit our Invasive species harvest guidelines and links to learn more. More specific information on individual invasive species here.

When plants and animals are introduced to areas without their natural enemies, they can crowd out our native species. The U.S. spends over $120 billion annually on their control. We raise awareness of these species in a deliciously fun way that features invasive species.

Some of the benefits of sponsorship include:

Give us a call at (541) 753-3099 or reach out to info@appliedeco.org for more details!

This summer in Oregon, you are invited to join the Institute for Applied Ecology and the Confederated Tribes of the Grand Ronde to help restore prairie habitat at a First Foods Harvest Area in Champoeg State Heritage Area. Land conversion and degradation in the Pacific Northwest has led to a loss of over 99% of historical prairie habitat, including culturally significant species. You can help us restore indigenous First Foods in native prairie habitat, while contributing to the recovery of the land!

RSVP to Evan Lasley at evanlasley@appliedeco.org if you would like to join this important restoration event. All are welcome! Exact location will be provided on confirmation. A restroom is available on site, and limited carpooling from Corvallis is available.

The NW Plant Materials Program’s seed collection season is well underway! This year, our seed collection program is collecting 78 species for 8 projects, most of which will be used to start production fields or plugs for restoration.

We make two types of collections for production: site-specific collections to keep hyper-local genetics in produced seed (e.g., Marys Peak) or Willamette Valley collections to increase the genetic diversity in the produced seed (e.g. regional seed partnerships), a strategy for creating climate-resilient plant populations.

The growing season at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonville, OR is well underway. Two crews of incarcerated women take care of the plants that are cultivated for two endangered butterflies and one charismatic megafauna (the greater sage-grouse). The yard full of English plantain that the Plantago crew manages carefully is healthy and ready to be consumed by Taylor’s Checkerspot Butterfly larvae. The early blue violets grown for the Oregon Silverspot butterfly larvae are being fertilized by the Viola crew to prepare for the harvest at the end of this month. The sagebrush grown for the greater sage-grouse are tucked into their cone-tainers with plenty of light and moisture and should continue germinating for the next couple of weeks.

Learn about a vital, local restoration site and natural area from IAE ecologists and naturalists. The Natural Area includes native Oak groves, riparian woodland, upland prairies and wetlands, and has been in the process of restoration since 2012. Herbert Farm is also home to many native species, some of which are threatened or endangered. RSVP to evanlasley@appliedeco.org for more details.

We are currently hiring for a Full Time Executive Director as part of the planned transition of our Founder, Tom Kaye, into his new role with IAE: Chief Science Officer.

We are also hiring for an Ecological Education Coordinator II based in Corvallis, Oregon. Full job descriptions and application details can be found in the links on our website at www.appliedeco.org/jobs.

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IAE Board of Directors