8:30 a.m.

Sarah Nevison and Melissa Panella, NGPC – Welcome and Information

8:35 a.m.

Alicia Hardin, NGPC Wildlife Division Administrator – Welcome and Recovering America’s Wildlife Act Information

9 a.m.

Melissa Panella, NGPC Wildlife Diversity Program Manager – Nebraska Natural Legacy Award Winners

9:10 am

Will Inselman and Melissa Panella,NGPC – Midwest Landscape Initiative: Working across boundaries to conserve our shared nature

9:10 am

PANEL – Great Plains Initiative Panel: Opportunities and Roundtable Discussions

11 a.m.

Stephen Brenner and Joel Jorgensen, NGPC – Migratory songbird abundance and body condition at a Wildlife management Area in eastern Nebraska

11:30 a.m.

Amanda Hegg, Audubon Nebraska – Mitigating avian collisions with power lines through illumination with ultraviolet light

12 p.m.

Dana Varner, Rainwater Basin Joint Venture – Habitat prioritization for breeding grassland birds

1:30 p.m.

Grace Gaard and Ted LaGrange, NGPC and Brooke Talbot, Platte Basin Timelapse – Wet and wild learning in Nebraska: Shaping a statewide wetlands outreach and education project

2 p.m.

Patricia James, Nebraska Master Naturalist – Making connections through the arts: A landowner’s artistic study of 200 plants in Boyd County

4:00 – 4:30 p.m.

Colin Croft, Nebraska Master Naturalist – Camera-trapping in two panhandle BULs

3:15 p.m.

Tom Malmstrom, Saline Wetlands Conservation Partnership, and Brooke Talbot, Platte Basin Timelapse – Visualizing the value of saline wetlands (60 MIN PRESENTATION)

4:15 p.m.

Kaley Keldsen, Platte River Recovery Implementation Program – Monitoring interior least tern and piping plover nests with remote and cellular video cameras at off-channel nesting sites along the Central Platte River in Nebraska

9:30 a.m.

Abraham Kanz, Oklahoma State University – Refining relationships between macroinvertebrate communities, abiotic factors, and vegetative factors of wet meadows in the Central Platte River Valley

10 a.m.

Kate Bird, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Importance of scale in evaluating landscape connectivity: An examination of wetland habitat in the Central Platte River Valley

10:30 a.m.

Daniel Fogell, Southeast Community College – The distribution of Blanding’s turtles (Emydoidea blandingii) outside of their core range in Nebraska

11 a.m.

Randy Stutheit, Nebraska Game & Parks – Cottonwoods: Their demands on wetlands and management to minimize their influence on the resource

12:30 p.m.

Amber Schiltz, NGPC – Increasing ecological literacy through science communication and outreach

1 p.m.

Lindsay Rogers, NGPC – Understating Nebraska’s diverse audiences

1:30 p.m.

Alie Mayes, NGPC, and Louise Lynch-O’Brien, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – An update on Community Science in Nebraska and beyond

2 p.m.

Jamie Bachmann, Northern Prairies Land Trust – Environmental education and land management: A power couple

3 p.m.

Cody Dreier, NGPC – Nebraska Game & Parks butterfly survey update

3:30 p.m.

Jennifer Corman, Northern Prairies Land Trust – American burying beetles: Aligning conservation funding with survey results

4 p.m.

Alison Ludwig, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – The role of extreme fire in grassland restoration for the threatened American burying beetle (Nicrophorus americanus)

9:30 a.m.

Bailey McNichol, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Environmental gradients strongly influence present and future forest composition in the Niobrara River Valley

10 a.m.

Joseph Spooner and Zach Horstman, NGPC – Chutes and ladders: Mitigation of perched culvert stream fragmentation

10:30 a.m.

Michael Murphy, Clemson University – Conservation of the finescale and northern redbelly dace

11 a.m.

Allison Zach, Nebraska Invasive Species Program – Nebraska Invasive Species: New species, collaborations, and education resources

12:30 p.m.

Ashley Garrelts, Sandhills Task Force – Working with private landowners on eastern red cedar management to promote ranching and improve wildlife habitat

1 p.m.

Conor Barnes, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Comparing variations in landowner attitudes toward eastern redcedar and prescribed fire among three Nebraska ecoregions

1:30 p.m.

Daniel Morales, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Rural versus urban perspectives on management of natural resources in Nebraska

2:30 p.m.

Devan McGranahan, USDA Agricultural Research Service – The case for burning rangeland pastures in the Northern Great Plains

3 p.m.

Dillon Fogarty, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Effective seed dispersal of eastern redcedar in grasslands

3:30 p.m.

Paul Akpejeluh, University of Nebraska-Lincoln – Are the Sandhills getting greener?

4 p.m.

Claire Shield, Nebraska Forest Service – Introducing the Nebraska Wildfire Risk Explorer