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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy
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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Jeanine Moy