Pollination Organization at SRU is a brand new club that aims to educate students about pollinators while striving to make a difference in the local eco-system.
The club slogan is “Pollination: It’s more than just bees!”
“When people hear pollination, they tend to picture European honeybees…we focus on the whole system,” club president Amber Angert said.
So far, the club has worked on bringing in speakers and spreading information. At a meeting on Jan. 30, the session focused on how a lack of wolves has caused deer to overpopulate. The deer in turn eat more flowers, which drives away native insects.
“You don’t really think of wolves as being part of the pollination system,” Angert said, “but they are. Just like deer are and birds are and we are.”
In the future, the organization plans to visit local environmental facilities, including SRU’s Macoskey center.
“We don’t want it to just be lectures and talking, we want to take action on what we’ve learned,” Angert said. “We discussed seed bombing which is where you get a bunch of native seeds to our area, put them in a dirt ball and chuck them somewhere.”
The group is also considering planting a pollination garden to attract helpful bugs to campus.
The Pollination Organization at SRU meets every other Monday at 6.00 in Spotts room 117. Every third Tuesday of the month, Jan. through Oct., they will be hosting the Central Western Pennsylvania Beekeepers’ Association meetings in the Macoskey Center.
