Bees are essential to the health of our environment and farms. Unfortunately, in many places, the essential service of pollination is at risk from habitat loss, pesticide use, and introduced diseases.

For nearly a decade, Conservation Works' Bee Patches program has been planting resilient habitats with multi-season forage which can lessen the struggle of bees to survive.

Contact oona@conservationworksnc.org to find out how you can help protect our pollinators by planting a Pollinator Habitat Garden at your farm, school or community garden.

Our habitat plantings nurture migrating Monarch butterflies, another pollinator species under threat and which passes annually from regions west of the Rocky Mountains through California to overwintering sites along the California coast.

In 2021, Conservation Works partnered with Gold Ridge Resource Conservation District to help offset the loss of monarch breeding habitat by planting regionally appropriate native milkweed species and nectar plants in all our pollinator habitat planting projects. Agricultural intensification, the development of rural lands, and the use of mowing and herbicides to control roadside vegetation have all reduced the abundance of milkweeds in the landscape (Xerces).

Contact alina@conservationworksnc.org to find out how you can help protect our monarchs by planting milkweed at your farm, school or community garden.

The Behren’s Silverspot Butterfly (Speyeria zerene behrensii) was listed as an endangered species in 1997 and is our own local butterfly living in coastal Sonoma and Mendocino counties. This beautiful butterfly survives in coastal terrace prairie/grassland habitat that contains its caterpillar’s host plant, western early blue violet (Viola adunca), adult nectar sources, and suitable adult courtship areas.

In 2022, Conservation Works began partnering with Whynn Coastal Planning & Biology and the National Fish and Wildlife Service as a fiscal sponsor and partner to help recover this butterfly.

Contact oona@conservationworksn.org to find out how you can get involved. Photo Credit ,Clint Pogue/NFWS