By Beth Sluys
Northside News
The prairie being installed in the Wisconsin and Southern Railroad right-of-way along Woodward Drive is in its second year of growth and is full of flowering native plants. Within the blooms, when you walk along the edge of the site, you hear and see all manner of pollinators. Volunteers working in the prairie have observed many pollinators, including snowberry clearwing moths, rusty patched bumblebees and monarch butterflies.
Elizabeth Braatz is a graduate student researcher at the UW Madison Insect Landscape Ecology Lab working with Dr. Claudio Gratton. To help learn more about the pollinators in Harmony Prairie, Elizabeth was invited to educate a group of neighbors about the buzz at the prairie.
She is conducting a research study on community-led pollinator-friendly plantings to quantify the impacts of urban native plant installations on pollinators and also to characterize the experiences of the participants. Harmony Prairie is one of her study sites.
“I have always been interested in insects and was involved in studying monarch butterflies during my undergraduate work at the University of Minnesota in the Oberhauser Lab. Through my work, I have learned the importance of community engagement and outreach in conservation efforts. I have a better understanding of the balance of people and the ecology, and in my study of pollinators, I get to view another layer of life cycles often not known to the public. I enjoy making the connection of ecology with people,” said Braatz.
On Aug. 17, Elizabeth and her colleague, Remi Cooper, offered a bee talk and walk where community members learned about native bees, their importance, and the best ways to create good bee habitat in yards and parks and shared the wonder of how pollinators are in decline and their intrinsic importance to agriculture.
The buzz being created in the new prairie is that there are a large number of pollinators that are finding their way to the flowers and that as the prairie continues to grow, so too will the number of pollinators that find it.
