Public Events: Join as a volunteer, a student, a community scientist, an artist, and get involved at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve. All are welcome to attend, space is limited/ all participants must RSVP in advance.
Partnership Events: These private events are reserved only for participants associated with partner organizations, schools, Tribes, or others noted in the event description.
Join us on Friday, April 25 for an afternoon of hands-on activities, local vendors, and engaging experiences that highlight the science of sustainability. Earth Day is a call to protect our planet for future generations—come learn, explore, and take action for a more sustainable future!
Come learn practical and low-cost strategies to restore natural hydrology, improve biodiversity, and enhance ecosystem function. This hands-on workshop will explore low-tech, process-based restoration techniques for waterways and wetland meadows. Emphasizing practical approaches like soil erosion control, and plant community restoration, and natural water flow management, this workshop is ideal for landowners, restoration practitioners, students, and anyone interested in ecological restoration.
As a thank you to our Spring Fundraiser supporters at $250 or more, we are hosting a unique experience during one of the greenest, sweetest, most lovely times of the year!
Join Vesper Meadow Education Program Director Jeanine Moy and Board Member Stacy Tauber for a bird walk through Vesper Meadow followed by a delicious brunch spread. We'll see some charismatic Sandhill Cranes as well Hermit Warblers, Yellow-rumped Warblers, Grosbeaks, Western and Mountain Bluebirds, various sparrows including the Vesper Sparrow, Cliff and Tree Swallows, maybe an elusive Hermit Thrush, and many others!
Calling all artists, writers, creatives! Join us for and informal day of inspiration and art making in the early summer. We’ll explore the day’s theme “water, restoring the flow for all life." Participants will tour the creek restoration demonstration site and have thoughtful discussion of the meaning of restoring waterways during current times.
Join Jeanine Moy as she brings you along through the native bunchgrasses and seablush flowers for a butterly-eye view of the Monument. Hear the story of a rare and imperiled species, and learn about our chance to come together and protect the land that both the Mardon and our communities rely on. Participants will gain opportunities to become involved and take action for meadow habitat conservation and restoration.
Following the Friday May 23rd evening talk, we will get out on a field trip to Vesper Meadow and a couple different nearby meadows in the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument. We will caravan to the CSNM for a hybrid walking/ driving tour of different Mardon Skipper habitat meadows; taking care to not impact sensitive sites. Participants will be treated to a diversity of spring wildflower viewing, early season butterflies, and breeding birds. We will get a good picture of how the state of the Klamath Mardon Skipper is reflected in the land, and learn about the history of people, plants, and water that have shaped the overall health of their meadow habitats.
Calling all educators and local organizations!
In collaboration with The Crest at Willow-Witt Ranch, we’re co-hosting an open house day for you to get to know the land and people behind the Highlands Connection programs. We welcome educators & partner organizations, old and new, to come out for short walking tours and a brown bag picnic lunch.
Some of the most pressing issues of our time: wildfire, how to build resilience communities, and climate change…. are challenging topics to discuss with children. Through utilizing our “Fire Ecology and Human Relationship” curriculum guide, we’ll showcase resources and lesson plans to explore these issues and provide hands-on learning materials for the classroom and beyond. This workshop features a presentation by Joseph Scott, Culture keeper and Indigenous educator who will discuss traditional ecological knowledge and relationships with fire, as well as several choose-your-own lesson demonstrations. We’re inviting all educators and community organizers to join this free event.
All are invited to our first Mini-Fest for some relaxation, community, and merriment. This fundraiser is celebrating the end of the season, 5 years of Vesper Meadow programs, and most of all… you! You will enjoy the fall season at the meadow, hear about our last five years of biocultural restoration, and partake in both healing and celebratory activities (read more for details)
This community collaboration is for the restoration of an upland meadow to enhance water resources, fish and wildlife habitat, and an imperiled pollinatior speces, the Klamath Mardon skipper. After the creation of beaver-based restoration structures in Hoxie Creek earlier this year, the Bureau of Land Management is teaming up with local conservation organizations to build a fence that will help this meadow habitat come back after years of of damage from free range cattle.
All are welcome to join this effort to restore native plants to the meadow which will also benefit a diversity of native bees and butterflies. We’ll learn about restoration techniques, spread some seed, and enjoy the meadow in fall.
All are welcome to join this effort to restore habitat for the endangered Klamath Mardon Skipper and will also benefit a diversity of native bees and butterflies. We’ll learn about restoration techniques, spread some seed, and enjoy the meadow in fall.
Join us for our fourth year of transforming the meadow from stands of invasive pasture grass to diverse native grasses and flowers, aka pollinator habitat (like restaurants for pollinators!). All are welcome to join, no experience necessary.
Calling all volunteers to help harvest conifer bows and willow stakes, and plant willows along headwater creeks of the Rogue River using restoration techniques to restore the creek channel previously eroded by grazing and down-cutting associated with lack of vegetation.
Calling all artists, writers, creatives! Join us for this early autumn event: Take a field trip out of the studio, help steward native plants through seed collection, and exercise your creative side.
Spend the day with fellow Queer Indigenous people repairing beaver-based restoration structures in the creek. We will share in good company and conversation about land restoration as healing for native queer and 2-spirit people.
Join us in collaboration with the Public Lands Store to ‘behave like beavers’ and help restore Latgawa Creek at the scenic Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve. You will stay cool walking in the meadow and the creek, and learn restoration skills with some fun folks!
Join Aiyanna Brown, our Healing Landscapes Intern, and Stasie Maxwell for an evening of beadwork and native plant seed collection!
This public event is being held in collaboration with Red Earth Descendants R.E.D. Learn more about our Healing Landscapes program in this recent blog post.
Come unwind with a sunset walk and help us to further restoration at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve. Learn about plant identification, pollinator habitat, and First Foods.
Participants will gain hands-on experience in plant identification and support place-based restoration for Tribal access to First Foods. A fun and informative introduction for restoration managers, ecology students, and pollinator garden enthusiasts.
Join us for a stewardship event where you can learn about and help the rare Kamath Mardon Skipper butterfly. Found only in the meadows of the Cascade-Siskiyou mountains, its populations have been dropping significantly over the last decade.
We will train volunteers to monitor threats to Mardon skipper habitat and identify key habitat plants for seed collection. This training will meet at the KS Wild office at 10am for volunteer protocol training, then a 30 carpool to a Mardon skipper meadow. Bring a pen, paper, close-toed shoes and sun protection, water & lunch.
This is a collaboration with Vesper Meadow, Friends of Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument, and Bureau of Land Management (BLM).
Join Tuula Rebhahn of The Understory Initiative and spend a day during the peak of wildflower season to collect seeds of species that are larval host grasses and nectar flower plants for the Mardon Skipper butterfly. Experience with botanical ID and/or seed collection preferred.
We’re working with a group of Southwest Oregon restoration practitioners, Tribal members, ecologists, land managers to develop a Network for grassland/prairie/meadow habitat conservation and restoration. One eventual goal could be a regional conference to share best practices and research outcomes for this unique regional habitat type. This tour and discussion will help collect input and create a vision for the work ahead.
Join Tuula Rebhahn of The Understory Initiative and spend a day during the peak of wildflower season to collect seeds of species that are larval host grasses and nectar flower plants for the Mardon Skipper butterfly. Experience with botanical ID and/or seed collection preferred.
Calling all the habitat-hero’s out there: we need extra hands to assist with removing Star Thistle - one of our top noxious weeds. Join us for this annual event as we get closer to total removal of this invasive species.
Calling all the habitat-hero’s out there: we need extra hands to assist with removing Star Thistle - one of our top noxious weeds. Join us for this annual event as we get closer to total removal of this invasive species.
Join Tuula Rebhahn of The Understory Initiative and spend a day during the peak of wildflower season to collect seeds of species that are larval host grasses and nectar flower plants for the Mardon Skipper butterfly. Experience with botanical ID and/or seed collection preferred.
Calling all artists, writers, creatives! Join us for this special summer solstice event: Take a field trip out of the studio - learn about the local ecology in our area, the biocultural restoration work at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve, and connect with other artists. Join us for a group painting, sketching, writing experience with VM Director Jeanine Moy and artist Sarah Burns
This private event is being held by the Indigenous Gardens Network (IGN) for families from the Confederated Tribes of Siletz Indians and Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde.
Joinus for an early summer walk during the greenest time of the year! From forest to meadow to creekside, we will be watching breeding behaviors of species like Blue birds, Swallows, Vesper Sparrows, Sandhill Cranes, warblers, hawks, woodpeckers and more. With your help, we will be supporting long-term community science efforts for bird diversity monitoring and Vesper Sparrow research.
This private event for Indigenous women is being held in collaboration with Southern Oregon University’s Native American Student Union.
We’re teaming up with the Native Plant Society of Oregon, Siskiyou Chapter for a meadow tour and willow planting work party! All are welcome to tour the creek restoration area, now 6 years in the making! We will plant willows along headwater creeks of the Rogue River using restoration techniques to restore the creek channel.
Spend the afternoon with Artist-in-Partnership Gabriel Barrera at the Vesper Meadow Restoration Preserve. Participants will be the first to learn more about Gabriel’s upcoming art installation at the meadow, to be created with old cattle fencing and other found materials from onsite. We’ll take a walk through the meadow and participate help jumpstart the art process for this sculpture with some land stewardship.
We’re offering a two-part curriculum workshop for educators! Newly released June 2023, the Fire Ecology and the Human Relationship is an Oregon-centric 4th - 10th grade curriculum that helps teachers and students explore fire and its connections with Traditional Ecological Knowledge, biodiversity, land-use history, climate change, and social impacts. In this two-part workshop teachers will gain foundational understandings of fire ecology in Oregon, Indigenous use of fire, and discuss current social-cultural impacts. Participants will receive a complimentary spiral-bound copy of the curriculum, will hear perspectives from an Indigenous Cultural Fire Practitioner, a Fire Scientist, and get a sneak peak at a few of the lessons.
Join Vesper Meadow and Friends of the Cascade-Siskiyou National Monument to ‘behave like beavers’ as we tour along the creek to see and tend to the 2022-2023 beaver-based restoration structures. Depending on the weather we will do a combination of creating Postless log strutures, riparian planting, in-stream willow stake planting.
