Tag Archives: conservation

Perspectives of the Prairie: Jennifer Rumery and Karen Hemberger

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Hi everyone.  The following blog post is written by 2024 Hubbard Fellow Claire Morrical.  Claire put together a fantastic series of interviews with people working in conservation here in Nebraska and we thought you’d enjoy reading and listening to their stories. 

This project – Perspectives of the Prairie – uses interviews and maps to share the perspectives and stories of people, from ecologists to volunteers, on the prairie. You can check out the full project HERE.

This post also contains audio clips. You can find the text from this blog post with audio transcripts HERE. If you’re reading this post in your email and the audio clips don’t work, click on the title of the post to open it online.

Jennifer and Karen have volunteered at Platte River Prairies for over 10 and 20 years, respectively. After a volunteer day of gathering mountain mint seeds, Jennifer, Karen, and I sat down to discuss the healing and learning they get from the prairie, what makes volunteers unique, and to share stories of young volunteers connecting to the prairie.

Volunteers harvest seed in East Dahms (photo: Chris Helzer)

Interview: November 2nd, 2024

Part 1: Meet Jennifer

It’s an overcast Saturday in November and I’m sitting outside the Platte River Prairie’s main office waiting for volunteers to arrive. In a white pickup truck, there’s a handful of five-gallon buckets, leather gloves, and a couple pairs of gardening clippers. It’s a seed collection day.

Throughout the year, we collect and stockpile native prairie seeds from our sites, to be scattered back on our prairies in the following years.

In the past, we’ve used most of our seed for restorations, returning crop fields to prairie. With no seed bank in restorations, no prairie seeds lying in wait under the soil until conditions are just right to emerge, we start from scratch. As a result, we needed a lot of seed. Seed collecting meant having four five-gallon buckets strapped to you as you tore your way through the prairie, trying to fill a bucket every 5 to 10 minutes.

This year we have no active restorations. During these years, we use seed to help our sites along, bolster the plant community, fill in patches. With less demand for seed, seed collection is a much more social affair. 

It’s one of the last weeks to find much seed as the prairie creeps towards winter dormancy, and our volunteer, Karen Hemberger, has led us to where she recalls seeing our day’s targets, New England Aster and Mountain Mint. We meander through the wildflowers and grasses, chatting as we scan for plants. By the end of two hours, we’ve collected a 5-gallon bucket’s worth of seed between the four of us. But we’ve accomplished our primary objective, spending time in the prairie and spending time together.

Afterwards, I sat down with two of our volunteers, Karen Hemberger and Jennifer Rumery, to talk about their experiences working at Platte River Prairies.

This is Jennifer-

Notes for Context:

  • Mardell Jasnowski: Worked as a land steward at Platte River Prairies and continues to help as a volunteer
Prairie gentian (Eustoma grandiflorum), a wildflower that Jennifer especially likes (photo: Chris Helzer)

Overseeing volunteer days is the responsibility of Hubbard Fellows, including myself (year-long employees getting early career experience at Platte River Prairies). During our first volunteer days, seasoned volunteers like Jennifer and Karen are amazing guides as we get our footing, ready for any task and happy to answer questions along the way.

 Jennifer has been a volunteer with us for about 10 years. Both she and her husband, Grant, help us at PRP.

Notes for Context:

  • Brandon Cobb: One of the 2022 Hubbard Fellows (you can hear from him HERE)

Part 2: Meet Karen

Location: The Derr Sandhills site at Platte River Prairies

Karen Hemberger is another long-time volunteer who’s helped us for over twenty years and is her own force of nature when it comes to seed collecting.

Notes for Context: Karen mentions “keys to the house”. Our main office, the Derr House, is an extremely 70’s brick house that past landowners sold to us in the 2000’s

  • The Crane Trust: A conservation non-profit and preserve to the East of Platte River Prairies
  • Chris Helzer: Director of Science and Stewardship for Nebraska TNC. Chris has spent much of his career at Platte River Prairies
Male blue sage bee (Tetraloniella cressoniana), a specialist of pitcher sage (Salvia azurea). Karen especially likes this wildflower (photo: Chris Helzer)

Through learning and growing and sharing, Karen’s passion for this work is unending. She is fierce in her love for the prairie and tender in her approach to caring for it.

Notes for Context: Karen mentions a plant named sweet clover. Depending on where you are in the United States, sweet clover is either a very invasive species (a non-native plant that outcompetes native plants), or a non-native plant of little concern. In central and western Nebraska, we tend not to worry very much about sweet clover. It is abundant when there are few plants competing with it, but makes way when other species move in.

Karen is referring here to Chris Helzer.

Plants mentioned: Sweet Clover (Melilotus officinalis), Sun Sedge (Carex heliophila)

An ant colony on a large anthill

Part 3: Healing and Learning

Location: The site Caveny at Platte River Prairies

Karen and Jennifer are reflective on what they receive in return for the time that they give. They take something home with them, and for Jennifer, that something carried her through her work as a school psychologist

Sandhill cranes flying off from the river

Every spring, hundreds of thousands of sandhill cranes pause their migration north to eat their fill of invertebrates and corn along the central Platte River (where we are). They store the energy they’ll need to hatch and raise chicks in the coming months. At the migration’s peak, there is a constant trill of cranes calling in the mornings and evenings. When they fly to the river to roost for the night, the line of cranes, wing to wing, can stretch from the eastern to the western horizon. This great migration of sandhill cranes is followed closely by the endangered whooping cranes.

For many, even those who have watched the cranes year after year, seeing them return in the spring can be a deeply impactful experience. Jennifer finds meaning in her own experience with the cranes. For both Karen and Jennifer, time spent in the bluestem and switchgrass and sunflowers has shaped the way they take care of themselves and others.

In addition to healing, spending time in the prairie has helped shape how and what Karen and Jennifer see.  

Plants mentioned: Pussy Toes (Antennaria neglecta), Star grass, Blue-eyed grass, Pale spike lobelia (Lobelia spicata)

Four-point evening primrose (Oenothera rhombipetala) in sand prairie at The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies (photo: Chris Helzer)

Part 4: The Youngest Volunteers

Location: The site Derr West at Platte River Prairies

Jennifer and Karen share special moments watching young volunteers experience the prairie.

Notes for Context:

Plants mentioned: Milkweed (Asclepius sp.)

Common milkweed seeds (photo: Chris Helzer)

Hiring Now! The 2026 Hubbard Fellowship with The Nature Conservancy in Nebraska

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It’s time! We are now accepting applications for our 13th class of Hubbard Fellows. Please forward this to anyone you know who might be interested. I supervise our fellows each year, and can’t wait to meet the next two.

The Hubbard Fellowship was built to help people bridge the gap between what you learn in college and the skills and proficiency needed to start a career. After graduation, many (most?) aspiring conservationists spend several years in seasonal positions, trying to gain enough experience to qualify for career positions. Because those seasonal jobs tend to be fairly narrow in scope and short in duration, it can take a while to build a diverse resume.

2025 Hubbard Fellow Noelle Schumann ignites a prescribed fire under the watchful eye of a mentor.

Hubbard Fellows are involved in nearly everything The Nature Conservancy does in Nebraska over the course of their 12-month fellowship. They spend a lot of time doing land stewardship – getting the training they need along the way – but also attend board meetings, engage in strategic discussions, and help with fundraising and marketing work. Fellows get to meet and work with researchers, lead groups of volunteers, and talk about conservation to the public.

In addition, each Fellow can design their own independent project, which allows them to dive more deeply into a topic of their interest. As long as it provides some kind of tangible benefit to The Nature Conservancy, projects can look like just about anything. Fellows have conducted field research, created art, developed recommendations for conservation strategies, designed outreach programs and materials, and much more.

Our other 2025 Hubbard Fellow, Kojo Baidoo, gets an up close look at bison at The Nature Conservancy’s Niobrara Valley Preserve.

By the end of their year with The Nature Conservancy, fellows tend to have a stronger sense of what they want to aim for in their career. Sometimes, that leads them into graduate school, ready to focus on their chosen topic, and with an eye toward what they want after they complete their next degree. Other times, it sets them up for a successful job application in land stewardship, environmental education, conservation fundraising, or other fields.

If all of this sounds like something that applies to you, please apply! We get applicants with both undergraduate and graduate degrees. The level of your degree doesn’t matter nearly as much as your enthusiasm and potential. We want to help build the next generation of conservation leaders (including all forms of “leadership”) so tell us why this fellowship would be helpful to you and why you’re excited about the opportunity.

You can read much more about the Hubbard Fellowship here and in this brochure. Applications are due September 28, 2025 and our two new fellows will start on February 2, 2026.