Celebrate Bees for World Bee Day (Week)
For the love of bees!! It’s your last chance to bee a winner in our 2024 annual fundraising auction!! You’ll win because you have a chance to score some sweet prizes, you’ll win by showing our sponsors and project partners some love by bidding on their item, and you’ll win by making a donation to support grassroots (flowerroots??) bee conservation by supporting our research, education, regeneration, and art programs and projects!
Myself and our whole team here at BGO are committed to preserving biodiversity, promoting coexistence, inspiring regenerative stewardship of agricultural lands, and building a future where bees enrich our landscapes and our lives.
By bidding on these sweet prizes you will be supporting our small team that does big work! Let me tell you more about our hive -- Ginelle is co-director of operations and fundraising, I’m in charge of research and education program design and implementation, Autumn is our brilliant data analyst, Tara is our educational content developer, and Skyler is our talented bee taxonomist.
In addition to paid staff and contractors - we have a committed board of directors supporting us with their time and skills in marketing, law, development, and tax advice.
Our fundraiser ends TODAY, Monday 27th @ 3pm Pacific time!
We’re just over halfway to our fundraising goal. We currently have $2,868 in high bids, our goal is $5,000. Some lots don’t have bids yet, which means you could walk away with some sweet prizes for 50% (or more) off the retail price - while supporting bee habitat conservation.
As this fundraiser nears its final hours I’ll be meeting with a bison rancher outside of Bozeman, Montana to explore a possible collaboration to expand our Bison and Bee Habitat Project. Shortly after that, I have an interview lined up with a producer of the podcast series, Working Wild U, to talk about BGO’s bee projects on working lands in the West.
Working Wild U is an award-winning podcast that immerses the listener in the action with the people and wildlife of the American West. They bring you the big stories at the heart of the struggle to sustain productive, resilient and connected rural landscapes and communities. Each episode is centered at the intersection of cultural knowledge and science, exploring the challenges and successes of sharing and managing working landscapes that support both people and wildlife.
It’s an honor to have the opportunity to share our work (that you support!) with more and more community members in the working wild.
Speaking of, next I’m on to spend the day with rancher Erik Kalsta in the “Big Hole” region of Montana. Erik is famed for his co-existence work with the region’s grizzly bears. We’ll be discussing native bees which have become increasingly rare in the American West, and how we can collaborate to ensure that ranchers are a part of the solution in providing refugia for these bees.
The next day I’m off to J Bar L Ranch to continue our Coexistence and Bee Habitat in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem project. This will kick off a month straight of visiting ranchers and monitoring our study plots to learn and share all we can about bees, and how best to conserve them and their habitat, in the working wild.
This is hard work and it’s become increasingly difficult to fundraise in the last couple of years (a trend all US non-profits are experiencing). If nothing in the auction strikes your fancy, please consider a donation of anything that is meaningful to you. Also, please forward this email on to anyone you think may be interested in making a donation to support our work – and a friend or family member, a foundation, or a grant maker. Let’s work together to leave a lasting legacy of flowers, trees, and healthy soil for our bees to live in!