[Pollinator] Xerces' Pollinator Team Grows, Again

[Matthew Shepherd]

I’m very pleased to be able to introduce six new members of Xerces’
pollinator team. It is amazing to be able to add so many people, and is
thanks to the support of our partners at General Mills and the USDA’s
Natural Resources Conservation Service. The new staff bring a diverse range
of skills and experiences, including prairie restoration, native plant
propagation, research into ground-nesting bees of blueberries and the
impacts of land-use change on honey bees, organic farming, habitat creation
on farms, and more.



Matthew





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https://xerces.org/2017/06/22/xerces-pollinator-team-grows-again/



*Xerces’ Pollinator Team Grows, Again*



By Matthew Shepherd, Communications Director



I have to admit to having worked at the Xerces Society for longer than
anyone else. When I joined, there were five people on the staff and I was
the only person in the nascent pollinator program. How things have changed:
The Society has gone from strength to strength and the pollinator program
has staff based across the United States—and we’ve just added six new
program staff!



This has happened thanks to a partnership between General Mills and the
USDA’s Natural Resources Conservation Service, which was announced just
after Thanksgiving last year. General Mills and the NRCS together made a
five-year, $4 million financial commitment to support the creation and
protection of pollinator habitat on America’s farmlands. Our six new
pollinator conservation specialists are here to make that dream a reality.



This week, our new staff gathered in Minnesota for an orientation to their
new jobs and to meet other Xerces staff that they’ll be working with on a
daily basis. (They were joined by Vicky Wilkins, who is taking a one-month
sabbatical from her job in Britain to learn about Xerces work. Until
recently, Vicky worked at Buglife, but she is now with Flora & Fauna
International.)



The new pollinator staff will be based in NRCS offices around the country
and will collaborate with NRCS staff to provide individual consulting to
farmers on habitat restoration and pollinator-friendly farm management
practices, and serve as advisors to staff of other conservation agencies.
The end result will be thousands of acres of new pollinator habitat. We
thank General Mills and the NRCS for making this expansion possible.



The Xerces Society has become a trusted source for science-based
information and advice. This influx of new talent adds to that and brings
our pollinator program staff to two dozen, cementing it firmly as the
largest and most experienced pollinator conservation team in the world!





MEET OUR NEW POLLINATOR STAFF



*Ben Carlson* comes to us from the U.S. Geological Survey at Northern
Prairie Wildlife Research Center, where he investigated the impact of
land-use change and USDA conservation program land on the health and
productivity of commercial honey bees. Prior to that, Ben earned a masters
degree in natural resource management from North Dakota State University,
and gained experience of restoring native prairie habitat. He will be based
in North Dakota



*Dave Williams* brings more than two decade’s experience of prairie
restoration in an array of landscapes, including public parks,
right-of-ways, farms, and private lands, most recently as the Restoration
and Research Manager at the University of Northern Iowa. Dave received an
MS in biology from the University of Northern Iowa, with an emphasis on
prairie ecology. He is also an accomplished author, with titles including
The Tallgrass Prairie Guide to Seed and Seedling Identification and
Tallgrass Prairie Center’s Guide to Prairie Restoration in the Upper
Midwest. He’ll be based in Iowa.



*Eric Venturini* has a background in native bee research and consulting in
northern New England. He has studied nesting of mining bees, undertaken
bumble bee surveys, and trialed organic methods for establishing wildlife
plantings. Eric received a masters degree in ecology and environmental
sciences from the University of Maine, and subsequently worked there as an
assistant research scientist. Through his consulting company, Eric has
worked with growers to plan and install on-farm pollinator habitat. He’ll
be based in Maine.



*Karin Jokela* straddles the fields of pollinator conservation and
agriculture. With an MS in ecology and evolutionary biology from Iowa State
University, she has conducted native plant and bee surveys for the
Minnesota Biological Survey, and most-recently worked for Great River
Greening, where she helped landowners to design, implement, and evaluate
habitat restoration efforts. Karin and her husband are also organic
vegetable farmers, and Karin manages a small native plant nursery on their
Sogn Valley Farm, adding another farming family to the Xerces team. Karin
will be based in Minnesota.



*Kathryn Prince* is joining our staff in California. Kat’s initial focus
will be on the San Joaquin Valley, providing technical support and training
focused on pollinators, other beneficial insects, and monarch butterflies
and assisting conservation planners with creating or improving habitat on
working lands. Kathryn holds an MS in entomology and agroecology from the
University of Wisconsin, with a focus on the role wild bees in vegetable
crop production. She has also worked on projects involving conservation
biological control and IPM.



*RaeAnn Powers* is a Nebraska native whose work has taken her to the shores
of Alaska with the National Wildlife Refuge system and the lakes of
northern Minnesota as a canoe guide, before returning to the prairies of
Midwest, where she has worked with Nebraska Natural Heritage program, the
Nature Conservancy, and Prairie Legacy Inc., a native seed farm. RaeAnn has
an MS in ecology from the University of Nebraska – Lincoln, and will be
based in Nebraska.
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