The sunflower family is the most diverse plant family in Oklahoma and also one of the most important families for pollinators. Join us with guest speaker Abby Moore and learn tips & tricks for identifying native sunflowers!

Abby Moore is curator of the Robert Bebb Herbarium — home of the largest collection of plants in the state which houses over 250,000 specimens — and she is an assistant professor in the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. She studies plant evolution and is especially interested in the sunflower family.  Abby grew up in Utah and has lived in Oklahoma since 2016.

Please join the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP) for our next workshop! This workshop will focus on extreme weather patterns, resiliency to those changes, and sustainability! More details to come!

Please join the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators (TAP) for our next workshop! This hands-on workshop will focus on planning and preparation for a successful growing season, planting dormant prairie plants, and stratifying seeds. We will be planting dormant plant plugs of species such as Buttonbush (Cephalanthus occidentalis), Maximilian Sunflower (Helianthus maximilani), and others. We will also be discussing steps to prepare for the growing season and we will take you through the process of stratifying seeds during the winter to prepare for spring germination!

Discussion topics of this conference will include:

• How to help monarch butterflies and other pollinators through habitat restoration.
• Funding opportunities that can assist you with conservation work.
• Learning how to identify invasive plant species — and how to get rid of them! 
• How to get started with a prescribed burn program on your land and why it is so important for land management.
• New methods of climate-smart agricultural practices that can save you money while also helping the planet.
• Strategies for protecting your land, crops, livestock and home from drought and other extreme weather. 
• Integrated pest management — harnessing the power of nature to help control the bad bugs destroying your plants. 

The date is set! Please join Tribal Alliance for Pollinators for our next workshop! Content for this workshop will likely include in-the-field plant identification (if the weather cooperates), invasive plant control, pollinator walk and hands-on stratification.

Leading the pollinator identification section of our field sessions will be Dr. James Hung! James is a pollination ecologist from Vancouver, Canada. James currently works at OU’s Oklahoma Biological Survey, where he is studying the diversity and conservation of bee species in our state. If you haven’t had the pleasure of meeting James at previous TAP events, now is your chance!

Special Offer: attendees will be able to take their stratified seeds home!

The date is set! Please join Tribal Alliance for Pollinators for our next workshop! We’re planning something special for this workshop: Prairie Planting! At this workshop, attendees will be making habitat islands on the Euchee Butterfly Farm grounds. Expect to be involved in the process from start to finish! We’ll begin with site prep, plant selection, planting, and care! Weather permitting, this event will be held almost completely outdoors, so dress accordingly!

Please join Tribal Alliance for Pollinators for our next workshop! We will have a special focus on the ecological importance of prairies, plant and bee species, and how you can assist in the preservation of wildlife. 

Lunch will be provided!

8:30 – 9:00

• Registration and check-in

9:00 – 10:00

• Plant Identification and Seed Collection (Brandon Gibson, Program Coordinator, Tribal Alliance for Pollinators)

10:05 – 11:00

• Landscaping for Pollinators in Your Neighborhood (Dr. Melissa Louis, Assistant Professor, University of Missouri)

11:05 – 12:00

• Field Bee Identification (Dr. James Hung, Pollination Ecologist, University of Oklahoma)

12:00 – 1:00

• Lunch (Included with registration)

1:00 – 2:00

• In-Depth Bee Identification and How to Improve as a Citizen-Scientist (Dr. James Hung, Pollination Ecologist, University of Oklahoma)

2:05 – 3:00

• Prairie Ecology Field Session (Dr. Priscilla Crawford, Conservation Biologist, University of Oklahoma)

3:05 – 4:00

• Seed Processing and Stratification Hands-on Demonstration (Collin Spriggs and Brandon Gibson, Program Coordinators, Tribal Alliance for Pollinators)

4:00

• Wrap up Discussion and Group Photo

TAP is hosting its next webinar! This time, our guest is TAP’s own Collin Spriggs. In this webinar, Collin will be discussing what to do with your seeds after you collect them, how to store them, and how to stratify your seeds!

Collin graduated from the University of Oklahoma with a bachelor’s in environmental science. When he wasn’t in biology classes, he could likely be found rehearsing with groups in OU’s Catlett Music Center. Not long after graduating, Collin found a job posting for the Tribal Alliance for Pollinators and promptly requested an interview. He has been with TAP since January 2019 and does a bit of everything including hoop house maintenance, newsletter editing, seed processing seed bank management, and making pinned butterfly frames.

In his free time, Collin enjoys listening to and playing music, playing games with friends, and attending live music performances.

TAP is hosting its first workshop of 2022! While still in the planning stages, we are excited to get this on the calendar. Some speakers include Corey Williams, Executive Director of Sustainable Tulsa, James Williams, Director of Environmental Services for the Muscogee Nation, and Julie Norem and team, conservationists with the Muscogee Nation, and others. The content we will be discussing includes defining and exemplifying climate resiliency, what sustainability efforts tribes are implementing, and how you as an individual can live more sustainably! 

Lunch will be provided!

TAP is hosting its first webinar of 2022! To kick the year into gear, we have a special presenter to announce: Brandon Gibson! Brandon joined the TAP team in January of 2020 and has become quite the Oklahoma wildflower specialist. In this webinar, Brandon will be reviewing plant identification tips, tricks, and recommended resources. Additionally, Brandon will be discussing best practices and pro tips to collecting seeds of the plants you’ve identified!

Brandon graduated from Northeastern State University with a degree in Organismic Biology and spent his first few post-grad years as an ornithologist. During this time he studied and helped preserve prairie chickens in Nebraska. In 2020 Brandon joined the TAP team and has since been instrumental in the furthering of TAP’s Oklahoma prairie conservation efforts.

In his spare time, Brandon enjoys researching Oklahoma plants, talking about native plants, and occasionally destressing by carrying his teams in video games!

TAP is hosting its next webinar! To continue building our pollinator prowess, we have a special guest presenter who is here to help us identify some pollinators you are likely to attract when your native wildflowers bloom: Dr. James Hung. Dr. Hung presented at TAP’s September 2021 conference and with the positive feedback we received, we thought he’d make excellent contributions to our webinar series. He will be discussing native bees, how to identify and differentiate them from flies and wasps, and why we should care about our bee buddies (and flies and wasps too)!

James is a pollination ecologist from Vancouver, Canada. James currently works at OU’s Oklahoma Biological Survey, where he is studying the diversity and conservation of bee species in our state. In his spare time, James enjoys being outdoors with his kids, making food with his wife, growing vegetables, photographing wildlife, and playing the violin in his church band. James’s favorite insects are bees, of course! His favorite non-bee insect is the mole cricket.

Our distinguished speaker will be Dr. Ray Moranz of the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. In this episode, Dr. Moranz will present his research findings on the impacts of intermittent burning on pollinators, plants and fire-adapted ecosystems. He will also propose best management practices regarding fire and pollinators. Controlled burning–a culturally significant practice of many Native American tribes since time immemorial–is gaining research support and popularity among the public as a way to reverse woody plant encroachment and increase resilience to wildfires. Join us as we learn how these practices can be beneficial for our plant and pollinator populations!

Are you interested in learning how to:

• Restore native plants
• Help pollinators
• Save monarch butterflies
• Build resilience to extreme weather and changing climate
• Develop food sovereignty
• Find funding opportunities
• Discover the successes (and failures) of other tribes navigating land stewardship during the challenges of the 21st century?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you won’t want to miss the next Tribal Alliance for Pollinators conference!

We are planning a large, multi-day conference to tackle these issues plus much more on September 21-24. 2021. Registration is FREE and travel scholarships are available to pay for travel and hotel expenses. The conference will be held at the Euchee Butterfly Farm (www.NativeButterflies.org), just outside Tulsa, Oklahoma. In addition to indoor and outdoor meeting space, the farm includes 13-acres of intact native prairie, native plant greenhouses, the largest native plant seed bank in the region, and thousands of beautiful native butterflies in a walk-through aviary.

Bonus! The conference will include a field trip to tour the native plant installations at The Gathering Place (www.GatheringPlace.org) in Tulsa! Opened in 2019 as the largest public park created in modern history in the United States, this unprecedented green space in the heart of Tulsa sits on 100 acres adjacent to the Arkansas River. It’s a gathering space designed to bring all aspects of the community together and includes 26 acres of professionally installed native plant restoration.

The sunflower family is the most diverse plant family in Oklahoma and also one of the most important families for pollinators. Join us with guest speaker Abby Moore and learn tips & tricks for identifying native sunflowers!

Abby Moore is curator of the Robert Bebb Herbarium — home of the largest collection of plants in the state which houses over 250,000 specimens — and she is an assistant professor in the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. She studies plant evolution and is especially interested in the sunflower family.  Abby grew up in Utah and has lived in Oklahoma since 2016.

The sunflower family is the most diverse plant family in Oklahoma and also one of the most important families for pollinators. Join us with guest speaker Abby Moore and learn tips & tricks for identifying native sunflowers!

Abby Moore is curator of the Robert Bebb Herbarium — home of the largest collection of plants in the state which houses over 250,000 specimens — and she is an assistant professor in the Oklahoma Biological Survey at the University of Oklahoma. She studies plant evolution and is especially interested in the sunflower family.  Abby grew up in Utah and has lived in Oklahoma since 2016.

Join us in this episode of TAP’s Climate Resilience series in which Mr. Clay Pope discusses soil health and the important role it plays in helping agriculture adapt to the extreme weather that our shifting climate is exacerbating. Mr. Pope will also detail techniques for reducing your footprint through carbon sequestration and reducing harmful emissions.

Clay has received numerous honors including the Oklahoma Farmers Union Legislative Leadership award, the NRCS Oklahoma Conservationist of the Year award, the Oklahoma Association of Conservation Districts President’s Award, the Oklahoma Farm Bureau Legislative Meritorious Service Award and the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association Representative of the Year award. In 1999, Clay was named Agriculture Man of the Year for Oklahoma by Progressive Farmer magazine and a ‘Graduate of Distinction’ from the College of Agriculture at Oklahoma State University in 2005. In 2013 he was recognized by the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences with a regional Emmy Award for his outreach and educational work in conjunction with the Ken Burns documentary The Dust Bowl.

Amy Buthod is a botanical specialist at the University of Oklahoma, working with the Oklahoma Biological Survey and the Oklahoma Natural Heritage Inventory. She conducts floristic inventories throughout the state of Oklahoma, maintains the list of rare plant species for the state, and is the collections manager for the Robert Bebb herbarium.

Kristen Schmitt works for the Northern Institute of Applied Climate Science (NIACS) and the USDA Northern Forests Climate Hub. She works with partners on climate change adaptation planning for natural resources, as well as various training and educational events. A large part of Kristen’s role with NIACS is think about how adaptation resources can help address the needs of different partners in regions across the U.S. This can include developing new tools, for exampls adaptation menus focus on California forests or Great Lakes coastal ecosystems. 

Dr. “Chip” Taylor is the Founder and Director of Monarch Watch, and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Kansas. Having trained as an insect ecologist at the University of Connecticut, his research projects have included studies of reproductive isolating mechanisms in sulfur butterflies, reproductive and life history patterns in plants, comparative biology of European and Neotropical African honey bees and migratory behavior of monarch butterflies. In 1992, Taylor founded Monarch Watch, an outreach program focused on education, research and conservation relative to monarch butterflies. Since then, Monarch Watch has enlisted the help of volunteers to tag monarchs during the fall migration. Since 1992 over 1.3 million monarchs have been tagged by volunteers. Of these, over sixteen thousand have been recovered. This program has provided many new insights about the dynamics of the fall monarch migration.

Indigenous knowledges and perspectives are not commonly recognized in climate adaptation planning focused on natural and cultural resource management. The Tibal Adaptation Menu (TAM), which was developed by a diverse group of collaborators representing tribal, academic, intertribal and government entities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, provides a framework to integrate indigenous and traditional knowledge, culture, language, and history into the climate adaptation planning process. It was created to help engage tribal and traditional values in climate adaptation planning processes such as the Northern Institue of Applied Climate Science Adaptation Workbook.

The TAM may be used as a tool to help bridge communication barriers for tribal and non-tribal persons or organizations interested in indigenous approaches to adaptation and the needs and values of diverse tribal communities. This presentation will offer a look at the creation, layout, and application of the Tribal Adaptation Menu.

• College of Menominee Nation
• Tribal Climate Resilience Liaison for Midwest and Northeast Climate adaptation Science Center

• Climate Change Scientist for Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC)

• Climate Change Program Coordinator for GLIFWC