Hi everyone, it has been a great couple months of my internship since my last blog post! Something that I have continued to work on and develop is my outreach. Over the past couple months I have tabled at various farmers markets throughout the Twin Cities. At my tables, I educate the public about the threatened and endangered pollinators here in Minnesota, and the many ways that we can help them. In late October I got to table at a Fall Festival with Prairie Restorations in Princeton, MN. There I got to meet many other organizations and people that are devoted to pollinator and prairie conservation.

Most recently, I got to partner with Franconia Sculpture Gardens in Shafer, MN for an outreach event. There a local prairie artist hosted a prairie re-seeding “dance party”. The community helped broadcast seeds onto an old turf lawn and everyone danced on the lawn to push the seeds in the ground. There I had a table to talk about Midwest pollinators, and provided pollinator activity sheets for the kids. This event was one of my favorite opportunities because everyone was simply so happy and devoted to nature. While not everyone knew each other, they still danced and worked together to help this prosperous prairie grow.

During September I participated in the last two Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (RPBB) surveys of the season. On the second to last survey I got to find my third RPBB at the MN Landscape Arboretum. I’m very thankful that I got to see three of them in the wild, and I hope to see more in the future! In September I also got to go on two travel trips with the office. My first trip was to Zion, Illinois to participate in a Region 3 conference known as the SWAP meeting. There biologists from the state and federal side met up to discuss policies and questions regarding the regions threatened and endangered species. I also got to go to Tomahawk, WI to participate in the MN-WI Ecological Services retreat. It was a great opportunity to get to know my coworkers and to learn more about the values and mission of our office.

This past month I have also been able to observe some bird banding at the MN Valley Wildlife Refuge. Along with participating in the Minnesota Bat Festival! I have been sitting in the planning meetings for the festival so it was amazing to see it finally come together! Some of my current projects involve writing up the status of species for a programmatic biological opinion and developing a literature review for the Dakota Skipper conservation guidelines. I’m excited to learn more over the next few months!