Jul 05
IMN/HFWA Talk Series: The Web of Life – Linking Land and Water and its Importance to the Island Park Area
July 5, 2025
Virtual Presentation via Zoom
STATEWIDE MILKWEED SURVEY
STATEWIDE MILKWEED SURVEYHelp IDFG adopt milkweed patches across Idaho and monitor the milkweed throughout summer 2025. The survey kicks off July 1 and goes through August 15. Volunteer community scientists will need to check their sites 1-3 times during this timeframe to document crucial information, like stem counts, health of the patch itself, and count butterflies.
Find additional details and training materials here: https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/db39ee5cbb634608bb057a5cd851e4a1
Past Events – 2025
Weed Pull on Teton Land Trust Property
HFWA joined the Teton Regional Land Trust for a weed pull on Woods Creek Fen near Driggs. The hard work of this volunteer crew will improve ecosystem health by making room for native plants to thrive and provide for wildlife. The crew focused their efforts on pulling primarily Canada and musk thistle, but also spotted knapweed, houndstongue, and oxeye daisy. Volunteers received a short course on weed identification before setting to work. Thank you to all of the volunteers that showed up to improve the landscape for native plants and animals!
WILDLIFE FESTIVAL
Our annual Wildlife Festival was a great success! On June 28th HFWA, Bear Guardian, Involved Property Owners of Island Park, Bear Aware Island Park, and Harriman State Park hosted this fun-filled, family-friendly day. Participants learned about local wildlife, conservation, and research while enjoying scenic Harriman State Park. Visitors learned to use bear spray with IDFG’s robotic bear, made plaster casts of bird feet and customized bird strike window decals with Friends of Camas, learned about invasive weeds, public land protection, and so much more! Los Tacotes provided delicious food while Lines and Tines entertained with a fabulous selection of music.
Thank you to all who attended and participated in this event and we look forward to seeing you at next year’s Festival!
FLAT RANCH PRESERVE
FLAT RANCH PRESERVEWe would like to extend our most sincere appreciation to all of the amazing volunteers that helped to raise and repair fencing at TNC’s Flat Ranch Preserve! Laying down fencing during critical migration periods is one tool that land managers can use to improve connectivity between critical winter and summer habitats. Although it can be labor intensive to lay down fencing before the winter migration just to raise it again after the spring migration, the effort benefits wildlife populations including pronghorn, deer, elk, moose, and even grouse that use the Henry’s Fork Watershed, while also supporting working lands. So, this is important work and we thank everyone involved for giving your time to help wildlife move more freely!
SAGE GROUSE LEK VISIT
SAGE GROUSE LEK VISITOur fieldtrip to a sage grouse lek on April 12th, 2025 was a success! We saw dozens of male sage grouse strutting and displaying for females. The sights and sounds were unforgettable. We hope to organize another fieldtrip in spring 2026 so make plans to join us then! In the meantime you can read about our experience here…
