Get up close and personal with the odonates (dragonflies and damselflies) that call the Illinois Valley home. Morning sessions will be in the classroom where you will learn about their biology, life cycle, behavior, diversity, and identification. The focus will be on adults, with more limited discussion of the aquatic nymphs. The afternoon sessions will be in the field at local aquatic habitats. Ages 16+ welcome.

Be prepared to be enchanted by dazzling botanical treasures while hiking to the summit of Mt. Eddy, the highest peak in the Klamath Mountains. The serpentine habitat is home to an extraordinary number of wildflowers including some that are found nowhere else in the world, such as Mt. Eddy skypilot, as well as beautiful lakes and meadows. Saturday’s roundtrip hike is nearly 12 miles with a 2,400-foot gain in elevation at the summit. On Sunday morning, participants will see roadside…

The Bear Camp Botanical Area, located halfway between Galice and Agness along Bear Camp Road, is not “signed” on the ground, and rarely visited for botany excursions. On this trip we’ll show you the best routes to enjoy this amazing area, and visit many of its unusual plants. You’ll also learn about the process of designating a Botanical Area and become acquainted with botanist Veva Stansell’s life. Veva conducted extensive plant surveys in this area over many years (providing the…

What’s to like are dikes! Dikes are flattish bodies of rock that have cut through other rocks, vast molten blobs whose low density keeps us above sea level. Their magmatic fluids contributed to the formation of the earliest life, yet also helped kill most life billions of years later. Join us on serpentine road cuts, the Big Tree and Bigelow Lakes Trails , to see subalpine wildflowers, geobotany, and lava flows that have burst apart, remelted, and then been polished…

Using Latin names for plant species is critical for clear communication among botanists, but the naming system can be daunting to learn. This active course will provide you with a solid foundation that will empower you to find the currently accepted scientific name (even if you have only figured out the common name or an old name). We will practice pressing a plant specimen and making a proper label so your important collections could be submitted to an herbarium. We…

You will be introduced to benthic (sea floor) and planktonic marine organisms, pelagic and shore birds, and marine mammals offshore of the Coos Bay and Cape Arago region, an area known for extremely high diversity. Use scientific tools to look at this marine biodiversity up close in the field on foot, offshore via research vessel, and in the laboratory. We will survey local species and habitats and ecological and oceanographic processes influencing organism form, function, interactions, survival and distribution. We…