Our regular monthly meeting will be held at 7pm in the library at Salmon Arm Secondary School, Sullivan Campus in Salmon Arm. See panel to left for mapping and address details.

The meeting will begin with a presentation by Sarah Johnson, a prominent Canadian pollination ecologist and PhD candidate at Simon Fraser University specializing in bumblebee conservation and ecology in British Columbia. She is widely recognized as the founding president of the Native Bee Society of British Columbia, which she helped establish in 2019 to bridge the gap between researchers and enthusiasts.

Her PhD dissertation focuses on how wildfires in central British Columbia affect bumblebee diversity, abundance, and movement. She also led a national recovery program for at-risk bumblebees, including a captive breeding project for the Yellow-banded bumblebee. She has been a leading voice on the decline of the Western bumblebee (Bombus occidentalis), often documenting rare sightings in remote areas like Bella Coola. Beyond academia, Sarah is a key figure in public education and citizen science. She is a contributing expert for Bumble Bee Watch, where she has verified thousands of public sightings.