Save the Northwest Prairie!

Hello Everyone,

It has been a very busy spring and we have been met with many challenges and many blessings.

Last month, we found out that three of our grants with the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have been approved.  All these grants relate to conserving and studying the prairie.  Grants cannot cover all our costs and needs for saving the prairie, but the are certainly an important piece.  Support from individuals allows us to continue the work between grant projects, apply for new grants, and sustain our work year round.

In other exciting news, Pacific Rim Institute is months away from finally purchasing our property from the Au Sable Institute of Environmental Studies.  We have been leasing and managing the property for four years now and Au Sable has been very generous in giving us time to come up with funds needed to purchase the property. 

Several donors have already stepped forward to pay for the actual transaction costs for the land (which Au Sable is giving us an extremely generous price for - since they want to see the land protected as much as we do).  We still have approximately $300,000 to raise within the next year.  Any support that you can provide will be a great help!

Next week, we are hosting a Prairie Open House.  Last year we had over 100 people come and take tours of our native prairie. This year, I hope to see 150 people come through.  Naturalists will take visitors off the trail and into our special research and restoration areas that are typically off limits to the public.  Once a year, we provide this opportunity so people can get up close and personal with the work being done.

If you live on or near Whidbey Island, we hope you will join us for a tour! You can find more information on our website.

Thank you again for supporting our efforts to save prairie in the Pacific Northwest!

Links:

• Our Website

Hello Everyone!

I hope you have had a wonderful Christmas and a great start to your year. 

I have some exciting news to share.  Within the next few weeks, our Habitat Management Plan will be completed and published.  We have been developing this document for over a year and to have it almost complete is a great feeling.

This plan will guide all our work on the prairie for at least the next five years.  It documents the priority areas on our 175 acres, what the next steps are for those areas, and what resources we need to accomplish our goals in each area.

For example, this plan will include a detailed chart that shows which native seeds and how much of each seed we would need in order to re-plant one acre of prairie.  With this type of information documented and laid out, we will be able to more effectively and efficiently restore native prairie to our Whidbey property. 

We have received input from over 12 experts in related fields on this plan.  Many thanks go to the writers, Seth Luginbill (PRI Land Steward), Robert K. Pelant (PRI CEO), Randy Van Dragt (PRI Board Chair and Restoration Ecologist), and Peter Dunwiddie (Prairie Restoration Expert and Consultant). 

Thank you so much to all of you for your support of this rare native habitat.  Did you know that the US Fish and Wildlife Service has said that the prairie ecosystem is the FASTEST disappearing ecosystem in Washington State?  Your funds are directly helping to reverse this.

We will make our plan available electronically to anyone who is interested, so please let me know if you would like to see a copy when they are finished.

Many thanks!

Holly

Links:

• Our Website