In April, National Wildlife Federation and Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom teamed up to inspire and support the efforts of the next generation of conservation leadership. The collaboration resulted in a series of seven college and university EcoLeaders® grants. The grant program aims to advance innovative, solutions-based programs that help protect threatened and endangered wildlife. A few of the wildlife species positively impacted by these grants include chinook and coho salmon, Hine’s emerald dragonfly, northern long-eared and little brown bat, eastern screech owl, black bear, gopher tortoise and the southern hognose snake.
Wild Kingdom and National Wildlife Federation are honored to support these schools through this grant:
- Bellevue College in Washington
- Joliet Junior College in Illinois
- Roanoke College in Virginia
- University of Montana
- University of Nebraska Omaha
- University of West Alabama
- University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
The grant teams, made up of students, faculty and staff, had the extraordinary opportunity to attend a mentor call to kick off their projects with the co-hosts of Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Protecting the Wild, Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant and Peter Gros. The call gave the grantees the opportunity to learn more about Dr. Rae and Peter’s work to advance wildlife conservation, and to ask questions and seek advice to support their own work on campus.
Learn more about these amazing college and university wildlife conservation projects.
Updates on Wild Kingdom grant projects
Bellevue College
Bellevue College resides in an area critical to salmon habitat restoration. The Pacific Northwest salmon population has declined in recent years. Bellevue’s project is aimed at restoring habitat to threatened salmon in the greater Lake Washington watershed, through reduction in 6PPD-quinone and other toxins carried from local roadbeds by stormwater.
This summer, the Bellevue grounds crew cleared the invasive species from the project area, monitored how plants are growing back and observed how the area changed in the drier months. Bellevue is hosting two volunteer events this fall to advance their project: a work party to remove more invasive species and a second event to replant the area to restore habitat and to install the biofiltration devices that will help remove toxins from salmon habitat.
Credit: Brad Mears
Joliet Junior College
Joliet Junior College (JJC) has over 90 acres of natural areas. Joliet is conducting research on wildlife species on campus including a survey of JJC’s prairie and fen. One desired result of the survey is to confirm the presence of the federally endangered Hine’s emerald dragonfly. The rare dolomite prairie and fen habitat hosts the perfect habitat for this organism, which has been recorded in other local prairies within a 10-mile radius from JJC.
Additionally, Joliet is surveying bat populations within woodlands and installing bat boxes specifically for bat species, such as the Indiana and the northern long-eared bats (a federally endangered species). Joliet is also surveying streamlets looking for signs of crayfish activity to help establish sampling sites for the Hine’s emerald dragonfly nymph.
This summer, four sites were chosen in the natural areas for Hine’s emerald dragonfly research. The JJC team spent several field days doing a full macroinvertebrate assessment of the fen creek, allowing them to quantify the biodiversity of invertebrates in the water and the quality of habitat. This involved sampling several sites by kicking up sediment and using a dip net to capture the macroinvertebrates buried in the creek bed. The macroinvertebrates were then taken back to the lab, identified by taxa and counted. Additionally, Joliet installed the Anabat acoustic monitoring to a tree in the natural area’s wetland near a potential bat flyway with ample space for accurate signals.
Roanoke College
Wildlife population declines are due in part to loss of habitat from suburbanization. Habitat restoration on a suburban college campus targets different requirements, such as foraging, cover, roosting and nesting habitat. This has the potential to promote a wide range of wildlife. The Roanoke College Environment Center includes a 1.5-acre meadow restoration project, 0.8-acre area of swale, and a 2-acre woodlot. Roanoke is studying the impacts of habitat restoration at the center by installing roosting boxes for bats, including the big brown bats, little brown bats and northern long-eared bats, which are listed as endangered.
In the era of white-nose syndrome, providing bats with small roost sites via bat boxes can reduce pathogen exposure. The college is also installing nesting boxes for great horned owls and eastern screech owl, as well as solitary bee houses and butterfly boxes to support mason bees and monarch butterflies.
This summer, the Roanoke team installed two bat houses, two owl boxes and three bee boxes. By adding these structures, they added crucial habitat for these species that are of conservation concern, which add ecosystem services of pollination and pest control to the suburban landscape. Roanoke held an environmental literacy event for the campus community, Suburban Wild.
On June 27, students, faculty, staff and administrators came out to the Environment Center and learned about how diverse native plant communities lead to diverse, abundant insect communities, which fuel the food web through pollination and feeding predators. They also learned steps to support native plants in their own yards.
The Roanoke team produced three videos for the campus and broader community on the benefits of key wildlife on campus, including bats, bees and screech owls, and featured steps on how to build your own boxes to provide homes for wildlife. Check out these how-to videos: Bat boxes, Bee boxes, Owl boxes.
Credit: Priscilla Morris
University of Montana
The University of Montana (UM) is situated in a beautiful mountain valley, surrounded by a river to the north, university-owned mountains to the east, and residential and business districts to the south and west. The constant presence of wildlife in the valley and on campus is a point of pride for the university. Deer are ubiquitous, and black bears are seen frequently in the summer and fall investigating trashcans and open windows in their hunt for snacks. UM respects the presence of their four-legged neighbors while also needing to manage interactions for the safety of both humans and wildlife.
There are currently an estimated 200 black bears that call the Missoula Valley home. In 2022, UM recorded 19 black bear sightings on campus. The City of Missoula established a Bear Smart working group to design a plan that establishes a “Bear Buffer Zone” in which residents and businesses, including UM, must take additional measures to reduce bear attractants. According to local wildlife officials, it’s only a matter of time before one of the grizzly bears that inhabit the local mountain ranges wanders onto campus.
With support from the Wild Kingdom grant, UM is installing more bear-resistant trashcans and building more enclosures to deter bears and other animals from visiting the waste collection areas. This summer the enclosures were built, and the campus is waiting on the arrival of the bear-resistant trash cans to install. A bear-aware event is scheduled for early October to educate the campus and community about best practices to ensure humans and bears can coexist safely.
University of Nebraska Omaha
The University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) is conducting research on endangered bat species to better understand grassland bat foraging ecology, improve conservation practices and raise public awareness. Insectivorous bats provide invaluable ecosystem services through pest control. However, habitat loss and the white-nose syndrome are contributing to substantial declines in bat populations in North America, resulting in the loss of these critical ecosystem services.
Restoring agricultural lands to their natural habitat serves as a conservation tool to protect endangered species and sustain essential ecosystem functions. In 2023, UNO collected bat acoustic data at Glacier Creek Preserve and Turkey Creek Preserve to investigate whether bats would exhibit a foraging preference in restored grasslands compared to the adjacent agricultural lands. Research found the tricolored bat, a species proposed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to be listed as endangered in 2024, was more active in the restored grassland than in the agricultural land.
The campus also collected acoustic recordings of the northern long-eared bat, a federally listed endangered species, and the little brown bat, a species under review for listing under the Endangered Species Act. Through the Wild Kingdom grant, the campus is purchasing more bat detectors, which will allow more recording sites at additional nature preserves in Omaha and its vicinity.
In the spring, the UNO grant team hosted Dr. Rae on campus and had the opportunity to share more about its research on endangered bats on campus. This summer, the UNO team purchased the bat detectors, quickly set up field sites and started to record data.
“Bats in the Midwest are invaluable because they consume a large number of agricultural pests. Our research aims to understand how restored native grassland patches among farmlands and urban developments might attract bats and provide overall better habitats for their long-term viability,” said Dr. Han Li, assistant professor of biology at the University of Nebraska Omaha.
University of West Alabama
Across Alabama, there were once naturally treeless areas that supported a community of grasses and flowering plants comprised of protein-rich and soil-building legumes. These prairies are largely associated with the black belt physiographic region and have alkaline soils comprised of chalk, marl and limestone. Realizing the fertility of these soils, early European settlers quickly converted these ecologically diverse areas to row crops.
By the turn of the 20th century, less than 1% of these areas remained. Scarcity, loss and lack of management of blackland prairies has led to the imperilment of several species, including the gopher tortoise, southern hognose snake, and the eastern, prairie, and speckled king snakes, as well as bird species including the northern harrier, grasshopper sparrow and the short-eared owl.
The University of West Alabama (UWA) features an 18-acre remnant of relatively intact blackland prairie. Efforts to restore the prairie began in 2004 by eradicating invasive species, reestablishing fire as a disturbance and removing woody vegetation. Through the grant, UWA is continuing its efforts to restore the prairie habitat by removing non-native woody trees and shrubs, implementing spot-applications of herbicide to reduce the prevalence of non-native herbaceous species, and reintroducing prescribed fire to maintain and enhance floristic diversity.
The campus prairie was burned in mid-March 2024. Post-burn, student volunteers measured the effect of prescribed fire on bird and other wildlife communities. Although slight, the post-burn species diversity was higher than diversity measured before applying prescribed fire. In general, an increase in wildlife use of the prairie was observed after the prescribed fire, with whitetail deer being the most prevalent species captured on camera.
Other wildlife captured on camera include eastern cottontail, gray squirrel, raccoon, bobcat and coyotes. Several workdays were hosted to focus on mowing trails, collecting trash and removing woody vegetation. Herbicide was also applied to regrowing McCartney rose and rapidly expanding areas of poison ivy since applying prescribed fire.
During the summer months, the bird surveys continued despite the high temperatures. The grant team also continued to spot spray herbicide on invasive McCartney rose, black locust and plum saplings, encroaching cedars and privet hedge. In addition, the project team is thinning areas that have become predominately poison ivy and partridge pea to encourage a mosaic of prairie vegetation.
University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Through the Wild Kingdom grant, the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire (UWEC) is establishing a bird/pollinator garden formed by a partnership among the grounds department, the American Indian Studies department and the Student Office of Sustainability. The garden is at the Davies Student Center, designed with a native plant palette and part of the Mississippi Flyway. Since doors opened at the center, a portion of the plants on the west side of the building have died or become overrun with invasive species.
The council oak grows next to this area. This bur oak stands as a symbol of UWEC’s commitment to serving as a place of meeting and exchange, which began between the Ojibwe and Dakota Tribes as well as other Tribal Nations, including the Ho-Chunk, Menominee and Potawatomi. UWEC acknowledges a history of settler colonialism through the campus land acknowledgement. This grant project seeks to move beyond the land acknowledgement and find creative ways to recognize the indigenous past, present, and future of the site. Additionally, this garden will have the potential to benefit the Karner blue and monarch butterflies, and the rusty patched bumblebee.
On May 10, Ojibwe Tribal Elder Justin Boshey led the campus in the blessing of the garden, with tobacco. This is a tradition of thanks that is done before anything is removed or added in an outdoor space. Tobacco was sprinkled from left hands (the hand closest to the heart) as he spoke on the intelligence and importance of birds and creating habitat for them. This summer, planting of native species began. The UWEC team spent most of July maintaining the garden and monitoring the growth of the sweetgrass by the creek. Additionally, the designs for the window films have been finalized and are scheduled to be installed very soon.
Learn more about Wild Kingdom’s work with the National Wildlife Federation.
