2024 Upper Peninsula Invasive Species Conference Recap

 

Image of conference room full of attendees

Last week UPRCD hosted the Upper Peninsula Invasive Species Conference. After a nearly 8 year hiatus, the UP Phragmites Coalition brought this event back. This two day event, April 16-17, 2024 in Marquette, MI, will utilize the partnerships of all 5 UP CISMAs to network, share success stories, highlight management/monitoring/restoration efforts, and more occurring across Michigan's Upper Peninsula. Partners and participants had the option to attend in-person or virtually. 

Image of conference room full of attendees

The first day focused on invasive phragmites management, treatment, hardships and successes. We had presentations about the overview of the phragmites project, what the CISMAs and UPRCD have been doing, testing for hybrid phragmites, Phragmites work across the Great Lakes Region and we had the Great Lakes Commission speak on PAMF and the Phragmites Collaborative. Attendees had the option to register to set up a table and a lot of these were utilized during breaks and were a great location to go network and ask questions to colleagues. Wild Rivers Invasive Species Coalition had a phenomenal table display with a board game created for invasive species awareness and many tables had thoughtfully designed stickers that guests could collect. 

Display tables from various collaborators

Lake to Lake gave away native seed packets

Breakout room for terrestrial invasives full of attendees

The second day focused on other species and ended on restoration topics. Breakout sessions were separated based on being aquatic or terrestrial. A crowd favorite was an update on Hemlock Wooly Adelgid gaining a lot of audience questions and also a talk on how to rate management success which was a joint presentation between Invasive Species Centre and Three Shores CISMA. However, every presentation was relevant to our line of work and brought beneficial conversation and ideas to the table. Another very popular part to the conference was the native plant restoration panel. The panel of 4 native plant experts were asked a hand full of questions to fill a 50 minute time slot and their answers were carefully thought out and exhibited a passion for the future care of native plants and climate and human impact issues.

Interviewing the native plant restoration panel

All in all, this event was a huge success due to the partnerships showcased across the region. The UPIC is a wonderful opportunity to get together and network with like minded people and those who we work closely with to accomplish tasks, and we plan to host another one in the near future to keep the ball rolling. I want to use this blog post to just share a thank you to our partners, those who attended and spoke, those who brought displays and offered feedback- it is all so inspiring how the Upper Peninsula and surrounding areas pulled together for the conference and how partnerships matter so much to accomplish all the work that we do in the name of conservation. 

UPRCD executive director closing speech- "It's all worth fighting for."