Community outreach

I recently had the opportunity along with two of my classmates, Mariah and Isabella, to meet with the Shenandoah Valley Discovery Museum to discuss working with the museum to cultivate their native plant gardens and develop kid-friendly activities for their summer programs. Thanks to our previous communication with the directors and staff members, this meeting was a great success! We will be taking our entire ecology class to plant their gardens later this year. We will also be developing informational posters to display with the native plant gardens, to teach children how pollinators and native species rely on each other.

My classmates and I proposed the idea of creating a few kid-friendly infographics about the importance of native pollinators, which would fit cohesively into their honey bee exhibit. Native pollinators are especially important for the ecosystem because they have adapted to the environment, including coevolving with native plants and adapting to climate conditions, and have developed specific niches that other pollinators cannot always fill. The Center for Biological Diversity has a web page describing the specific impact and importance of native pollinators, which has been a great resource for this project. My class has also utilized the app iNaturalist to photograph and identify plants on our campuses. Please check out these sources to identify some of the pollinators in your own backyard!