Thursday at U to discuss pollinator conservation

Insect pollinators are responsible for the success of more than 85% of plant species on the planet. That’s a lot of green, including much of the food people eat.

On Oct. 3, Chris Stein, a program manager with the National Park Service, will present Protecting Our Precious Pollinators as the fifth topic in the Thursdays at the U fall lecture series at UW-Eau Claire — Barron County. The presentation will be from 12:30-1:30 p.m. in the Blue Hills Lecture Hall in Ritzinger Hall and livestreamed at ricelaketv.com.

Stein will discuss a simple, easy to implement, low-cost conservation framework that allows communities to engage in pollinator conservation and education.

He works with National Heritage Areas and Community Conservation Partnerships, serving Interior Regions 3, 4 and 5 (the Midwest). After spending four decades managing and helping national parks around the world, he finally came to realize that protecting “the little things that run the world” in our own yards is one of the most important things we can do to help save the planet.

The Thursdays at the U weekly series is free and open to the public thanks to support from the UW-Eau Claire — Barron County Foundation. Neither seating reservations nor parking permits are needed for in-person attendees.

Although in-person attendance is encouraged, most talks in the series are livestreamed. They also are archived and can be watched later on the Thursdays at the U webpage.

The next lecture in the series will be Oct. 10, with Tom Culbert presenting Across the Sahara with Pan Am in 1941.

For more information, contact Laura Holden at 715-788-6207 or holdenlk@uwec.edu.