It’s been about a month since my last update, and we are really in the thick of crunch time, trying to develop some materials that will hopefully be a start to something that will help “put Pembroke on the map” (a catchphrase my team finds itself using pretty often to describe our project) in a meaningful way.
Within the last month, I’ve learned a lot, particularly about how hard it is to do big work on a time crunch, with multiple stakeholders with different backgrounds and interests. We talked quite a bit in class how logistically difficult it is to work with people sometimes, and how hard it is to tackle large projects on a short time frame, when the reality is that conservation work often needs to be ongoing, monitored and tweaked for decades, to ensure lasting impact. We’ve also discussed how daunting it can be to try to compromise with people who have different visions and needs for conservation projects. This has become abundantly clear, particularly within the last month, as we’ve run into a few challenges and hiccups along the way.
For example, things went a little haywire when my primary landowner contact changed phone numbers (twice), and forgot to tell anybody on the museum team that this happened. We lost contact for about two weeks, until Iza (my botany supervisor) and I decided we should leave a note on her doorstep and see what happens (it worked!). Things like this can easily throw a wrench into the gears of a short project, especially if that project is dependent on relationships and close work with citizens, so it’s important to try to be able to budget time for things like this, and adapt plans and work accordingly (as well as figure out a backup plan to put things back on track).
This week, we also went out to check seed collection participants’ plugs, to see if anything survived to be marketable/a worthwhile purchase to customers. If you remember from my previous blog posts, we had had a little bit of trouble (prior to my onboarding) with getting people to start their seeds in their hoophouses, in proper pots, at the right time, etc., mostly because of age, lack of help, priorities in family matters, freak accident injuries, you name it. Given this, we were not too surprised to find that most of the plugs had failed to thrive, but as we all are aware, pilot projects usually don’t go perfectly on the first try, and that’s where adaptive strategies come in.
As such, we took the opportunity to do an informal survey of some landowners to see if they were interested in trying again this season, and if so, what would help ensure a little more success next Spring. We learned that what most of the landowners would want would be some planting help, as well as help moving trays in and out of their hoop houses, seasonally. A lot of landowners are not only older, but taking care of families (grandchildren, nieces and nephews, etc), and running small organic farms, so a lot of problems stem from lack of time, and lack of energy to do one more project. So, we decided we would look into maybe grants to provide some part-time labor for the project, and maybe go from there. It also doesn’t help that we don’t currently have anyone from the Field Museum specifically on this project to be in Pembroke as frequently as it will be necessary to monitor the plugs. We are hoping that maybe if we are approved for a grant for extra laborers, this could change, but that’s complicated.
On this particular trip, we also met with Gary Sullivan of The Wetlands Initiative (Iza’s former boss). The idea was, if there were plugs, he would come by to see them, and if not, we would spend the day cruising the streets for right-of-way seed and specimen collection and botanizing, and maybe also stop by some natural areas and show him the potential Pembroke has to offer, in hopes that we could maybe spark a new relationship between some restorationists and landowners in the area. We talked a lot about seed collection and plug sales by landowners, and how labor was such a major roadblock. This (combined with utter amazement at the sheer amount of “lifers,” bucket list plants, so to speak, just growing in roadside ditches), led us to a new idea: develop a seed collection program where restorationists can set up agreements to pay to collect on specific portions of landowners’ properties during specific seasons. This week, we are putting in some work to broker some of those relationships and see if maybe this is the right direction for the seed collection initiative.
We are now in the final push to put some materials out to the community. Since I last wrote, we have narrowed down ideas to a few things that we think would be most helpful to the community. We are going ahead with the Milkweed Guide, but we will also be helping landowners set up a welcome center in the library, creating both large and small visual/informational materials, and suggesting some broader next steps.
One thing I’ve noticed on my trips to Pembroke is that there is no shortage of nature preserves, wildlife refuges, landowners ready to show off their properties, etc., but there is a glaring lack of advertisement for any of this. If you’re big into nature tourism, you know that when you enter a place rich with places to hike, camp, etc., there are usually signs to direct people to those places, maybe a center or hub where you can learn about your trip, plan your day, or even just cool off and rest/reset. Pembroke currently has none of this. If you want to go anywhere and see anything, you pretty much have to print off your own mapquest map and forge your path alone–cell service in the area is spotty at best. If you’re there, you have to know what you’re looking for. Some of the best areas to find plants and wildlife don’t have any signage or advertisement at all–these gems are insider information. This is not ideal (in fact, we learned this the hard way on one of our recent trips, and got a little turned around both trying to find one of the local preserves, and then also trying to get back to the Four Corners town square). This isn’t really something the people of Pembroke want, either. A lot of people would much prefer to display something a little more inviting.
So, for the next couple of weeks, I will be working with Veronica (the head of Pembroke Library), and Stephany (my primary landowner contact), to carve out a space in the library for an official welcome center. There, we will display a poster showing some things that people want visitors to pay attention to, a large map like you would see in any preserved area, showing you where you are, and nearby roads, preserves, etc. to help visitors orient themselves. Stephany and I are also collecting photos and information to create a handheld brochure version of our main poster. I will probably be working with Erika (GIS, botany, and all around Pembroke expert) to create a smaller handheld map, too. Since the library is the strongest community institution in the area, and the most receptive to our ideas, it will be the best place to start out our operation (though Stephany has dreams of building something more permanent and set aside for such a thing in the future, which would be wonderful–actually she’s got some goals and plans in the works for just such a thing, so keep your fingers crossed!).
The area in the library where we will be setting up the welcome center used to hold an exhibit Pembroke citizens created with help from the Field Museum called Rooted, which showcased some Pembroke history and heritage, in connection to peoples’ lasting and intimate relationship with the land. It heralds their stewardship and pride in the black oak savanna and sand prairies they have cared for for 150 years (an anniversary they are celebrating at Blueberry Fest this weekend!). One of our hopes is to move this exhibit back to the library welcome center as soon as possible, and out of the school where it was moved this year, so it is accessible to everyone, not just students and parents. After the move, it became clear that people outside the school missed being able to visit the exhibit and showcase it to others. Moving this to a central and hopefully more permanent location would be an amazing addition to a welcome center. So far, we do have some museum support on this, but it appears moving the exhibit might be up to the school/the powers that be, so this is a more long-term endeavor, which I hope to be able to help facilitate in the coming weeks.
Going forward, there will be a few challenges to bring this together. The most obvious one is time. One of the sayings within the Field Museum team is that “time moves slower in Pembroke.” This community is very rural, and full of retirees who are away from the hustle and bustle of city life, very much on purpose. When you go to work in Pembroke, you spend most of your time chatting with the people you’re working with, catching up on events both local and global, walking through gardens and farm plots and checking on this season’s crop, celebrating grandchildrens’ birthdays (happy 1st, Stormy!), etc. Sometimes, you make plans to meet one person, and then they’re not home during your meeting time, so you stroll on down to the next house and do an impromptu meeting with somebody else you maybe weren’t going to hang out with until next week.
Most of the work here is building and maintaining relationships. This is both essential to getting things done and goals achieved, and very rewarding (I’ve met and chatted with some really sweet and wonderful people these last few weeks!), but it can also be really time consuming, which is hard, because with such a short time frame, I am not necessarily afforded the luxury of that time. One of the reasons I have narrowed down my plans for the area is that I have to make sure I can provide something realistic for the community, proportional in weight to the time spent developing relationships. Something that can be done quickly and with less lasting contact than would be necessary for some of the larger ideas we have. I wish I had about two months or more to meet and talk with people and develop some of the other ideas we have planned. For some of those (activities on Stephany’s property, particularly, I will likely end up providing an assessment and resources guide to help her jumpstart some of the easier and more obvious activities she could implement).
Another major challenge will be communication/meetings with my contacts in Pembroke. I mentioned that sometimes people can be hard to pin down, and that we have run into a little bit of trouble getting a hold of people we need to meet with, as well as meeting on time (sometimes you want to meet at 9am but it doesn’t actually happen until noon). For our next meeting, I’ll need to get a few people together at once to try to finalize and set up our materials. I have only a couple weeks left to make this happen, so I am really hoping that one or more people show up to help out my efforts and we can solidify and set up our space as soon as possible.
Finally, another, though less pressing, challenge is that when you’re working with different people to create an establishment showcasing town assets, everybody has a little bit of a different vision for what should be included. Currently, we are working with an extremely small representation of citizens on creating a public institution. This will mean that eventually, we will likely be getting more and more input from others once its initial prototype is set up. To acknowledge and accomodate this, we are making our plans as inclusive as possible, making the welcome center and its plans an invitation to other citizens. If somebody sees an opportunity, or an asset we haven’t included, or realizes they did not formally meet us in the planning process, but would like to be included, we will make space to do just that. (This, again, may be difficult, since I will be gone eventually, and we don’t always have someone on the ground, but the hope is that the town and particularly adopts the project and edits it as it sees fit, since ultimately, it is their resource).
These challenges aside, I am optimistic that with a little bit of persistence and elbow grease, we will be able to at least put up a preliminary setup/structure/distribute our materials to our participants, and given the support we have from the people we are working closely with, things are likely to grow from there.
And, since a lot of this post has hammered the fact that relationships can be terribly important in conservation, I’ll leave you all on a really positive and optimistic note: within the last few weeks, I’ve gotten some major support in the form of photos from a carnivorous plant community contact who is working on a restoration just across the border into Indiana (this ecoregion spans both states!). He was more than happy to collaborate on my field guide and provide pictures for plants I’ve had trouble finding, or plants I’ve found, but not quite in the right stages for all portions of my guide (again, another time I’ve confirmed that plant people really are just the best). It’s really comforting to know there are people out there to help and that if we keep our friends and colleagues close, we don’t have to do things totally alone.
The Nelson Institute: Environmental Conservation Leadership Projects 