Looking Back: A Year of Achievement
January has always felt like a nostalgic month to me. It brings the new year, of course, but that aside, there’s something about a wintry landscape—tree branches genuflecting beneath the weight of snow as if in deference to Mother Nature, a piercing pristineness on the coldest of days—that invites reflection. Time, like everything else in January, seems to freeze: there’s nowhere else to look but back.
2024 offered both challenges and rewards for the Schoolcraft Conservation District, starting with our annual tree sale. We hope to promote forestation and wildlife habitat by offering a variety of trees and shrubs to folks each spring. These sales have continued to balloon in popularity, with last year’s seeing a record number of orders. This increased scope means more time and effort to bring everything to fruition, and we couldn’t have run this last tree sale without the help of Hiawatha Behavioral Health, their clients, and the volunteers who teamed up with us to accomplish all the prepping and packaging that needed to be done. We’re currently in search of a location to hold our upcoming sale; if you have a garage or pole barn that you’d be willing to rent out, please get in touch with us at (906) 286-2890 or [email protected].
Last August also saw our second annual native plant sale—another great success thanks to the many wonderful people who supported it! Like the first native plant sale, we held this one at the Manistique Farmers’ Market, where we maintained a booth for the duration of the market’s season. The Farmers’ Market is an incredible resource for both the conservation district and our community, and we’d like to offer our sincere gratitude to market managers Eric Meftah and Emily Navarra-Meftah of The Movement Kitchen for their tireless efforts to keep the market running.
When we weren’t attending the Farmer’s Market last summer, we kept busy working on year one of our two-year Michigan Invasive Species Grant project, which aims to limit the spread of aquatic invasive species. If you’re a boater, you may have run into one of our crew members out at a launch, spreading the word about invasive species prevention and offering free boat decontaminations. While similar programs have a robust presence in other areas of the Midwest, Michigan hasn’t experienced the same degree of outreach, so we hope this project serves as an open door to larger invasive species prevention efforts going forward.
MISG wasn’t the only grant we were able to tackle last year. We were thrilled to have also received a grant from the Wildflowers Association of Michigan that allowed us to establish a pollinator garden outside Emerald Elementary School. Volunteers and students from both Emerald and St. Francis helped us clear and replant what had previously been an unused strip of lawn outside the school’s front entrance, transforming it into a space that will serve as both pollinator habitat and an outdoor classroom for kids to experience the natural world (and humans’ impact on it) firsthand.
Because kids are the future of conservation! Efforts to engage them are a crucial part of our mission, and many of the events we hosted last year worked toward that goal. In celebration of Earth Day, we held two events—one at the Lake Effect Art Center and one at Emerald Elementary—in which we made seed bombs with all of Emerald’s classes and other young Schoolcraft residents. In October, we were joined at the Environmental Education Lab by the Manistique High School’s environmental class for a biodiversity field day, which was shortly followed by a Halloween Hike to encourage children and their grownups to spend more time outdoors.
Other events we led included an agricultural roundtable, classes on fruit tree pruning and growing native plants, a winter solstice hike, and a wildlife wreath-making workshop. The crème de la crème though was our annual Warbler Wonderland Birding Festival. In May, the Manistique area transforms into a hotspot for warblers and other migratory birds as they coddiwomple their way north, making it a perfect place for people to gather and scan the trees for glimpses of these spring visitors.
Many of last year’s events, including Warbler Wonderland, will be cycling back around in 2025, so be sure to keep an eye on our website (schoolcraftcd.org) and social media pages if any of the above caught your eye! Special to 2024 though are two employee achievements…
Each fall, one conservation district employee from each of Michigan’s ten regions is recognized for their outstanding dedication and achievements. We were over the moon to see our very own Ashley Reitter, SCD’s district manager of almost five years, receive the 2024 Region 2 Employee of the Year award. Ashley has truly made her impact on SCD and Schoolcraft County, and we couldn’t be prouder of the grit, passion, empathy, and knowledge she brings to work with her every day.
Equally deserving of recognition is our conservation technician, Bruce Birr, who announced his pending retirement this winter after twenty years of service with district as first a director and later as an employee. It’s not an exaggeration to say SCD probably wouldn’t be here today were it not for Bruce’s tenacity and toil during a time when the future of the district was very uncertain. We’ll dearly miss Bruce when he leaves us this March, but take solace in the fact he’ll be continuing in his role as a county commissioner and SCD representative.
2024 offered both challenges and rewards for the Schoolcraft Conservation District, starting with our annual tree sale. We hope to promote forestation and wildlife habitat by offering a variety of trees and shrubs to folks each spring. These sales have continued to balloon in popularity, with last year’s seeing a record number of orders. This increased scope means more time and effort to bring everything to fruition, and we couldn’t have run this last tree sale without the help of Hiawatha Behavioral Health, their clients, and the volunteers who teamed up with us to accomplish all the prepping and packaging that needed to be done. We’re currently in search of a location to hold our upcoming sale; if you have a garage or pole barn that you’d be willing to rent out, please get in touch with us at (906) 286-2890 or [email protected].
Last August also saw our second annual native plant sale—another great success thanks to the many wonderful people who supported it! Like the first native plant sale, we held this one at the Manistique Farmers’ Market, where we maintained a booth for the duration of the market’s season. The Farmers’ Market is an incredible resource for both the conservation district and our community, and we’d like to offer our sincere gratitude to market managers Eric Meftah and Emily Navarra-Meftah of The Movement Kitchen for their tireless efforts to keep the market running.
When we weren’t attending the Farmer’s Market last summer, we kept busy working on year one of our two-year Michigan Invasive Species Grant project, which aims to limit the spread of aquatic invasive species. If you’re a boater, you may have run into one of our crew members out at a launch, spreading the word about invasive species prevention and offering free boat decontaminations. While similar programs have a robust presence in other areas of the Midwest, Michigan hasn’t experienced the same degree of outreach, so we hope this project serves as an open door to larger invasive species prevention efforts going forward.
MISG wasn’t the only grant we were able to tackle last year. We were thrilled to have also received a grant from the Wildflowers Association of Michigan that allowed us to establish a pollinator garden outside Emerald Elementary School. Volunteers and students from both Emerald and St. Francis helped us clear and replant what had previously been an unused strip of lawn outside the school’s front entrance, transforming it into a space that will serve as both pollinator habitat and an outdoor classroom for kids to experience the natural world (and humans’ impact on it) firsthand.
Because kids are the future of conservation! Efforts to engage them are a crucial part of our mission, and many of the events we hosted last year worked toward that goal. In celebration of Earth Day, we held two events—one at the Lake Effect Art Center and one at Emerald Elementary—in which we made seed bombs with all of Emerald’s classes and other young Schoolcraft residents. In October, we were joined at the Environmental Education Lab by the Manistique High School’s environmental class for a biodiversity field day, which was shortly followed by a Halloween Hike to encourage children and their grownups to spend more time outdoors.
Other events we led included an agricultural roundtable, classes on fruit tree pruning and growing native plants, a winter solstice hike, and a wildlife wreath-making workshop. The crème de la crème though was our annual Warbler Wonderland Birding Festival. In May, the Manistique area transforms into a hotspot for warblers and other migratory birds as they coddiwomple their way north, making it a perfect place for people to gather and scan the trees for glimpses of these spring visitors.
Many of last year’s events, including Warbler Wonderland, will be cycling back around in 2025, so be sure to keep an eye on our website (schoolcraftcd.org) and social media pages if any of the above caught your eye! Special to 2024 though are two employee achievements…
Each fall, one conservation district employee from each of Michigan’s ten regions is recognized for their outstanding dedication and achievements. We were over the moon to see our very own Ashley Reitter, SCD’s district manager of almost five years, receive the 2024 Region 2 Employee of the Year award. Ashley has truly made her impact on SCD and Schoolcraft County, and we couldn’t be prouder of the grit, passion, empathy, and knowledge she brings to work with her every day.
Equally deserving of recognition is our conservation technician, Bruce Birr, who announced his pending retirement this winter after twenty years of service with district as first a director and later as an employee. It’s not an exaggeration to say SCD probably wouldn’t be here today were it not for Bruce’s tenacity and toil during a time when the future of the district was very uncertain. We’ll dearly miss Bruce when he leaves us this March, but take solace in the fact he’ll be continuing in his role as a county commissioner and SCD representative.
First published in the Pioneer Tribune on January 22, 2025