Hands-On Means Minds-On

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When learning is hands-on, it’s also “minds-on.”  Consider these words accredited to Dr. Herb True: “Tell me, and I’ll forget. Show me, and I may remember. But involve me, and I’ll understand.”

In fact, the value of hands-on learning has been understood for millennia. In his collection of philosophical writings, Xunzi, the Confucian scholar Xun Kuang wrote, “Not having heard something is not as good as having heard it; having heard it is not as good as having seen it; having seen it is not as good as knowing it; knowing it is not as good as putting it into practice.”

At WHC, our model encourages the use of hands-on, minds-on learning whenever possible. This kind of “active learning” helps you engage more deeply with the information or skill at hand. Hands-on learning stimulates all the senses, allowing you to become more fully immersed in the experience and activating more parts of the brain. This makes it easier to recall and synthesize what was learned, as demonstrated by two related 2009 studies that found doodling helped participants better remember the information conveyed during a lecture and enhanced enjoyment and engagement with the material.

Experiencing and participating in an activity first-hand also changes the way you process the information. Hands-on lessons engage learners with real-world applications for classroom concepts, helping them make meaning of these concepts and make connections with their own life. Actively engaging in educational activities therefore promotes critical thinking, problem solving, creativity and team building.

During hands-on educational activities, learning occurs on multiple levels, including visual, auditory, tactile, kinesthetic, and social. Each person may learn better in certain ways than others.  By providing experiences that utilize multiple modes of learning, you can more effectively engage as many learners as possible, creating a learning experience that is more inclusive for learners of all types.

If you’re looking for ways to incorporate hands-on education into your conservation program, WHC staff are here to help you. We can show you how to incorporate teacher-designed, hands-on curricula such as Project WILD, Project WET, and Project Learning Tree into your program, or we can even help you design your own curriculum. Get started by emailing us at strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

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Keeping Fireflies from Blinking Out for Good

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I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been seeing many fireflies in the last few summers.

Growing up, we called these little guys “lightning bugs.” I remember many summer evenings watching our backyard glow with what seemed like a million blinking little lights floating in the air.

Unfortunately, firefly populations seem to be declining in recent years. Although the reasons are not certain, they appear to be affected by light pollution, which disrupts their flashing displays for mating, as well as habitat destruction and improper pesticide use.

Like many bioluminescent species, fireflies—which are actually beetles, not flies—create this seemingly magical glow with a chemical reaction. A compound called luciferan contained in their abdomen combines with oxygen, calcium and adenosine triphosphate (ATP), and this reaction produces light. Both males and females use this display to help them find a suitable mate, and each species of firefly (of which there are 2,000 worldwide) blinks this light in a specific pattern.

In addition to their spectacular nighttime displays, fireflies are also beneficial. You may be surprised to learn that the adults of most firefly species are pollinators! With diets consisting primarily of pollen and nectar, fireflies play an important role in the propagation of many flowering plants. Their larvae are equally helpful, eating invertebrate pests like snails, slugs, worms and grubs.

Fireflies tend to thrive in habitats that are warm, humid and near standing water. A favorite habitat for the larvae especially is areas with abundant rotting wood and leaf litter along the edges of ponds and waterways. They also like forest edges, meadows and marshes.

If you want to help fireflies in your neck of the woods, here are a few tips you can incorporate into your site’s habitat management:

• Reduce the use of pesticides near firefly habitat (check out NAPPC’s Pollinator Friendly Practices for helpful guidelines on responsible pesticide use near pollinator habitat)
• If you have riparian habitat or other warm, moist habitats near water, consider management practices that encourage the presence of leaf litter and woody debris.
• Provide vegetation for adult fireflies to seek shelter in during the day, such as tall grasses, low-growing flowering plants and creepers, and shrubs. Even mowing the lawn less frequently and at a higher height can benefit fireflies, as they often rest in lawns on or near the ground.
• Plant flowering plants with bloom times throughout the growing season to make sure adult fireflies have enough nectar and pollen to feed on.
• Wherever possible, turn building lights down or off to reduce light pollution. (This will also help migrating birds, who can become confused by and collide with buildings that are lit up at night.)

If you’d like help with managing for fireflies as part of your corporate conservation program, contact WHC’s Strategy and Planning team at strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

The Importance of Pollinators

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Pollinators play a special role in native ecosystems and in managed agricultural systems. Unfortunately, pollinators such as bees, bats, butterflies and ants have slowly suffered from loss of habitat and diseases. Factors such as increased land use have guided these habitats to a floral abundance deficit and exposure to parasite and pesticides have led to local extinctions of select pollinator species across the world

Thankfully, 10 years ago, the U.S Senate took the matter of declining pollinator populations into their own hands by creating National Pollinator Week.

The goal of Pollinator Week is to raise awareness about pollinators and promote conservation of pollinator habitats at a national level. Over time, this event has grown into a worldwide celebration of the beautiful and hardworking job that animals do daily through pollination.

Approximately 1,000 of the plants grown for food, beverages, fibers and medicines need to be pollinated by animals in order to produce the goods on which we rely. In fact, one out of every three bites of food, from vegetables to fruits to edible oils, are a direct result of pollination services. In the U.S. alone, bees and other insects produce $40 billion worth of products annually through the process of pollination.

In addition to their value to agriculture, these animals also play a vital role in maintaining our ecosystems. Other wild animals rely on pollinators for the production of food sources such as wild fruits, and they benefit from the conservation of pollinator habitat. Flying from flower to flower and transferring pollen along the way, pollinators have had substantial historic, economic, social and cultural impacts in our world.

The White House’s National Strategy to Promote the Health of Honey Bees and Other Pollinators (National Strategy) was also released in May 2015 to inform public-private partnerships their necessary role to implement the Pollinator Health Task Force. The Wildlife Habitat Council has been working with businesses for 30 years to facilitate high-quality pollinator conservation projects on corporate lands and to ensure companies have taken action to protect pollinators, increase public awareness around the issue, and create pollinator-friendly habitat.

Some of the strategies presented by the National Strategy are:

  • Restore honey bee colony health to sustainable levels by 2025
  • Increase eastern monarch butterfly populations to 225 million butterflies by year 2020
  • Restore or enhance seven million acres of land for pollinators over the next five years.

Whether it inspires your team to grow a small garden for pollinators outside your site’s entrance or to learn more about pollinators in order to pass along the information to other employees, Pollinator Week can serve your team well.

Resources

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In Defense of Opossums

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When you think about the Virginia opossum, what comes to mind? I bet the image that comes to mind is not a particularly positive one: a vicious, hissing animal, scavenging through your garbage at night or digging holes in your yard.

Well I’m here to tell you that contrary to those stereotypes, opossums are pretty darn great, and are an important part of North America’s ecosystems.

The Virginia opossum is the only marsupial species in North America. Like kangaroos and other marsupials, female opossums rear their young in a fur-lined pouch. Opossums also have opposable thumbs and prehensile tails that they use to help them climb trees. Although their hairless tail and pointy snout gives them a similar appearance to rats, opossums are not even in the same family as rodents. They do not dig holes, although they will readily seek shelter in holes dug by other animals.

You might think opossums are vicious because when confronted with a potential threat, they put up a fierce display, baring their teeth and hissing. But that’s all just a front – they won’t actually attack. By their very nature, opossums are neither aggressive nor destructive, and do not pose a threat to humans. In fact, if the perceived threat continues, they’ll either run away or will switch to playing dead or “playing possum,” a physiological response that can last anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours.

However, opossums are downright indomitable in another way – they have an innate ability to stave off many diseases and toxins. They are nearly impervious to rabies because their body temperature is too low to host the rabies virus. They also rarely catch Lyme disease from tick bites, and are immune to the stings of honeybees and scorpions, botulism toxin, and snake venom.

Lucky for us and for the ecosystem, opossums use their powers of immunity for good. They act as “nature’s cleanup crew” – they often eat leftovers other animals can’t or won’t eat, like rotten fruit and carrion. They’ll eat just about anything, from fruits, nuts, and grass to pests like garden slugs, cockroaches, and ticks that carry Lyme disease, as well as species that most mammals can’t safely prey upon like rattlesnakes. This allows them to be remarkably adaptable to new habitats, including urban areas where habitats and resources are scarce.

Although I suspect that not many folks would agree with me in calling opossums “cute,” I hope I’ve inspired in you a more positive perception of these nocturnal marsupials.

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Prescribed Fire Means a New Beginning for the Meadow at New Beginnings

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February 17, 2017, was an exciting day for Bridgestone’s New Beginnings—The Woodlawn Wildlife Area, with the implementation of a prescribed burn of the site’s wildflower meadow.

Fire is a natural part of grassland and woodland ecology in many parts of North America. Along with other disturbances such as grazing by large herbivores, fire plays a vital role in maintaining these ecosystems. Experts use prescribed burning to burn these ecosystems in a safe, controlled manner, reducing the risk of wildfires by removing dry, dead vegetation and maintaining a healthy ecosystem by reducing excess woody vegetation, releasing fire-dependent seeds, and encouraging the growth of native vegetation.

The burn at New Beginnings was necessary because the meadow had become severely overgrown. The meadow had not been burned since 2010, so invasive species such as purple deadnettle and a few native species like blackberry brambles and goldenrod had begun to crowd out other native species. The burn will help to stimulate the growth of native herbaceous vegetation by allowing more sunlight to reach the ground and releasing nutrients back into the soil. The burn and follow-up mowing will also prevent invasive and woody species from taking over by removing unwanted growth of these plants.

A burn crew from the Maryland Department of Natural Resources conducted the burn, with WHC staff and local maintenance contractor Bob Hogue also in attendance to help monitor the burn. The day began with a brief check of the firebreaks, which had been created ahead of time, to make sure they would be adequate for keeping the fire in the desired burn area. The burn crew then used Firestarter cans to initiate a burn in the southeast corner of the meadow, directing a slow-burning backfire very slowly to the north and west and then initiating a faster-burning headfire from the other side. The crew also used ATVs with water tanks to wet areas that they didn’t want to burn, such as the meadow edges and the ground below the bluebird boxes. To prevent the fire from burning too strongly, there was a separate burn pile for heavier brush collected from the meadow.

The burn took approximately three hours and was relatively successful. Although most of the native grasses and wildflowers in the meadow burned well, there were a number of live blackberry brambles that did not burn. This remaining unwanted vegetation was removed by local volunteer Bill Kilby with a brushhogger a few days after the burn was completed.

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The Nature of Business – A Conservation Conference Session Recap

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On the first day of the Conservation Conference last November, Sue Kelsey of General Motors (GM), Kristen LeForce of DTE Energy and Sita Daavettila of Summit Materials convened a session to discuss the importance of conservation programs in developing a new or enhancing an existing corporate sustainability strategy.

Sue Kelsey, Global Biodiversity Program Manager, GM, kicked off the Nature of Business: Linking Habitat to Corporate Sustainability Plans session by demonstrating how GM’s engagement with WHC Conservation Certification enriched GM’s sustainability strategy. In particular, GM has committed to achieving Conservation Certification at all of its manufacturing facilities by 2020. During her presentation, Sue showcased many of these facilities, describing how she worked with WHC strategy and planning staff to provide toolkits and specialized remote or on-site guidance to help initiate conservation programs and achieve certification. With programs at 49 of its manufacturing facilities (and an additional 13 non-manufacturing sites) around the world WHC-certified as of November 2016, GM is already more than halfway to its goal.

Kristen LeForce, Wildlife Habitat Coordinator, DTE Energy, discussed how conservation activities can even be a gateway for initiating a sustainability strategy. For DTE, that means incorporating conservation into the planning process for operational activities. This helped to create a culture of sustainability and ensures funding for these activities is allocated during the planning process, rather than after budgets have been finalized. This successful strategy, along with Conservation Certification metrics, has been detailed in its Corporate Citizenship Report.

Finally, Sita Daavettila, Social and Sustainability Coordinator, Summit Materials, conferred the importance of gaining support from company leadership to make substantial change. In addition, Sita reinforced the power of stories, and how themes or alignments among projects can be used to tell a broader story to leadership or stakeholders. In fact, Summit Materials uses its website to feature the stories of some of its accomplishments, including programs that have achieved Conservation Certification.

To learn more about the programs at GM, DTE and Summit, and how you can integrate conservation activities into your company’s CSR or sustainability strategy, contact the WHC Strategy and Planning team.

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Joining Forces with USFWS to Save Monarch Butterflies in the Southeast

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By now you’ve likely heard that monarch butterfly populations have drastically and rapidly declined over the past several years. While approximately 1 billion of these butterflies completed their annual migration in 1996, only 30 million did so in 2014. As a result, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) is currently reviewing the species for listing under the Endangered Species Act throughout its range in the U.S.

Building upon a long-standing partnership and the recently-established USFWS Region 4 priority to protect monarchs, the USFWS reached out to Wildlife Habitat Council (WHC) in September 2014 to focus on increasing the amount of quality monarch habitat on corporate lands in the southeast U.S. The 2-year joint initiative concluded in September 2016.

To achieve the goals of the initiative, WHC coordinated with companies in the southeastern states to restore monarch habitat and educate the community about monarch conservation. The 16 participating companies created monarch habitat by planting milkweed, native warm-season grasses, and other pollinator-friendly vegetation. These plantings typically took the form of pollinator gardens or wildflower meadows. WHC also encouraged site teams to educate communities about monarchs and other pollinator species and their needs. At the culmination of the joint initiative in September 2016, the participating companies had completed 29 projects, which combined provide nearly 100 acres of quality monarch habitat.

As part of these efforts, WHC helped foster partnerships between participating companies and local organizations, who lent their expertise or hands-on assistance to help complete monarch habitat projects. WHC also succeeded in connecting a number of sites with their local USFWS field offices, whose staff were all tremendously willing to help when asked.

An additional outcome of the initiative was an event held at Research Triangle Park (RTC), a large multi-company business park in North Carolina where several WHC members are located. WHC staff joined the USFWS, Research Triangle Foundation, and several other exhibitors during National Pollinator Week 2016 for a monarch and pollinator exhibition designed to spread awareness among RTC employees about monarch conservation and the joint initiative. The event also provided opportunities for employees to connect with about 20 potential partners for restoring monarch habitat at their company’s facility. WHC is grateful to the USFWS, whose staff was instrumental and invaluable in bringing together so many local partners and helping making the event successful.

Although the joint initiative has ended and the USFWS has refocused its monarch conservation efforts in the Midwest, companies still have the opportunity to contribute to monarch conservation. You can find information about monarchs in the resources found in the WHC Knowledge Center, or contact the WHC Strategy and Planning team for one-on-one guidance on creating and monitoring monarch butterfly habitat at your site.

New Ways to Think About Landscaping the Corporate Campus – A Conservation Conference Session Recap

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Earlier this fall, WHC released the white paper, Reimagining the Corporate Campus: Creating Impactful Outcomes that Benefit Biodiversity and Communities, examining a range of project types that can be implemented on a corporate campus setting. Following up on this theme, a general session and workshop was added to the Conservation Conference 2016 program.

The general session opened the second day of the Conference, with WHC President Margaret O’Gorman facilitating an engaging conversation about native landscaping and the evolution of the corporate campus with Naomi Edelson, Senior Director, Wildlife Partnerships for the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), and Claudia West, landscape designer and author of Planting in a Post-Wild World: Designing Plant Communities for Resilient Landscapes.

The panel had a lively and often though-provoking discussion about the value of greening the corporate campus for both biodiversity and connecting people with nature. West often spoke of the psychological aspects of participating in these kinds of projects, reflecting on ideas such as how the simple act of putting a plant in the ground is a powerful enough to wake something deep inside us and connect us to the land.

Afterwards, attendees were invited to participate in a workshop with Edelson and West, which delved deeper into the concepts introduced during the general session. Edelson discussed the importance of using native species in more detail and introduced the audience to the NWF’s new online tool for selecting native plants, which was developed with the help of respected author, scientist, and native gardening proponent, and 2015 Conference keynote speaker, Dr. Doug Tallamy.

West covered the more technical side of native landscaping using material from her book, discussing planting strategies that use the ecology of native ecosystems to guide and inspire landscaping designs. She also provided participants with ideas to make native landscaping look more intentional, such as adding “orderly frames” around naturalistic plantings.

Both the general session and workshop were excellent reminders of what WHC members are increasingly aware of – that with increasing development of rural areas, the green spaces on corporate campuses can no longer serve just an aesthetic purpose; we must raise the bar for what we ask our landscapes to do, like providing habitat and managing stormwater.

You can still download our free white paper, Reimagining the Corporate Campus, to learn more about projects suited to the visual and functional aesthetics required of corporate campus settings.

Flamingos? Nope – They’re Roseate Spoonbills!

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With their long legs and rosy pink color, it’s easy to understand why roseate spoonbills (Platalea ajaja), a waterbird species that lives in coastal areas of the southeast U.S. and Caribbean, are often mistaken for flamingos.

On their website, Audubon describes them as “gorgeous at a distance and bizarre up close.” But let’s be honest, in the world of weird-looking birds, roseate spoonbills are in good company. (I mean, have you ever seen a shoebill stork?)

Like flamingos, spoonbills’ coloration comes from carotenoid pigments in their diet, which consists primarily of aquatic invertebrates and small fish. Their feathers can range in color from bright magenta to pale pink, depending on age and location.

Their spoon-shaped bill is unmistakable, however. Although the long, flat, spoon-shaped bill may seem downright strange and even impractical, it actually serves an important purpose. The bill shape helps the birds to detect, trap, and strain fish and invertebrates out of the shallow, muddy water where they forage.

Like other colonial waterbirds, roseate spoonbills can usually be found in small flocks among other wading birds like egrets, nesting and foraging in the same area.

If you are lucky enough to have roseate spoonbills living on your site, you’ve got a great opportunity to help this species, which is declining in some areas (like the Everglades) and is stable but low in numbers throughout the rest of its range.  Here’s a few great ways your team can enhance habitat for these birds:

  • Plant native wetland vegetation, which will benefit spoonbills’ food by providing food and cover and by improving water quality
  • Install structures such as submerged brush piles and rock piles, which will benefit spoonbills’ food
  • Conduct regular surveys of the spoonbills’ colony to track changes in the population over time
  • Plant more of the shrubs and trees (e.g., mangroves) that spoonbills and other colonial waterbirds in your area use for nesting
  • Take measures to decrease disturbance to nesting spoonbills, such as by posting signage or educating employees about the importance of keeping your distance from nesting colonies.

If you need help tailoring these projects to your particular site, or just aren’t sure how to begin, we’re here to help!  Give our Conservation Strategy and Planning Department a call at 301-588-8994 or send us an email at strategyandplanning@wildlifehc.org.

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Habitat Design that Invites Exploration

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One of the best ways to spread awareness of and interest in biodiversity conservation is to provide opportunities for people to enjoy wildlife and their habitats. While unstructured, even “messy” habitats have their place, a nice-looking habitat will create a much more inviting environment that employees and visitors will want to spend time in.

The main thing to keep in mind is to make the project look intentional and inviting to exploration. Here’s a few ideas to get you started:

Make it more colorful by using a diversity of native plant species with colorful flowers and attractive foliage.

Make it highly visible. If you are able to choose the location for your project, put it somewhere folks will easily see, such as placing your pollinator garden near a building entrance. This visual reminder will entice people to visit the habitat.

Use plantings and maintain vegetation to create attractive lines and shapes. Install or maintain vegetation in such a way as to create soft, rounded corners and curving lines, instead of hard, straight edges with corners.

Plant seeds or plugs in “drifts” composed of one or two species or maintained mowed borders around the edges of plantings to create a more attractive, intentional look to large planting projects like meadows or prairie restorations.

LS_ROW_Exelon West Chicago2008 Make it accessible to users of all abilities. It’s easy to feel like accessibility is a burden, so instead, look at it as an opportunity to allow more folks to enjoy and learn about biodiversity. Ensure that both able-bodied and differently-abled people can get to your habitat and can use it without difficulty once they get there. Look to ADA guidelines or talk to a local disability advocacy group for ideas on improving accessibility in realistic ways, like adding braille to signage for visually-impaired users or providing a level trail with railings for mobility-impaired users.

Add structures that encourage folks to pause and enjoy the scenery, such as benches, wildlife observation decks, or friendly signage with information about what they’re seeing nearby.

Add a trail or boardwalk to make it easy for folks to get to your habitat, or to enjoy a walk through the habitat once they get there.

If your team is feeling particularly creative, you might even consider adding artistic features that celebrate habitat while also enhancing it, like these artful rainwater design projects created by a team at Penn State University or a pollinator garden shaped like a butterfly.

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