Toronto Pollinator Projects-Get Involved

Pollinator Arts and Culture:

1) The Pollinators Festival. Saturday June 25th at Evergreen Brick Works. During and after farmers market. Contact: sabrinamalach@gmail.com

2) Resonating Bodies: a series of art, community and web-based projects which illuminates aspects of Canada's biodiversity through focusing on pollination ecology, with special attention paid to the intersection of native bees, habitat and coevolution of plants and pollinators of the Greater Toronto Area. Artist: Sarah Peebles. http://resonatingbodies.wordpress.com/.

Pollinator Gardens and Habitat:

1) The PACT Urban Peace Program’s “Grow to Learn” Urban

Agriculture Initiative has recently received funding from The Metcalf Foundation to scale up their pollinator gardens at high school gardens in Toronto’s west end. Contact: sabrinamalach@gmail.com

2) Scott MacIvor is a PhD student at York University where he is investigating the effect of landscape and urban complexity on the diversity and foraging ranges of cavity-nesting bees and pest controlling wasps in cities. Contact: jsmacivor@gmail.com

3) Clement Kent, author of "How to Make a Pollinator Garden", heads the Pollinator Gardens project in Toronto. Contact: clementk@yorku.ca

Pollinator Monitoring:

1) Dave Barr is a biologist and urban beekeeper leading citizen scientist volunteers in a pollinator monitoring program .He is author of "Pollinator Monitoring for Citizen Scientists," just published in eBook format." Contact at:  http://bumblebeewatch.blogspot.com/

2) Sheila Colla is our local bumble bee expert. She is working on a book called "The Bumble Bees of North America" and it will be published in 2012 by Princeton U. Press. Sheila needs photographs of bumble bees for the books so please keep you eyes out for these critters over the next three months and send Sheila your photos. Contact: scolla@yorku.ca

Thanks to Sabrina Malach for assembling this list.