Author & Ecologist
EOLYN and her companion novels had a makeover in 2021. Cover design by A Raven Designs Anyone else feel like there wasn't much of a holiday season this year? Everything blasted by so quickly. That's not to say I didn't have a nice holiday. Thanks to vaccines and loosened travel restrictions, I was able to... Continue Reading →
Cup traps proved very effect for sampling early spring native bees. Friday, I met my student, Gabrielle, on a frosty spring morning to set up traps for her capstone project. Gabrielle is following up on work begun last year assessing the impact of stem nester refugia on native bee communities in prairie remnants at Jerry... Continue Reading →
The woodland sunflower in full bloom. Look closely and you'll see a native bee (family Halictidae). I promised I'd share some inspiring stories from NACCB2020, so this week I'm embedding the short film (Re)Connecting Wild from NineCaribou Productions. (Re)Connecting Wild documents the efforts of the Nevada Department of Transportation and partners to re-connect an historic... Continue Reading →
Filmmaker Jake Willers talks about the making of (Re)Connecting Wild at the 2020 North American Conference for Conservation Biology By February of this year, when Covid-19 was just making its presence known in the U.S., my summer calendar was booked. Early June, I planned to attend the Society for Ecological Restoration's (SER) global conference in... Continue Reading →
Normally this time of year I would be at my annual Women's Writing Retreat, more affectionately known as Dollbabies Week. Like so many other spring activities and conferences, that plan was washed away by the tide of Covid-19. My literary colleagues and I have organized a remote edition instead. It won't be the same, but... Continue Reading →
Life has been transformed in the past couple weeks for pretty much everyone in the United States, and around the world. At Avila University, faculty, staff and students have undertaken a monumental effort to move our entire spring curriculum online. Virtual classes started yesterday, almost all of us wading into unknown territory. On the bright... Continue Reading →
My bee page is now updated - check it out for details about our 2020 field season. I'm excited about my projects, coordinated as always with KC Wildlands, KC Parks, and the Missouri Department of Conservation (MDC). We're going to conduct a standardized survey of a unique habitat in the Kansas City area, the rocky... Continue Reading →
Avila University started its regular spring semester about two weeks ago. Seems I've hardly drawn a breath, and the month has already slipped by! After some worry that I might be teaching an overload again this spring, I managed to negotiate with the powers that be so that my teaching obligations remain within contract. This... Continue Reading →
Karin Rita Gastreich 