Community Conservation for an Endangered Butterfly and Beyond
Support Operation Mardon Meadows!
Over the last few years, we have been working to grow partnership networks in southwest Oregon to address the needs of Mardon skippers and create a community that can effectively support their conservation:
This project involves a multipronged conservation strategy to monitor Poma populations and habitat, engage volunteers in conservation actions and habitat restoration, increase public awareness through education, art, and digital media. We will address the ongoing habitat degradation in the last two known meadows with viable populations of this southwest Oregon endemic species.
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The Inaugural Year of the Healing Landscapes Program at Vesper Meadow
In our pilot year, our Healing Landscapes program gave opportunities for Indigenous youth and families to engage in beaver-based restoration, connect to place, and engage in the worldview and practices that deepen and heal the human-land relationship.
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Cultivating Best Practices for Tribal Partnerships
Building partnerships with Indigenous people is essential. Centering Indigenous voices and self-identified goals directly addresses historical injustices and land dispossession by uplifting Tribal sovereignty and self-determination. Read on for our summary of our January 2024 workshop for local, non-native-led organizations in conservation and environmental activism.
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Coming Together 2023 Year-End Review
Everything, and everyone really came together in 2023 - in ways we could never have imagined! At the heart-center of this network, is our team at The Understory Initiative: a group of hard-working, passionate, and thoughtful ecologists and restoration practitioners who serve as the Vesper Meadow extended-family. We are proud to share the year-end report from The Understory Initiative:
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Our Hottest Item this Year: the Fire Ecology and Human Relationship curriculum
Hot item of 2023! One of our biggest accomplishments this year was launching the Fire Ecology and Human Relationship Curriculum. We worked on this project with the Confederate Tribes of Siletz Indians for three years and are glad now to be sharing it with teachers and the public. Here’s an overview of the curriculum and how its debut has gone so far…
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Seasons in Art: 2024 Vesper Meadow Calendar
Over a dozen different photographers, painters, printers, have contributed their work to this ensemble after having spent time at Vesper Meadow and finding inspiration there. It is also reflections of the land, community, and restoration as told through the eyes of artists. We are so grateful to work together with these artists to tell the story of healing the landscape.
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Skiing and Sloshing Around for Science
For Rianna’s capstone project at Southern Oregon University, she explored the riparian waterways of Vesper Meadow by snow and by sun. One of the components of her project was to document changes to Latgawa and Spencer Creek through photos, telling the powerful story of restoration over time.
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A Big Beaver-Day for National Public Lands Day at Vesper Meadow
We are celebrating the 30th Anniversay of National Public Lands Day even though Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve is privately held. But why? Firstly, all of our programs are designed to engage a wide and diverse public for the sake of education, community building, and environmental and social justice. And secondly, we believe that the urgent need for restoration across the greater landscape transcends the current land management and ownership.
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On Meadow Mimicry as Playful Care
Artist-in-Partnership, Renée Rhodes, questions the relationships between mimicry, play, and care, and as the darkness of climate collapse and species extinction surrounds us. Exploring creative allyship with other species. her diverse art practices (dance, film, weaving, textile design, photography) demonstrate being in devoted relationship with a prairie and promote ways of seeing based on ecological inquiry and friendship.
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Words to that Effect: ArtBeyond 2023
ArtBeyond artist Hannah Bakken Morris installed signs from her ongoing project, Words to that Effect, which is an ongoing project of site-specific installations that catalyzes a new engagement to the fence in the American West and its accompanying signs as a sprawling symbol of state settler powers. It provokes an imagining of release and possibilities to dismantle exploitative systems of people and land.
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Beaver Based Restoration at Vesper Meadow: summary and video
Like many ecological restoration projects, we want to reduce the harms of past land management practices; for the waterway, wildlife, and our changing climate. What’s unique is our approach…
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Butterfly diversity
Vesper Meadow is in the heart of butterfly country. After three years of data collection, we are excited to share some results with the help of students at Southern Oregon University.
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2022 Year in Review (whew!)
Thank you to all the partner organizations, scientists, students, interns, artists, volunteers, and generous supporters who have come together and made this year so wonderful.
Read on to see all our accomplishments in restoration, community building, Tribal partnerships, visits with youth groups, and more…
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Behind the Beaver Days: the story of long-awaited restoration
Finally….Beaver Days! Its been a long road, and we are continuing on it.
We launched a huge volunteer-powered restoration effort in 2022 to advance Latgawa Creek restoration goals. Over the course of 13 days we worked with 80 volunteers for over 440 hours of volunteer labor, and over 60 elementary and college students for stewardship engagement.
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The Land Weaves Relationships: centering Tribal people and partnerships at Vesper Meadow
This area is the homeland of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa people. They were forcibly removed in the 1850s to the reservations of Grand Ronde and Siletz. It is a responsibility to provide their descendants with resources and access to their ancestral homelands and First Foods. To do our best to undo settler colonial harm is good work.
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Chasing butterflies and restoring their food: my internship with Vesper Meadow 2022
Cecilia Green’s summer internship spent conducting Butterfly Surveys and supporting Pollinator Habitat Restoration with Vesper Meadow. Hear about the survey, see the beautiful creatures she saw this summer, and how Vesper Meadow has been a place of healing, beauty, and learning for her.
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Life Transforms: Art of Vesper Meadow - art show and auction
Since the inception of the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve and Education Program in 2018, we envisioned our ecological restoration work to be shared to wider audiences through art. Now, 16 artists with over 50 works of art are available in-person at the Gambrel Gallery, and in the online gallery and auction …..
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Supporting the Launch of a Southwest Oregon-wide Rare Plant Monitoring Network
The Rare Plant Monitoring Network of Southwest Oregon is a community science effort to find, monitor, and conserve rare plants throughout southwest Oregon. We collaborate with the US Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management to identify plants of concern, then partner with community volunteers to visit and monitor historic plant populations.
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The Story of Vesper Meadow Unfolds: a community presentation
This is the place, the idea, and the story of Vesper Meadow as it unfolds…
A talk hosted by the Jackson County Library System, January 2022.
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Latest Vesper Sparrow Research with partner at the Klamath Bird Observatory
Watch this presentation from our partners at the Klamath Bird Observatory, and the latest research being conducted to monitor the endangered Oregon Vesper Sparrow. Dr. Sarah Rockwell discusses the scope of this multi-year effort, the new MOTUS radio technology being used at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve, and work throughout other nearby meadows.
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