PACIFIC NORTHWEST BUMBLE BEE ATLAS TRAINING 

Harney County School District #3 Administration Building
Burns, Oregon
Saturday, May 11th, 2019
10:00 AM - 4:00 PM PST

Please join us in a collaborative effort to track and conserve the bumble bees of the Pacific Northwest through this hands-on training.

Learn about bumble bees, their conservation status, and how to participate in the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas during this full-day training. In recent years, the story of vanishing bees has become a common theme in news reports and popular culture. In most cases, these reports have focused on the disappearance of honey bees, a non-native species introduced to North America from Europe. The larger, often underappreciated story is that while honey bees are a popular and important species, native bees are also suffering, and in some cases, their fates are far worse. This is particularly true of some of North America’s native bumble bees.

Idaho, Oregon and Washington are home to nearly 30 species of bumble bees, and several of them face an uncertain future. The western bumble bee has declined dramatically - especially in the western portion of its range, and other species including Morrison’s bumble bee and the Suckley cuckoo bumble bee are in decline. The Idaho Department of Fish and Game, Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, Oregon State University, and the Xerces Society have collaborated to launch a citizen science project to collect data to better understand the status of our native bumble bees.

Please join this project and help collect critical information on Pacific Northwest bumble bees. With your help, we can create an army of trained volunteers equipped with cameras and vials, and collect bumble bee data throughout our region. Your participation will allow us to quickly and efficiently cover all three states, collect scientific quality data, and contribute to the local, regional, and global understanding of bumble bee distributions.

COURSE AGENDA

The focus of the training will be to introduce participants to the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas Project and familiarize participants with several aspects of bumble bee biology. In addition to basic life-history and ecology, participants will learn which species are most imperiled throughout the Pacific Northwest, the threats they face, and management techniques to help protect them. The bulk of the workshop will be dedicated to the identification of our native fauna, as well as learning different techniques for surveying and observing bumble bees, and how to submit observations to contribute data to this project.

The training will have several different components. The morning will be broken up into 4 different modules:

Module 1: Introduction to the Pacific Northwest Bumble Bee Atlas Project

Module 2: Bumble Bee Ecology and Conservation

Module 3: Bumble Bee Identification

Module 4: Bumble Bee Survey Techniques and Observation Submission

The afternoon will include a field trip to nearby habitat where we will discuss bumble bee ID and survey techniques in more detail, while we sample the local area for foraging bumble bees. 

INSTRUCTOR

Rich Hatfield, Senior Conservation Biologist, The Xerces Society 
Rich has a Master’s degree in Conservation Biology from San Francisco State University. His degree focused on the habitat requirements of bumble bees in the Sierra Nevada. He has authored several publications on bumble bees, including a recently published set of management guidelines entitled Conserving Bumble Bees. He is the Red List Authority for the IUCN (International Union for the Conservation of Nature) Bumble Bee Specialist Group, and recently completed an analysis of the status of all North American bumble bees. He has investigated native bee pollination in agricultural systems in the Central Valley of California, and studied endangered butterflies in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado and throughout the Pacific Northwest. In addition to his work as a research biologist, he has extensive classroom teaching experience with a focus on conservation biology, ecology and sustainability.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Special thanks go to the Harney County School District #3 for hosting the event.

PARTNERS

This short course is made possible thanks to the support of the Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research.