Tag Archive for: pollinator-friendly

SOU interns help grow Rogue Buzzway map

Rogue Buzzway gardens grow with SOU partnership

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The Rogue Buzzway – an interactive map that represents southern Oregon’s pollinator corridors – has bounced back following a steep decline caused by the 2020 Almeda Fire, under the leadership of recent SOU Environmental Science & Policy graduate Leo Helm.

Helm, who graduated last fall and is the latest in a succession of SOU interns to work on the Buzzway, has collaborated with the Pollinator Project Rogue Valley to create the Rogue Buzzway StoryMap, which celebrates nearly 120 self-certified pollinator gardens from Ashland to Grants Pass.

The Buzzway map helps visualize pollinator habitat connectivity – a vital element in helping native pollinators such as butterflies, bees and moths to navigate the urban landscape. The map also encourages people to create new gardens by showing areas with no certified pollinator habitat, and shares stories about how existing gardens were created.

“We made the Buzzway StoryMap to better communicate what the Buzzway is about,” Helm said. “It takes you through the map and really shows the kinds of gardens that are on there. It’s pretty inspiring.”

Gardens on the map include organic farms, city parks, front yards and gardens planted by PPRV as a part of its “From Fire to Flowers” pollinator garden program, which brought pollinator gardens to people affected by the 2020 Almeda fire.

Colorful pollinator plantings on the SOU campus are not yet included on the map, but Helm and others at the PPRV plan to work with the university and city of Ashland to fill in the map with existing local gardens.

The Rogue Buzzway was created after the PPRV approached SOU associate professor Jamie Trammel in 2016 about mapping the Rogue Valley’s pollinator gardens. Trammel and then-SOU student Ollie Bucolo and Dr. Jamie Trammell created the map, whose scope and capabilities have grown over the years with the contributions of other Environmental Science & Policy interns.

Helm said he hopes more interns will step forward in the future to help the Buzzway continue to grow.

“It’s really cool to be a part of a long-standing project like this,” he said. “We keep finding new uses for the Buzzway and ways to improve it. It’s been a valuable experience for me and I’m excited to see what happens to the Buzzway map once someone else inherits it.”

Students can also volunteer with the Pollinator Pals educational program or in PPRV’s demonstration garden in Phoenix, or put their knowledge to work with videography, photography, social media, graphic design, writing newsletters or helping to maintain and update the organization’s website.

SOU remains a Bee Campus USA

SOU – the nation’s first Bee Campus – keeps its designation

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(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University – which collaborated with Bee City USA to develop guidelines for Bee Campus certification in 2015 – has been recertified as a Bee Campus USA for a fifth consecutive year.

Colleges and universities are awarded the honor of being a Bee Campus based on the rigorous criteria of the Bee City USA organization, an initiative of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. SOU helped create the Bee Campus award after being inspired by two early adopters of the Bee City designation – Ashland and neighboring Talent.

There are 98 Bee Campuses across the United States, including four other colleges in Oregon: Lane Community College and University of Oregon in Eugene, and Portland Community College and Portland State University in Portland.

SOU’s place as a Bee Campus is hard-earned – students and faculty maintain over a dozen pollinator-friendly gardens, two pollinator-friendly beds, herbicide-free wildlife areas and a subcommittee of SOU’s Sustainability Council dedicated to bees and other pollinators. The work is recognized not only by Bee City USA, but also from the Sierra Club, which named SOU the nation’s top pollinator-friendly college in 2018.

The university’s dedication to pollinators is a key element of its commitment to sustainability. A third of all food is produced due to insect pollination, while 90 percent of wild plants and trees require pollinators to reproduce.

It is generally believed that the decline in honey bee populations is caused by a complex combination of factors – including diseases, parasites, mono-cropping and exposure to insecticides, herbicides and fungicides – that progressively weaken the bees’ individual and collective immune systems.

Colleges and universities that apply to become certified Bee Campuses must commit to development of habitat plans, hosting of awareness events, development of courses or workshops that support pollinators, sponsorship and tracking of service-learning projects for students, posting of educational signs and maintaining a pollinator-related web presence.

Story by Blair Selph, SOU Marketing and Communications student writer

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Pollinator Friendly

Cool School: SOU named nation’s top pollinator-friendly campus

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NEWS RELEASE

(Ashland, Ore.) — Southern Oregon University – which became the original Bee Campus USA three years ago – has been named the nation’s top pollinator-friendly college by the Sierra Club, as part of its annual “Cool Schools” rankings.

“Besides the fact that the campus boasts more than a dozen pollinator gardens, professors have taken students out to create bee habitats for the campus farm and to collect native flower seeds to sow the in arboretum,” the Sierra Club wrote of SOU.

The environmental group picked what it considered to be the top 14 schools out of 50 campuses across the country that have been certified for the Bee Campus USA list, administered by the Bee City USA organization. SOU topped a Sierra Club list that included both small and large institutions – including Georgia Tech (No. 2), University of Missouri, Columbia (No. 10), Auburn University (No. 11) and University of Central Florida (No. 14).

“Student engagement between the environmental science students and the Landscape Department at SOU has made it possible for us to change the culture surrounding the urban campus environment,” said Mike Oxendine, SOU’s landscaping superintendent.

“Where we once tended manicured lawns, we now tend pollinator gardens and wildlife habitat,” he said. “We are adapting to the changing climate by making the SOU campus landscape a resilient and safe place for pollinators and other forms of wildlife.”

SOU is now one of four Bee Campus USA schools in Oregon, but is the only one to make the Sierra Club list. The University of Oregon, Portland State University and Portland Community College are the state’s other Bee Campus USA institutions.

Colleges and universities may apply to become certified Bee Campuses after first forming leadership committees made up of faculty, staff and students. Those selected as Bee Campuses must commit to development of habitat plans, hosting of awareness events, development of courses or workshops that support pollinators, sponsorship and tracking of service-learning projects for students, posting of educational signs and maintaining a pollinator-related web presence. They must also apply each year for renewal of their certification.

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