Bees, Bison, and Burning

Thursday, August 3 @ Minneopa State Park, Blue Earth County, MN

Minneopa State Park is a beloved place, which also brings unique challenges for managing sensitive resources. Learn about ongoing oak savanna restoration efforts, ways to integrate prescribed burning and grazing to manage prairie, and interactions among disturbances, plants, and pollinators in prairie reconstructions and remnants.

The program includes a driving tour of the bison enclosure and a special tour of the pollinator nursery, which is used to enhance reconstructions on-site, and see where the federally endangered rusty patched bumble bees were found in 2022! This exciting discovery has led to management changes in the park that will be discussed during the field day.

Registration has closed.

Additional resources

Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis)

US Fish and Wildlife Service - Review the 18-page "Conservation Management Guidelines for the
Rusty Patched Bumble Bee (Bombus affinis)" (link to PDF) published February 2018

"The return of the bison to Minneopa State Park" Virtual Field Day

Four recorded sessions of Minneopa State Park virtual field day - on-site footage filmed during the summer of 2022 and recorded with panelists and live Q and A on Feb. 15-16, 2023 - available on the Prairie Reconstruction Initiative YouTube page

The Prairie Reconstruction Initiative

The Prairie Reconstruction Initiative (PRI) is a collaboration among practitioners and researchers from more than 30 organizations, including federal, state and local agencies, tribal communities, non-governmental organizations, and private individuals throughout the prairie region. PRI is committed to learning how to consistently plant a floristically diverse prairie that has minimal weed pressure and maintains its integrity. PRI's goal is to share experiences and pool data to accelerate our collective understanding of prairie reconstruction and uncover key elements in the process to increase the likelihood we all succeed.

https://sites.google.com/view/prairiereconinitiative/

Suggest an event

Conversations around the fire frequency experimental treatments at Grinnell College, June 21, 2017.

Have a suggestion for a field event to share information about research or lessons learned from prescribed fire implementation and monitoring?

Take a few minutes to share your ideas with the team via our new online field day suggestion form.

Form preview:

Past Field Events

We've been adding to our summaries of past field events: Find Information from Past Field Days