I don’t usually ask readers to help (even with good causes), but you will feel great about this one.

The University of Calgary, where I am looking at the interaction between honey bees and native bees, has a smart group of students studying biodiversity – and quite a few are keen to know as much as possible about pollinator diversity. This means observing, counting, photographing, mapping, and documenting. You can donate to help these future ecologists through the University of Calgary Giving Day.

Among the many projects raising public interest and awareness for pollinators at the University of Calgary, there is a brilliant field guide to bumble bees. Get your own free copy from this link. Productions like this take time, effort, and even a little extra money to produce, so please help us through the University of Calgary’s Giving Day project. Meanwhile, here’s a glimpse at one of the pages from the bumble bee book. (The actual visual quality is much better than my repro, as you’ll see when you download the original book.)

Want to know more about Giving Day? Here’s the announcement from the university’s Biodiversity and Bee Campus Initiative:

The University of Calgary is a designated Bee Campus, where students, faculty, and staff research and promote pollinator, invertebrate, and plant biodiversity on campus and beyond. Your gift allows us to continue offering course-based and co-curricular research and experiential learning experiences for students, outreach and community events, creation and sharing of biodiversity resources and training tools, and community/citizen science initiatives to study and advance the understanding and conservation of biodiversity.

More information on our designation and the efforts your contribution will support can be found here:

• Bee Campus
• Community Science Project: Calgary Pollinator Count
• Biodiversity Collections
• Experiential Learning

You make it happen

When you donate to the University of Calgary, you’re investing in the community — and on Giving Day, your gift can have double the impact! Whether supporting scholarships, faculties, research or any one of our other designated funds, all eligible Giving Day donations made by April 21 will be matched, dollar for dollar, up to $2,500 per gift while matching funds last.

Since its launch in 2017, Giving Day has raised more than $6 million to create lasting, positive change — on campus, in the community and beyond — by creating exceptional student experiences, advancing critical research and empowering the next generation of business and community leaders.