Click to view this email in your web browser

Each month, our TSN Conference Gems program rewards all TSN email subscribers with exclusive access to video content that has previously only been available to event attendees. We hope you enjoy this month's selection and we thank you for continuing to trust us with your time and attention!

"Monarch Butterflies Of The Great Lakes Regions: Spirits On The Wing"

with Joe Shorthouse

In this presentation from The Stewardship Network Conference 2023, Joe Shorthouse (Emeritus Professor of Entomology and Canadian Environmental Biology with Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario) discusses the monarch butterfly - arguably the most iconic and well-loved species of insect in North America. Observing monarchs in all stages from eggs to adults provide a popular means for connecting people to the natural world and a subject of wonder as the adults migrate in the fall from southern Canada to Mexico, and then return the following spring after undergoing several generations. The realization that monarchs are successfully using islands in the Great Lakes as part of their overall population dynamics has resulted in researchers and citizen scientists attempting to plot interisland movement of migrating monarch both in the fall and spring. It is common for people around the Great Lakes, and elsewhere, to elevate monarchs to a spiritual level once they learn more the biology of this amazing insect.

2024 Year-End Highlights

While we love all of our perennial TSN programs, sometimes you have to be willing to take on a project that no one saw coming. Such was the case this spring when we worked with our partners and delivered 50,000 free hazelnut seedlings to sequester carbon, filter nutrients, and provide food across Michigan and Ohio. That was a wild one, but we got it done! 

Supporting TSN to sustain our 2024 momentum will mean different things to different people, but for those in a position to help financially, the button below will guide you to some popular and powerful options.

TSN Conference Keynote

David C. Michener is a faculty curator at the University of Michigan Matthaei Botanical Gardens and Nichols Arboretum. He is best known publicly for his co-authored book Peony, which made the New York Times Best Summer Reads the year it was published. He established the sister-garden relationship with the Central Botanical Garden – Minsk – National Academy of Sciences of Belarus in part with work in peony conservation and viral genomics; before that he participated in two significant field expeditions in the Russian Far East. He is on the Board of Directors of the American Peony Society and an author for the chapters on Chamaecyparis and Keckiella in the Flora of North America.

For 20 years he was on the faculty steering committee of the University of Michigan Rackham Graduate Schools Museum Studies Program. In one trajectory, and intentionally out of the public eye, David has worked with Anishinaabek partners for more than 20 years. Key partners include the Michigan Anishinaabek Cultural Preservation and Repatriation Alliance (MACPRA) as well as programs of the Great Lakes Indian Fish & Wildlife Commission (GLIFWC) and the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture & Lifeways. With Professor Jennifer Gauthier of the College of the Menominee Nation’s Sustainable Development Institute, David co-leads the Midwest Hub of the Center for Braiding Indigenous Knowledges and Science. This is an ambitious $30,000,000 5-year initiative funded by the National Science Foundation.

David is part of our Day Two keynote presentation, "Developing Partnerships with Indigenous Communities," alongside Kathleen Smith and Roger LaBine.