Pickin’ up good vibrations on the prairie

“Although we think of restoration as a science, it’s also about creativity. Prairie restoration begins with a vision. The dream of how the land might be healed, imagined in the mind of a steward or site manager.” So writes author Cindy Crosby in Tallgrass Conversations: In Search of the Prairie Spirit.

On Tuesday, June 14, prairie restoration—and the use of creativity and imagination in the process—will be the focus of a field trip hosted by CFAES’ Environmental Professionals Network. Titled “If You Listen Carefully, It Sounds Like Love,” the event, its website says, will be “a celebration of beauty in the sounds of nine Ohio prairie seeds”—including wild bergamot, big bluestem, little bluestem, dogbane, and milkweed—“and the steps we can take as a bioregional community to help them thrive again.”

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They’re helping restore a wetland on Ohio State’s campus in Columbus (and you can, too)

Six senior students in CFAES’s Department of Food, Agricultural, and Biological Engineering, sponsored by the Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed (FLOW), and with further support from a Coca-Cola Sustainability Grant — are helping restore a wetland in Ohio State’s Carmack Woods. It’s another good read on our new CFAES Stories website.

You can help plant trees there on Sunday, April 22 — Earth Day. Find out more.

‘When they saw all the fish dying, they tried to raise their voices’

Return of the River,” the story of a “remarkable campaign to set a river free, culminating in the largest dam removal in history,” screens at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 21, in Ohio State’s 2017 Environmental Film Series. Set on Washington state’s Elwha River, the film offers a story of “hope and possibility amid grim environmental news,” its website says. “It is a film for our time: an invitation to consider crazy ideas that could transform the world for the better.” Watch the trailer above.

Free and open to the public. Free pizza and beverages at 6:45 p.m. Postscreening discussion led by CFAES’s Chris Tonra and Bryon Ringley of Stantec in Columbus. Details.

Just watch where you put your hands

Does whatever a spider canColumbus’s “Main Street bridge is crawling with spiders” — especially, it seems, its handrails. And in terms of the growing health of a restored section of the Scioto River, that’s good. CFAES’s Dave Shetlar is quoted. Mark Somerson of the Columbus Dispatch has the story. (Photo: Nathan Lovegrove, iStock.)

Plenty to sink your beak into

great blue heronA panel discussion at the next Environmental Professionals Network breakfast, which will focus on restoring the Olentangy River, will feature Laura Shinn, planning director, Ohio State; Byron Ringley, senior principal, Stantec; Anthony Sasson, freshwater conservation manager, The Nature Conservancy; and Alice Waldhauer, watershed coordinator, Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed. Also, come early and go birding at the Wilma H. Shiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park (the breakfast program’s location) with Jim McCormac, avian education specialist with the Ohio Division of Wildlife and Columbus Dispatch nature columnist. Details.

August breakfast program to feature Olentangy River restoration

olentangy dam for GBThe Environmental Professionals Network, a service of CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR), has announced its “breakfast club” program for August. The topic is the 5th Avenue dam removal project on the Olentangy River, and the location, which is a change from the usual, is SENR’s Wilma H. Schiermeier Olentangy River Wetland Research Park. If you’re interested, register soon, because attendance, due to the smaller venue this month, is limited to 60.

Ecological restoration, sustainability: Group meets starting today

SER logoThe Midwest-Great Lakes chapter of the Society for Ecological Restoration holds its annual meeting today through Sunday (4/12-14) on the Wooster campus of CFAES’s research arm, OARDC. Theme: “Ecological Restoration and Sustainability: Partners for the Future.” Read more about the meeting here and about the chapter here. (The chapter’s mission: “To promote the science and practice of ecological restoration to assist with the recovery and management of degraded ecosystems throughout the Midwestern and Great Lakes region of the United States.”) Among those attending and presenting are a number of scientists and graduate students from CFAES.

Tomorrow: How to restore fire-dependent forests?

wildfire restorationPriscilla Nyamai, a doctoral candidate in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources (SENR), presents “Is There a Role for Restoration When Fuel Reduction Is a Management Objective in Fire-dependent Forest Ecosystems? Lessons from the Northern Lake States” tomorrow (4/11) in SENR’s spring seminar series. Details. Her advisor is SENR scientist Charles Goebel, who leads the Lake States Fire Science Consortium.