Speakers

1:00 p.m. – Keynote Speaker Doug Tallamy

Doug Tallamy—New York Times best-selling author, conservationist, entomologist and co-founder of Homegrown National Park—is the keynote speaker at Clark Public Utilities inaugural Pollinator Festival on June 24. Experience Doug’s impressive and hopeful presentation on the simple solution to declining bio-diversity. Vintage Books will have several Tallamy titles for sale on site and Doug will be signing copies of his books immediately following the seminar.

Nature’s Best Hope: Recent headlines about global insect declines and three billion fewer birds in North America are a bleak reality check about how ineffective our current landscape designs have been at sustaining the plants and animals that sustain us. To create landscapes that enhance local ecosystems rather than degrade them, we must do two things: Remove the invasives on our property and add in the native plant communities that sustain food webs, sequester carbon, maintain diverse native bee communities, and manage our watersheds. If we do this in half of the area currently planted as lawns, we can create Homegrown National Park, a network of viable habitats throughout the U.S. that will provide vital corridors connecting the few natural areas that remain. This approach to conservation empowers everyone to play a significant role in the future of the natural world. It is also enormously restorative for those who take action.

11:30 a.m. – An Introduction To Native Bees with Steve Clark

Join Steve Clark for an introduction to our native pollinators. You will learn about basic bee biology including some very unusual features about bees—for example, you’ll learn why you probably have never been stung by a native bee and how male bees have no fathers (it’s true!). Find out where bees nest and what they like to eat. We’ll also identify some of our native bees and talk about how to make your yard a positive place for them to call home. Steve is a biology professor at Clark College and the project manager for Clark College’s Bee Campus.