Pollinator Party (during Pollinator Week 2024!)

June 17-23 is Pollinator Week! To celebrate, join a Swan Lake educator to help monitor pollinator biodiversity in a re-wilded meadow on site.

Our community-led monitoring supports sensitive and threatened plant and animal species at the Nature Sanctuary. In this program, you will learn about the incredible creatures that perform pollination and how to identify them using field guides and smartphone apps. If you will have access to a smartphone during the program, we highly recommend downloading the iNaturalist and/or Seek apps in advance. We will have additional resources available for folks not planning on using a smartphone.

For more than 100 million years, insects and flowering plants have lived in harmony, with insects transporting nutritious pollen from plant to plant so that seeds are produced.

This ancient symbiotic relationship is essential for human food security and the persistence of all wildlife.

Pollinators also support healthy ecosystems that clean the air, stabilize soils, and buffer the planet from climate change. These relationships are now at risk as pollinators and plants are responding differently to cues from a warming climate.

Learn more about Pollinator Week here: https://www.pollinator.org/pollinator-week