Our Conservation Community
A recap of our 2023 season and end-of-season thank you event
As our 2023 field season wrapped up, we were thrilled to gather with some of the outstanding individuals who help to make this work possible.
Volunteers, partners, and donors joined us this past week at Fisher Brewing Company in Salt Lake City to celebrate all we accomplished together this season. If you missed it, check out our recap below!
2023 Project Highlights
Utah Pollinator Pursuit
This project used data about at-risk bumble bees to create Utah conservation ranks for three target species–the western bumble bee, Morrison’s bumble bee, and American bumble bee--all of which face potential listing under the Endangered Species Act.
These results will be presented later this month at an international bumble bee conference in Chiapas, Mexico. It will share how community science can be used to quickly assess the conservation status of at-risk insect pollinators, which is critical during such an urgent time for pollinators.
Intermountain West Shorebird Survey
This is our newest project and has started out with a bang! In June of this year, Janice Gardner and Board Chair Jaimi Butler traveled as part of the "Great Salt Lake delegation" to the Mono Lake Chautauqua Bird Festival. There, researchers and conservationists from Utah, California, and Argentina shared our passion for shorebirds and saline lakes.
We're excited to continue these relationships that span countries and regions in support of our beloved shorebirds.
Riverscape Restoration
At our Red Pine Creek riverscape restoration site, we’re thrilled to see beavers creating a large wet meadow next to our BDAs (restoration structures).
This means they are likely to take over our BDAs, which is the best case scenario in our riverscape work. That way, they can continue the hard work of volunteers in these streams, who were filling in for them in their absence. Good luck to these beavers!
(Right: Learn about our work with private landowners in Utah to restore streams.)
Boreal Toad Project
Sageland Collaborative and Hogle Zoo biologists worked with our Riverscape Restoration team to survey for toads and assess habitat conditions before and after restoration structures are installed. This means our restoration work can be more targeted, restoring wet habitats that are critical for our high alpine amphibians.
Rosy Finch Project
Over three years, nearly 200 people across nine states counted thousands of rosy-finches. We filled in the map of rosy-finch distribution and our understanding of how these birds migrate across our landscape. Check out our most recent video (right) to learn more about this work.
Our part in this work has officially ended, but our partners will be carrying the rosy-finch conservation torch into the future. Our leadership ushered in a new, collaborative culture of rosy-finch conservation in our region. Learn how to stay involved on our Rosy-Finch Project page.
Wasatch Wildlife Watch
Our project data is having a national impact, with a recent New York Times article highlighting just one of 15 recent publications.
Know that your hard work–monitoring cameras in crazy locations and analyzing hundreds of thousands of wildlife photos–is part of landscape-scale projects supporting wildlife during climatic shifts.
Upcoming Projects…
In addition to sharing our existing project highlights, we’re also excited to share that we have two new projects in the works, one supporting Utah’s amphibians and another doing on-the-ground work to support free wildlife movement on large scales in the West. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter to stay up to date on ways to get involved!
Community Highlights & Thank You!
We were excited to highlight some key members of our community, which will receive their own in-depth story coming soon. A special thank you to these conservation stars!
Sageland Collaborative’s 2023 Volunteers, Partner, & Donor of the Year. From left to right: Austin Green, Alhondra Lopez, Anna Jackson, Gabe Brown, Julia Dalesandro, Lauri Taylor, Connie Misket, Will Riedlinger, and Carrie Schultz. Not pictured: Angela Rowland & Kathy Lichtendahl.
We cannot thank our volunteers, partners, and donors enough for these and many more impacts. Keep an eye out for our 2023 impact report to learn more about what you’ve made possible this year!