Laura Taylor works for the West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District. In this episode, find what happens when a local government wants to do something to help pollinator health.
As a conservation technician and an educational coordinator, Laura created an innovative program to monitor wild pollinators around restoration sites.
Learn how she got the monitoring program off the ground, what you can do for landowners wanting to help create pollinator habitats, and how they teach people to identify pollinators.
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“What can we do to encourage people to convert their monoculture lawns into something more diverse that will support a myriad of wildlife including pollinators and beneficial insects?” – Laura Taylor
Show Notes:
- How wild pollinators fit into the mission of the West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District
- Some of the biggest challenges to pollinators in this area
- How they work with land owners to set priorities for conservation and pollinator habitat
- What initially drew her interest in pollinators
- How they build their Meadowscaping Handbook
- How their pollinator monitoring program works
- What the program does to educate landowners
- How long it takes to teach someone to be able to identify insects and bees
- What they learned from teaching people about bees in the first year of their program
- What the future holds for the pollinator monitoring program
“Our pollinator monitoring, citizen science program sounds like a data collection program, but the main inspiration for it was the education benefit it would have for participants.” – Laura Taylor
Links Mentioned:
- Attracting Native Pollinators: The Xerces Society Guide to Conserving North American Bees and Butterflies and Their Habitat
- The Meadowscaping Handbook (PDF)
- West Multnomah Soil and Water Conservation District
- Laura mentioned this bee at the end of the episode. Can you tell what kind of bee it is?
