Message from the Board

October 2025

By Samantha Tackett

As summer winds down, Camas National Wildlife Refuge has been as active as ever! This year, Birds, Bugles, and Brunch was combined with Find Your Wild to create one big event. Find Your Wild is a nation-wide event that encourages people to get outside! Whether you explore your backyard, a state park, or a National Wildlife Refuge, you can participate by getting curious about your surroundings and celebrating the land around you. 

Our Find Your Wild event at Camas NWR featured bird feeder building, guided bird walks, refuge bingo, breakfast, a hayride, and more! Friends of Camas thanks those in attendance as well as our volunteers from BYU Idaho for making this event a success! Even though this event has passed, you can still show your support for Camas National Wildlife Refuge by donating to our Find Your Wild fundraiser at https://americaswildliferefuges.org/refuges/camas-national-wildlife-refuge/ . 

In addition to our annual outreach event, staff and volunteers have been hard at work in the pollinator garden. The refuge received a generous donation of 6,000 native plants from Northfork Natives! This donation included bunch grasses, sagebrush, chokecherry, and antelope bitterbrush plugs. The combination of these donations with $1,200 in Idaho Native Plant Society grant funding has allowed for extensive expansion of the pollinator garden. Space previously inhabited by invasive grasses has been cleared by volunteers to make room for these native species. Staff were even able to purchase a small greenhouse to allow for the propagation of localized plant species, which are more likely to survive and thrive after planting than plants sourced elsewhere. 

While we’ve made great progress, there are still some plugs in need of planting. If you are interested in volunteering with Friends of Camas to help get these last stragglers into the ground, please contact us at camasfriends@gmail.com. We appreciate every one of our volunteers and all they do to help accomplish important work around the refuge!