In June, the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation recertified UW-Madison as a Bee Campus, extending its status as one of eight universities in Wisconsin and one of nearly 200 in the U.S. to hold the designation. UW-Madison first achieved Bee Campus USA certification in September 2022. Early this year, it underwent the length process of submitting for renewal.

“To get the certification, you have to commit to working toward improving pollinator habitat across your campus, setting up a committee, and having a structure for it,” said Alex Frank, project portfolio manager for the Office of Sustainability (OS) who collaborated with graduate assistant and entomologist, Victoria Salerno, to collect and submit data for the Bee Campus applications. “It’s the recertification where you have to prove that you’ve actually made progress.”

“This is what the Bee Campus initiative helps us do that we otherwise might not have done ourselves very naturally,” said Claudio Gratton, a professor in the Department of Entomology whose lab studies pollinators and the benefits of insect conservation. “To bring people from all of these different sectors of our institution to help come together and figure out how we can work together to make conservation actually work.”

“When I started here 20 years ago, we weren’t really talking that much about climate change and the impact that it has on people’s daily lives,” he explained. “Similarly, we’ve recognized the impacts that humans have on the environment. What I’m seeing now is there’s a collective sense of, if we can work together on some of these challenges, we can mitigate the worst outcomes that might occur if we let things kind of continue the way that they are.”

“This is not a one-year project, this is not a ten-year project,” Gratton continued. “This is a mindset-change project that is going to continue on for a long time, and that’s what I’m particularly excited about.”

Adapted from an article written by Marek Makowski for the eCALS newsletter. Read the full story: https://sustainability.wisc.edu/uw-madison-recertified-by-bee-campus-usa/

This article was posted in News and tagged Claudio Gratton, Victoria Salerno.