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The award-winning Conservation Station educational trailers provided by Water Rocks! and Iowa Learning Farms are now available for request. Both programs are part of Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and are committed to conservation and educating Iowans about water quality.

Last year I invited Dr. Tom Isenhart to speak at a field day about saturated buffers.

“It’s like weeding your garden,” Billy Beck said. “But instead of throwing the weeds into the yard, you are chopping them up and using them to clean water.” Think of a garden, but bigger.

When the Iowa Monarch Conservation Consortium was formed seven years ago, Iowa State University researchers faced two big questions about reestablishing the milkweed and other wildflowers needed for the iconic butterfly’s survival: How can

White-tailed deer are as synonymous with the ‘acreage living’ experience as fences and ragweed. We find them everywhere in Iowa, thriving in urban forests and remote sections of cropland with little more than a ditch for cover.

Iowa’s Monarch Conservation Strategy seeks to add 160,000,000 new stems of milkweed to Iowa’s landscape by the year 2038.

National Woodland Owner Survey data shows that female woodland ownership in Iowa is increasing. In 2013 approximately 12% of primary woodland owners were women, and by 2018 that number had risen to approximately 20%. Women also made up nearly 50% of co-owners in 2018.

Tree seeds serve as a sometimes inconvenient fact of life during the fall. However, collecting these seeds is an excellent way to promote native biodiversity and even make extra cash.

The beauty and diversity of pollinators can be enjoyed within the home garden or landscape if some basic steps are taken to assure their habitat. In a recent publication called “

The Conservation Learning Group, a think tank based at Iowa State University Extension and Outreach and dedicated to addressing conservation and environmental challenges, recently published 

An Iowa Nutrient Research Center-funded study that seeks to quantify beaver dam impacts on water quality, hydrology, and stream morphology (i.e., how dams shape the stream itself) has reached the one-year mark.

As nature begins to awaken from its winter slumber, those looking to identify backyard Iowa trees can consult a new video resource from Iowa State University Extension and Outreach forestry specialist Billy Beck.