Jul 15 2013
Outreach

Nevada Bugs and Butterflies at the Discovery Museum

We are happy to announce that Nevada Bugs and Butterflies will be partnered with the Terry Lee Wells Discovery Museum in downtown Reno for their Bug Week, July 22-28, 2013! We will be there July 22 (Monday) and July 24 (Wednesday) and will have:

  • A bug petting zoo with beetles, butterflies, caterpillars, composting worms, cockroaches, and more!
  • Other bugs like a scorpion, tarantula, and bumblebees
  • Pinned insect collections of local and tropical species
  • Insect art projects

Come stop by at 490 S. Center St. , say hi, learn about insects and our soon-to-be newly opened Butterfly House, and check out the wonderful Discovery Museum. Hope to see lots of you there!

Fun with bugs!

Fun with bugs!

Apr 25 2013
Fundraising

Still climbing!

We’ve done it again!

We made our first stretch goal and have collected over $9,000 for our project! We are again humbled at the amount of support we have received and are looking forward to putting this money to good work, giving kids opportunities for hands-on science during the summer and school year.

But we’re not done yet! One of the major remaining costs to creating the butterfly house is collecting all those native Nevada Butterflies. These butterflies will serve as the stock from which we will raise caterpillars to be put into the house. Our next stretch goal is to raise an additional $1,000 that will be dedicated to traveling around the state and collecting a diverse array of insects to show at the butterfly house, as well as for student science projects. We are excited to share the beauty and insect life of the Great Basin with others, especially our supporters, so please let us know if you would like to come along on one of our collecting trips. What could be more fun than camping in the the desert and collecting bugs!

Cynthia hanging out in the Toquima mountain range, Nevada

Cynthia hanging out in the Toquima mountain range, Nevada

Apr 14 2013
Uncategorized

We’re having a fundraiser!

Hi everyone!

We are excited to announce our first spring fundraiser happening Sunday, April 28th, from 3:30-7:30 at the Lake Mansion Pavilion, 250 Court St. in Reno, right across from the Great Basin Food Co-Op. We are having two sets of activities:

From 3:30-4:30 we’ll have kids activities like a seedling planting and live insects and other animals to handle. Come learn about insect diversity in our area, learn about how plants and animals interact, and get a seedling that’s good for food and makes a pollinator plant!

From 4:30-7:00 we’ll have a home-brew tasting with 5 different types of beer all made by UNR students and alumni! We’ll also feature a silent auction with handmade items made by local artisans and businesses. Come enjoy a spring afternoon with handcrafted beer and a bit of food, see some insects, and learn more about our project!

Be sure to share our flier with your friends!

Be sure to share our flier with your friends!

Mar 29 2013
Butterfly house, Fundraising

Our Indiegogo campaign is up!

Hi all-

It’s official now. We’ve launched our fundraising campaign on Indiegogo to build an outdoor butterfly house and science center. It was a solid group effort, and first off we’d like to thank everyone who helped us create such a great summary of our vision for Nevada Bugs and Butterflies. A special shout-out goes to Amy Seaman, who not only narrates, but also edited the footage to create such a wonderful video. We’ve put in some really fun perks for the campaign, including a hug from Cynthia and Kevin (who doesn’t like hugs!), our logo stickers, sticker sheets of Nevada butterflies, a champagne brunch on opening weekend, and a collection of pinned butterflies in a display box. Click here to go to our campaign page. We’d appreciate your donation or just spreading the word about our goal to get kids outside and learning science this summer. If money donations aren’t your thing, please contact Kevin about volunteering for our build dates in April and May.

 

This really is just the beginning. We’ve got some penstemon seeds in the ground for the butterfly house already, and we’re planning a fundraising event in late April, right in Reno, that should be quite a little shindig. The response from people about our project has been amazing, and we are looking forward to a great summer of having kids in the butterfly house and garden, as well as taking live insects to kids in schools and teaching them about the importance of invertebrates in our world.

Mar 21 2013
Butterfly house, Fundraising

Butterfly house sketch

Hi all: a shout-out and giant thank you are due to our great friend Sarah Snyder (a fellow Ph.D. student with Kevin), who recently created a beautiful conceptual sketch of the butterfly house! We are excited to use it in our indiegogo campaign video, which will be online in the next week and will go into detail about our plans for the house this summer (also, see our What We Do page). Thanks Sarah!

Butterfly house conceptual drawing by Sarah Snyder

Butterfly house conceptual drawing by Sarah Snyder

Plan view of butterfly house, by Sarah Snyder

Plan view of butterfly house, by Sarah Snyder

 

Mar 21 2013
Outreach

Big Brothers Big Sisters 2013

Hi everyone! A quick note on some recent outreach we did in conjunction with UNR’s Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology (EECB) program. Two weeks ago the program had their 4th annual Big Brothers Big Sisters Day, an event where bigs and littles visit the biology department on campus for an interactive day of science displays. This year we had a chemistry and molecular biology room; a reptile, bird, and amphibian room; and an invertebrate room! As in the past there was an array of live reptiles, and we had a whole room full of beautiful pinned insects from around the world as well as live ones. New this year were DNA extraction using household materials and a seedling planting, where kids took home marigolds and poppies. As always, the kids were very excited to see the critters we have on and off campus, and the mentors are usually as excited as the kids to see them as well. We thoroughly enjoyed this year, as usual, and look forward to doing it again next year!

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

UNR Ph.D. student Josh Jahner in foreground, talking butterflies with BBBS students

 

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Seedling planting, BBBS 2013

 

Feb 20 2013
1 Comment
Uncategorized

Welcome to Nevada Bugs and Butterflies

Welcome to Nevadabugs.org, home of Nevada Bugs and Butterflies, a Reno, NV nonprofit dedicated to hands-on experiences with science and living things to cultivate love of the natural world and local environmental responsibility.

Look back for more posts about upcoming fundraising events, work days, and invertebrate diversity!

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