Episode 12: Pollinators (in English)

From the Oregon State University's Extension Service, you are listening to In the Woods with the Forestry and Natural Resources Program. This podcast aims to show the voices of researchers, land managers, and members of the public interested in telling the story of how woodlands provide more than just trees, they provide interconnectedness that is essential to your daily life. Stick around to discover a new topic related to forests on each episode. Welcome to another episode of In The Woods, I'm your host Lauren Grand, assistant professor of practice and extension agent in Oregon State University's College of Forestry. Today's topic is pollinators in managed forests. Our guest today is Dr. Jim Rivers, Dr. Rivers is an assistant professor of wildlife ecology in the college of forestry. Welcome Jim. Hi, thanks for having me. So, Jim can you just give us a little bit of background about yourself and some of the research you do here at Oregon State? I certainly can, so I'm a wildlife biologist here at OSU and a lot of the work that I do centers around animal ecology. So, understanding how animals interact with their environment and that work takes the focus of that work really is around animals, their behavior, and their populations. A lot of the work in the past that I've done has been about birds, but in the last few years I've started to get more involved with insect pollinators, particularly native bees. And so my research is kind of branching out into those two areas: birds and bees. The birds and the bees, a great topic. Um, actually, I just did an episode on wildlife ecology with um one of our other extension agents Thomas Stokely, and uh he nice greatly reminded me that insects are wildlife, so I'm excited that we're able to have you to talk about pollinators. So, um there might be a few people who are listening to this podcast that need a little um reminder about what pollinators are, can you speak to that? Yeah, so pollinators are animals that basically help plants um mate and what they do is they move pollen from the male part of a flower either to the female part on that flower or to the female part on a separate flower. And in the process of doing so, they fertilize the plant and that leads to either the production of a fruit or a seed. And we often think about bees as pollinators, but there are lots of different organisms that pollinate here in the pacific northwest. We have beetles and we have moss and butterflies and we have flies. If you expand beyond our region you can find mammals that pollinate. If you go to Australia and there are birds like hummingbirds or if you go to New Zealand there are honey eaters that are pollinators and sunbirds in Africa. So, there's quite a few different animals, some of which we don't typically think of as pollinators, that are playing an important role in fertilizing plants and and ultimately they're providing resources to the broader ecological community because a lot of those seeds and nuts and fruits are eaten by a whole host of wildlife species. See, I love doing this podcast. I get to learn something new too just like the listeners. Um, great, so and you mentioned that mostly we think of bees and, of course uh bees are sexy right now, so we're gonna probably focus on bees today, but feel free to bring in anything on pollinators that you wish any other species of pollinators you like. But you sort of mentioned seeds and fruits created from you know the fertilization of pollinators of plants, um, and so that brings me to think that we typically talk about pollinators in relation to agricultural systems. Um, what do pollinators have to offer forests? Or, vice and vice versa. What do forests offer pollinators? So, you're right Lauren in that when we often talk about bees uh we usually think very narrowly. In fact, we usually think about honeybees, and oftentimes don't either don't know about or don't think about some of the native bees that we have. And here in Oregon we have at least 650 different native species, probably a lot more than that those are just species that we know about that are native bees. And we often think about those honeybees as our bee and then we think about agricultural systems as well, but you can think about any terrestrial system that has flowering plants, which is to say pretty much any um system that you'd be in perhaps outside of Antarctica. And there are pollinators in those areas. So, forests are no different than agricultural systems or open grassland systems in the sense that they have these flowers that require pollinators or benefit from pollinators. They provide the resources that these pollinating insects need for their populations to be maintained. For bees it's um pollen when bees are developing as larvae, and then nectar as bees are adults and flying around and that nectar fuels their activity. So, forests uh we really haven't thought much about forests and pollinators particularly managed forests until just the last few years, and uh it's it's probably not surprising given how important our agricultural systems are. But the more we look into forests, including managed forests, the more interesting things we find out about insect pollinators, particularly native bees, and that we actually have a really robust community of native bees. We did a study a few years ago where we were just tallying up the number of different species we found in a single large area that had been clear-cut, and we had nearly 100 species of native bees. And when you reflect on the fact that in Oregon we have somewhere, I mentioned 650 if we use that number, 1/6 or 1/7 of our bees were found in a single location in a predominantly forested area that used to be forest it was a regenerating forest. So, forests have quite a bit to offer pollinators in a lot of different ways, and again these pollinators are providing resources that go to the broader broader ecological community, so our squirrels, our birds, our our elk, our bears, all of those organisms depend on and use the plants that pollinators are ultimately pollinating. Yeah, so interesting to think about how they're such a large part of our forest ecological system and we're just now starting to learn a lot more about them, and how they're involved in that process. So, it's kind of exciting to watch it unfold and been really fun for when for me when I follow your research how much I've learned so much about about pollinators and what to find in forests. I didn't even know that there would be bees and forests until you know it started to become a more common subject. And Lauren I'll tell you that I was in that camp as well because as someone who always worked on birds for a research topic. I was always looking up and listening and I wasn't really looking down at the ground at the flowers and only once I kind of started looking for them, did I start to see the bees. And I think that that's been what we've just we haven't had that focus before, no one's thought to look there and so it's one of these really interesting scenarios in science where the topic was always waiting to be discovered, but the researchers weren't really uh tuning into it. Yeah, I guess we were so distracted about wasp nests in the ground that we couldn't couldn't concentrate on anything else buzzing around. Um, so, you mentioned that you know there you did a study where there were maybe 100 different species of bees um that you found. Are there any bees that you find to seem to be specialists to forests? Or are ones that were more commonly found in forests? We haven't found any bees that are our specialists in forests per se, every now and then we'll we'll we'll get one that is uh at least a specialist in the sense of of only being found in forests. We do get some bees that are very closely tied to a particular plant genus for example. But, in general, what we're finding is that a lot of these these bees that that you would find in a coast range recently harvested stand would be a subset of what you might find in other areas. So, in that sense, we don't have any any um real specialists, but at the same same time I think it's important to remember that some of our most common species and our most abundant species, for example, the yellow face bumblebee, is one that is really important from an agricultural setting and as well as a natural setting. So, if we have forests, even if they're not supporting specialist bees, as long as they're supporting bees in general and other pollinators, they are providing opportunities for for having populations. And in particular they may be harboring populations that are providing colonists that move into agricultural areas. We know that agricultural areas are in many ways more intensely managed in terms of pollinators. There are honeybees that are often used there are insecticides that are used that we don't typically see in forests, at least in our part of the world, and so we might what we might have are bees in forested settings that are able to colonize those areas if there are populations of bees that are are having challenges in agricultural settings. We haven't really done the work yet to understand how many bees may be moving from adjacent forest areas into ag settings but it certainly happens it's it's just a matter of of trying to understand how common it is. So, are you saying that there's the potential, you still have to research it, but there's the potential that you know bees that are are using forest systems as kind of like refugia, or places to bolster their populations, and then those bees are then moving in and helping our pollination and agricultural systems. Yeah, that's that's our working hypothesis is that we would have um what's known as a spillover effect. Where you might have if you can just imagine a um some sort of crop that is is requiring a pollinator like maybe a blueberry field that's adjacent to some recently harvested areas. We might see an exchange of individuals between those two sites and in particular you might see bees that are moving across the boundary lines of those two habitat types. And, and then having that that forest the the term that we would use is a source population, and so again this is a hypothesis, but you might predict that the bees might be kind of a source population, or maybe even health bees that are healthier in those forests just because they're not exposed to all of the different types of pressures and stressors that they would have in an agricultural setting. But it's one of those things that we it's on our list to to research. Our first step was really to document what was there and so we've kind of done a I think a pretty good job of starting to understand that piece and now we want to understand the movement of individuals back and forth. It's really challenging to to understand where individuals are moving because bees unlike birds can't carry a big radio tag or a like an elk with a collar that tells you where the bee has been. So, what we can do is use different approaches like genetic techniques where we can understand where different members of a given colony might be coming from. Bumblebees are a good example because all of the the females that are coming out of a bumblebee nest are sisters. And as they're foraging for nectar and pollen around the landscape, if we can catch them in different areas. We can basically piece together how they can move throughout that landscape and so that's some of the work that we're doing now is to use these genetic markers to tell us a little bit about where bees can and potentially can't go on the landscape. Oh, that's really interesting I can't wait to see how that turns out, and how exciting would it be if there was evidence that you know the ag systems and the forest systems could work together where their neighbors. That would be that would be really interesting. And there has been some work uh, not many papers, but there's a couple of studies out there that have shown that bees have moved from one setting to another. What we wanted to do with a recent project was to try and understand if we we had bees in clear cuts that were going to an adjacent agricultural crop in a red red clover is what we were looking at. And we reasoned that if we caught bees going back to their nests with red clover pollen, that would tell us that they were actually getting it from these agricultural areas. What we weren't able to do in that study was to propagate nests of bumblebees. It's a really really challenging thing to do and we weren't able to put them out, but if we get to the point where we have someone and this has been done before, but someone who develops bumblebees in a commercial setting um, and native bumblebees to to Oregon, then we can use them in that way to understand how they use their their areas. Right now, we're kind of restricted to um the genetic techniques that I mentioned. Well that would be interesting yeah it'll be cool to see how all that unfolds, um. So, you've mentioned a couple of times that you've been surveying bees in clear cuts, and I'm curious if you can share with us some other some of the management strategies, or before we get to management strategies, maybe if you can, you know, talk about some of the habitat requirements that are necessary for bees? Or what some of the habitat requirements are that bees are looking for in forests? So, if you think of of where bees would be in a general setting, most people think of their gardens and they think of areas with lots of flowers. And that certainly is the case, we know that bees need flowers if they're going to have populations, but they also need nesting substrates as well. And we know that somewhere around two-thirds to three-quarters of our native bee species worldwide are ground nesting species. And what that means is that we for those species to have areas that they can use they have to have access to those soil resources that they can build their nest in. And it's a little bit surprising but bees don't want to dig through leaf litter and duff. What they like is exposed soil. So, one of the things that we learned from a the project that I mentioned where we we found a lot of bees after harvest in that that single unit of nearly 100 species. Was that when we scraped off the the litter and the duff, we actually had a lot more bee species and a lot more individuals. And we think what happened was that the bees cued in on on that mineral soil, looked at it, and said "This is a great place to set up a nest site," and so we're going to start nesting in this location. What was really telling was that there were no real flowers in that area, so the bees were commuting from these areas that were kind of a cleaned off area bald patch if you will of mineral soil and they were going off to these these floral resources. So, floral resource resources are important if your ground nesting bee, bare ground is important. We also have bees that nest in cavities and nest in the hollow piths of twigs, if you think about Himalayan blackberry there's a pithy center that some bees are able to to burrow into and have a nest there so you really need to have floral resources and nesting substrates at the same time. So, if we think about those two needs of bees and then we think about forests, you can imagine that a a very tall dark forest kind of the the uh 25 or 30 year old plantation that we think about isn't really a great place for bees because there just isn't a lot of light that gets into that area, there's not a lot of exposed soil on the ground. So, what we're finding from our work is that really bees are at a peak just a few years after a clear-cut harvest. These bees are responding to disturbance, they're coming into these areas, there's lots of flowers at that point and they're they're foraging from the flowers and then the open areas again whether it's um exposed soil or maybe it's an old scraggly blackberry that's dyed but still has um it's it's uh it's of a the substrate is enough that the bees can nest in it. Those are the types of areas that we start finding bees in. And so if we're thinking about managers or someone who might have private land and they want to manage for bees, really their best time is is when those stands are open when those recently harvested areas are starting to regenerate into forests. That's when we can do the most for bees. Once they get to be 20-25 years old, and the canopy closes and there's not a lot of light hitting the ground. The bees go elsewhere which is kind of interesting in and of itself because that means that bees are moving around the landscape and they're finding those little patches. Um, much like some of the birds we studied these early cereal birds like orange ground warblers and wilson's warblers that are in an area for five or ten years and then the habitat grows up and they move to another area. It's uh it's the same thing with bees, they're moving around the landscape and finding those those locations. Okay, so we have the species are somewhat nomadic just looking for those resources as they become available. It's good to know that they seem to be adaptable, um. Bees really are a disturbance dependent group. Uh, you can have disturbances that aren't great for them, and some of our anthropogenic disturbances aren't aren't the best. But what we're finding so far is that areas that have been intensely managed conifer plantations still harbor quite a few bees, and we think that that we don't know how how healthy those populations are, we just know that there are lots of individuals in some cases quite a few species as well in those areas. So, we know they're there the next step is try to understand their populations a little bit more and to understand some of the the measures of health which are kind of separate questions but really important ones too. Yes, definitely and um talking a little bit about how um you mentioned clear cuts and finding bees in open areas. I want to touch a little bit on fire, and usually when we talk about fire and forest management it's often given this negative connotation. But um it's my understanding that fire can actually be really beneficial to bees. Is that the case? That's true in a lot of settings and this several years ago we were working down in the Douglas complex down near Grants Pass and what we were finding from that work is that the most intensively burned areas, two or three years after the fire, had a greater number of bee species and greater number of individuals as well. And what we think happens in that scenario it isn't all that different from a clear-cut harvest like we were just talking about where with an intense fire we lose the overstory, there's a lot of light that comes, in there's a lot of exposed soil, and so in at least in the case of the Douglas complex where we've worked, and I think others have shown this in in other regions as well, some of these areas that have been impacted by fire can be quite important to bees. And it's there's lots of questions about fire and bees that we don't know. One of the things that we don't know following last year's large fires is: Which are the first bees to colonize these areas? And if the bees get into these areas, how do the first ones that get there potentially influence the communities of other individuals that follow? There's this idea of priority effects in the sense of whatever species gets there may modify the environment in some way or another, and it may facilitate another species coming or it may inhibit or may have no impact whatsoever. So, that's one question that we've been thinking about with um, and I say we, my a number of colleagues, have been kind of going back and forth on on these ideas, but really trying to understand when we have these high severity fires which are becoming much more common nowadays. How are those different from the historical range of fire severity that we have? And what how might bees be playing a role in developing those communities over time? Because once we have a lot of plants in the seed bank, those plants are going to come up after fire perhaps in the first year, perhaps the second year, and then they're going to need pollinators as well, so which bees get in there and start to to do that work to develop those ecological communities again. Okay, so we we talked about um some of the things that forests provide. And then also how fire might affect the landscape to offer resources to pollinators, um. Sounds like things that create a lot of light to open up resources for bare soil and flowering plants are good for pollinators. Um, and sort of things that have dead pithy stems or cavities for cavity nesting bees are good. But earlier you mentioned or sort of alluded to that there are some management techniques that might not be as good for pollinators. Can you speak to those a little bit? Yeah, I think one question that often comes up is what is the role of of herbicides uh with with bees and pollinators. And we don't know much about um the answer to that question, when I say herbicides I mean forest herbicides, we certainly have some studies in agricultural settings with um some of the herbicides that are used or pesticides really that may be impacting insects. What little we do know so far is that this is unpublished work that um I've been working with some colleagues, is that the the flower the floral community changes with herbicide use as you go from an area that hasn't been been impacted by herbicides at all to one that is is um heavily impacted and there's a lot of herbicide application. We see a shift from native plants towards non-native plants, but how that ultimately impacts the bees we don't really know. One thing that I would love to do is is be able to undertake a study where we can go out and sample a wide range of native and exotic flowers and get a sense of how good each plant is as a resource for either pollen or nectar for bees, and even have um my pie in the sky, and this is probably completely unrealistic, but my pie in this guy idea is to have a ranking system where we could say this is the best best plant out there if you want a plant for native bees, and here's the second best, and that would help in a number of ways because that would give us management targets that we could kind of aim for. It could provide us with species to focus in on when we have seed mixes that are being developed after post-fire or post-harvest areas. But the reality is we don't really know a lot about how those herbicides impact bees, we don't think that there's a lot of direct impact on them we think it's more this indirect modification of the plant communities that in turn may influence the bees, but again, even in some of our studies where we've gone out to areas that have had a lot of herbicides kind of industrial level herbicides put on to the ground. We still see quite a few bees in those areas which I think a lot of folks might find surprising. So, that the jury's out on on the full extent of herbicides and how they impact bees. In terms of other management actions, I think if anything um kind of impacts the floral resources or the nesting substrates we could think of it as a potential negative. I know that in many areas we have to spray for exotic plants. I think of some of the thistles that are growing on the roadsides, turns out some of those thistles are really well used by native bees. In fact, this time of year when it's it's really dry and hot those thistles are coming out and you go to them and you just see loads of bees all over them. So, some of those practices where we're spraying them, and we have to spray them because we're mandated legally to do so on federal land. That may be impacting bees as well but again the data aren't there to really allow us to understand what the full impact is. I was going to say the few times that I've been able to go out and sample for bees I have to say that most of the bees that I've been able to find have been on things like thistles and blackberries. So, it sounds like they provide some resources as well. That's right that's right and and that would be I think that's what's really making me wonder if you know are they are they better resources, or are they just more abundant and there's more of them and that makes them an important part of the the system particularly blackberry as you mentioned just because it's so prevalent in a lot of our coast range sites. Yeah, that makes sense and we'll allow you to dream here on this podcast, so hopefully you'll get that uh get a grant or graduate student that can help you with uh helping to rank those species, and I think landowners that we work with in extension would be really excited for that because we're always getting questions on "what should I plant?" and "what's the best flowers for them?" um, so, I think it would be well supported. Um speaking of small landowners and asking questions about pollinators, now that you've you know been doing some more of this research and more for scientists wildlife scientists and forest scientists have been jumping on the pollinator bandwagon, have you been noticing a shift in um interest in managing for pollinators at all? Or is it still seem like we need to get the word out a little bit? I think we I think we would benefit by continuing to get the word out, but I've been quite surprised by the support that we've got from landowners. And not just small private landowners, but industrial landowners, federal landowners, state land owners. Several years ago, and I think you were involved with this Lauren we had a workshop at OSU and we wanted to to pose to land managers what you know what sort of information do you need regarding pollinators. We realized that we had some ideas but we didn't want to just go out and start addressing studies that weren't going to be valuable to to land managers. So, we we got folks together, we thought we were going to have maybe a couple of dozen people. We had almost 100 people show up that day, had a great conversation, and the interest in that room was was palpable. And it ultimately led us to publish a research agenda on what we thought would be the important um areas of study that that should go forward with pollinators and manage conifer forests. And since that, time I have been asked by a whole bunch of different landowner groups to come talk about pollinators, and so much so that even some private private groups have asked me to talk about some of my bird research which is focused on one of the projects is focused on marble merlit which is an endangered seabird. And they said we'd like you to talk about your work with merlits, but we'd also like to talk about pollinators and I said "Really, well you know what how much time would you like me to devote?" and they said well just you know "half and half." And and I just said wow this is amazing because 10 years ago the only the term bee would have conjured up an image of someone getting stung by a bunch of yellow jackets out in the field. And, in fact, people still call yellow jackets bees all the time so that's part of the the education piece, but to answer your question the interest I think has increased a lot, I think people are really um they realize that there's there's this whole world out there that they've never even thought about and that they can manage their ground for pollinators and that they have an opportunity to do so and they can do that in all likelihood they can do it in a compatible way with with harvesting their land base as well so quite a bit of interest in in just the last few years around this topic. Well, that's great it's nice to hear that um that people are sort of excited about it just as excited about it as we are. It's nice to know that the work is is important to others as well. Okay, well I think that was a pretty good synopsis on sort of bees and forests and and pollinators. Is there anything else that you want to add that you think would be helpful to our listeners? I think that um I would encourage them to learn about bees because um a lot of my work early on was just trying to understand more about bees, their life history ,their natural history, and there's a there's a book that's called the Bees in your Backyard and it's uh you can find it on amazon. It is the best book on bees that I've found, particularly for a beginner who wants good pictures and images, I'm a visual learner, and I love going through that book and looking at the different bees and understanding you can get down to the fine scale details to understand one genus versus another genus, but you also can get really general pieces of information about bees and their impact on natural systems, agricultural systems, and and just being able to appreciate them as a form of biodiversity. So, that would be my my plug is for for folks who are interested to take that next step and and get that book from the library order it on amazon and really get into it. Okay, great, that's a good suggestion we'll make sure that's on our website so people can access it. Um, okay well I'm really excited that we got to have you today, um, before you go though, we have a few questions that we want to ask you that we asked all of our guests. And since we've been focusing on you know wildlife today, but it is a forestry podcast so we want to know what your favorite tree is?

What is my favorite tree? That's a that's a good one. I would I would say that's probably a quaking aspen would be my favorite tree. And I would give that answer because of my bird background because quaking aspen is a fantastic tree for woodpeckers and other cavity nesting species. Not just woodpeckers that create the cavities but also bluebirds and swallows and other other birds that are secondary cavity nesters. And years ago when I was an undergraduate I was working on a project where we were climbing trees and we were looking into um we were getting data breeding biology data on cavity nesting birds and a lot of the trees that we climbed were were quaking aspen and they were really fun to climb up and get up in the tree and see the nests up close so that I think that would be my favorite tree. Oh, yes, beautiful tree and that sounds really cool that you can climb into them I didn't think of them as for some reason I don't think of them as the type of tree that somebody would climb so. The reason they were so great to climb is that we had the these these ladders that we use that are called swedish stack ladders and if any of your listeners are familiar with red-cockaded woodpeckers in the southeast, they use the same ladders on red-cockaded woodpecker trees in in the pine system. But it's a 10-foot ladder that has a segment of chain that straps around the tree and you can take one segment of ladder and on the base and then take a second one and put it right on top of the um of the first ladder and then you can literally climb up ladder by ladder as you go so you don't need any real specialized climbing gear and we were able to to climb up trees like that and it was it was really fun. That does sound really fun you have any pictures of yourself floating in the air on your ladders. I uh they're they're blurry because they're from from another century, but I've got a couple floating around somewhere. Good well be good memories for uh to use your graduate students one day maybe. Um, okay, so um we've got to know what's one of the most important or most interesting tools that you have to bring out in the field with you whether it's in your field kit or in a cruiser vest? Years ago I would have said binoculars, because binoculars are you know when you're doing wildlife work you really want to get up close to the things that don't want you to get close to them and are usually trying to get away from you. I don't I carry binoculars usually but I don't use them nearly as much as I used to, so I think I would actually change that now to say a good a camera with a good lens. I found myself taking a lot more pictures and um taking pictures of what I'm seeing but also kind of elements that I might use in a class setting where I'm talking to students about you know a habitat edge or a stand edge really and talking about the contrast between an early cereal plantation and maybe a an older forest. So, I think taking photos is has become a really important tool and bringing camera out there with me so I can document what I'm seeing for myself, but also share that with others. Including when I give presentations um for either birds or bee research. Great tool um and uh our last question um is and I know you've already sort of talked about the Bees in your Backyard, but if there's any other resources that you might be able to recommend for people who are looking to take a deeper dive into learning about pollinators, or even more specifically forest pollinators. Yeah, I think that book is a good to learn about forest pollinators is really to learn about the the basics of pollinators. And what we found with our work is that native bees are the most abundant insect pollinator in in intensely managed forests, so I think the numbers somewhere around 85 percent of all of our insects that we capture with a number of different uh methodologies uh 85 percent of them are native bees. So, to understand bees is it goes a long way to understanding pollinators. So, the book I mentioned the Bees in your Backyard is a really good one. The other thing that I would say that a resource particularly for folks in Oregon is the Oregon Bee Project. And there are dozens and dozens of people here in Oregon that didn't know anything about bees five or six years ago, and now are experts because they've picked up that that book or they've taken a class with the Oregon Bee School which is offered here at OSU, in fact, I think it's going on this week. And they've they've just really gotten excited about it, so the Oregon Bee Project is is a really good resource it's not just about forest it's about the entire state, but there are tons and tons of resources there for people to learn about pollinators as a first step and then learning about forest pollinators is really just kind of thinking about forests and and how pollinators might fit into that different type of vegetation association. Yeah, that's a great suggestion I actually got to be involved with the Oregon Bee Project through the atlas and um it's been really fun getting to learn about how to catch bees and identify them, so great suggestion thanks. Yeah, it's a really impressive community because it's it's one that has started with just kind of an idea and it's it's branched out over the years to the point where we're starting to have a pretty good handle on where bees are found in the state including rare bees or bees that had been identified before, so lots of good things I don't have the website but um but it's once you hit that website and you find it it's it's got a lot of resources on it. Okay, great we'll make sure that um the bee project's websites on our website for this episode so people can find it easily. Well, that concludes our episode this month, I want to thank you so much for joining us. I learned a ton and I'll have to have you on to talk more specifically about some of those other topics the topics that we spoke about in relation to pollinators or even to talk about marlettes maybe um on a future episode. So, um thanks so much for being with us and um I look forward to um talking to you again soon. Sure thing thanks so much. Okay, thank you all for listening today and stay tuned for our episode next month. Until then, what's in your woods?

Thank you so much for listening, show notes with links mentioned on each episode are available on our website in thewoodspodcast.com. We would love to hear from you, visit the tell us what you think tab on our website to leave us a comment, suggest a guest or topic, or ask a question that can be featured in a future episode, and also give us your feedback by filling out our survey. In the Woods was created by Lauren Grand, Jacob Putney, Carrie Berger, Jason O'Brien and Steven Fitzgerald who are all members of the Oregon State University
Forestry and Natural Resources Extension Team. Episodes are edited and produced by Kellan Soriano. Music for In the Woods was composed by Jeffrey Hino and graphic design was created by Christina Friehauf. We hope you enjoyed the episode and we can't wait to talk to you again next month until then what's in your woods?