May, 29th 2025| Issue 16

Welcome to the 2025 Spring Pool Report.

There are lots of wonderful things to share about this past spring season: between the return of our in-person Annual Meeting, a wildly successful merch sale helping us to provide 60 monitoring kits to program coordinators and volunteers, a record number of field trainings across both peninsulas, community scientists doubling the number of monitoring visits to pools this spring, and partners advancing vernal pool mapping methodology... how to summarize it all... except by saying,

HAPPY VERNAL POOL SEASON!

Thank you for attending our 7th MVPP Annual Meeting! It was wonderful to see so many familiar faces in one room & even more online. We hope you learned something new & met some cool folks! What a great way to get back into our in-person meetings and celebrate 10 years as a partnership.

A big thank you to all our speakers for sharing your expertise, facilitators for keeping all the tech straight and organized, partners & participants for your continued enthusiasm and engagement in vernal pool conservation, Querkus Creative for the wonderful merch, MNFI for your on-site expertise for our vernal pool field trip, and hosts at Pierce Cedar Creek for all of the support! 

Field Training & Outreach Effort. We should absolutely be celebrating the education & outreach efforts of our partners this season. In 2025, partners hosted 22 field trainings, 10 presentations, and about 20 guided vernal pool explorations/monitoring visits, for a total of 52 events. We estimate that across all these efforts, spread across about 20 counties, over 800 people were were engaged in vernal pool conservation this year. Look out on social media for spotlights  on these awesome events & partners across the summer.

Student Education Effort. Vernal pools are an excellent opportunity to engage students with hands on ecology. Between individual teacher trips & larger partner efforts, the MVPP worked with over 500 students at vernal pools this spring. For example, in their second year of partnership, Chippewa Nature Center explored a massive vernal pool with 290 students at Floyd Elementary School, pairing younger classes with an older class to help teach the younger class how to safely handle wildlife. Stony Creek Metropark also entered their second year in partnership with the Girl Scouts of SE Michigan, leading a "Vernal Pool Patch" program at their parks. Additionally, partners at Newaygo County Environmental Coalition, Friends of the Rouge, Ottawa County Park and Recreation, and Michigan Nature Association worked with K-12 students to provide vernal pool learning experiences. 

At the college level, students at Mid-Michigan College have been monitoring vernal pools on campus, and Rebecca Ball displayed this effort at their Annual Student Showcase, winning the board of trustees award for her presentation! Congrats Rebecca! 

In total, over 1,350 individuals were engaged across the season. A big thank you to all our partners for a successful outreach and training effort!

Man, those Pool Patrollers were busy! Here is a summary from the Michigan Vernal Pool Database of the spring monitoring effort so far.

This effort occured across 41 Michigan counties and there were over 175 volunteers surveying so far this year. We had a 57% increase in monitoring visits compared to 2024! 

*This summary includes ONLY data submitted via the Survey123 field app and does not include paper data forms that will be entered into the database Fall 2025.

The mission of the Michigan Vernal Pools Partnership is to increase awareness, understanding and protection of vernal pools through conservation, research & mapping, education & outreach and collaboration.                                     

The Vernal Pool Patrol is a community science and place-based vernal pool mapping, monitoring, and education program consisting of classroom instruction and data collection in the field. Members learn how to follow a standard protocol to help identify, map, and monitor locations of vernal pools within their local communities.