Get Outside This Spring with BioBlitz

Lingering winter got you down? It’s time to think of bioblitzing! 

You, your family, and your learners can
celebrate Earth Day with the Center for Great Lakes Literacy’s/Sea Grant 7th Annual Great Lakes BioBlitz! This event is a great opportunity to engage youth and the public in community science, collect data to support biodiversity research and conservation, and learn more about the organisms in the Great Lakes Basin.

What is the Great Lakes BioBlitz?

A free event that focuses on finding and identifying as many wild, living things as possible in the Canadian provinces and the U.S. states that have coastline on the Great Lakes during a specified period of time. You need not be in the Great Lakes basin watershed to participate, just in a Great Lakes state or province.

When is it?

It begins on Earth Day, Wednesday, April 22, 2026, and runs for 4 weeks, ending on Saturday, May 23, 2026.

How do I participate?

The beauty of this project is that you decide your level of participation! Take an afternoon to explore and document some plants or wildlife in an area, or pick a location to return to weekly, or set a goal to find something new every day–there are many ways to participate. 

1. Visit iNaturalist or download the app onto your phone and create an account.  
2. Become a member of the 2026 Great Lakes BioBlitz project
3. Get outside, get out your cameras, and start making and posting observations!

[Additional action: As you are able, verify other participants' Great Lakes BioBlitz Project postings to make them “research grade.”]

Why participate? 

There are many benefits of becoming a BioBlitz wizard, here are just a few:

• Engage in an outdoor activity, discover the wild living things in the world around you, form and strengthen a place-based connection
• Join a global community of observers, learners, and scientists passionate about biodiversity and the Great Lakes
• Contribute to a global database of organisms. Observations made on iNaturalists contribute to research, conservation, and educational outreach programs

And please note: you don't need to bioblitz for four weeks – you can do it for an hour, a day, etc.

Want to learn more?

• Visit the Great Lakes BioBlitz Educator Google Site for more information about the project and educator resources for engaging youth in this wonderful learning experience!
• All the links for the BioBlitz are also available on the WiSG Webpage.

Want to help market this event to others? 

Her are some resources to help you get the word out:

• 2026 BioBlitz Poster 
• 2026 BioBlitz Challenges 
• 2026 BioBlitz Social Media Post

Great Lakes, Great Reads Free Webinar Series

 

Great Lakes, Great Read 2024-2025 Program announces free webinar series

Great Lakes, Great Read, the “one book, one community” program designed to inspire passion and connection to the Great Lakes Watershed through reading, will kick off the season with a series of three webinars to introduce the authors and books chosen for the 2024-2025 season. Meet GLGR authors Sally Cole-Misch and Joanne Robertson in conversation with Wisconsin Water Librarian Anne Moser on September 25 at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT. Registration is required. Individual author webinars will be held Oct. 2 with Sally Cole-Misch and Oct. 9 with Joanne Robertson. Both webinars will also start at 7 p.m. ET/6 p.m. CT. Everyone is invited to join this Great Lakes basin-wide book club!

Local public libraries and bookstores can host watch parties, and individuals can register on their own or host their own watch party. Flyers are available to share with communities here: https://greatlakesgreatread.org/toolkit/.

Great Lakes, Great Read is modeled after One Book One Community and state- or province-wide annual reading programs that choose one book for libraries, citizen groups of all kinds and the public to read and enjoy over the course of a year. Whether you live near the Great Lakes or far away, their beauty, history and significance are impossible to ignore. They’ve been home to 120 bands of Indigenous people, provided drinking water for millions, held flourishing biodiversity and 20% of the world’s surface fresh water and more. Dive into this project and deepen your connection to a system that shaped the U.S. and Canada and continues to sculpt stories today.

The Great Lakes, Great Read program features two books: “The Water Walker” by Joanne Robertson is the children’s selection, and the adult selection is “The Best Part of Us” by Sally Cole-Misch.

“The Water Walker” is the story of a determined Ojibwe grandmother, a “nokomis” named Josephine Mandamin, who walks to raise awareness of the need to protect “nibi” (water). Robertson wrote and illustrated the book, which was published in 2017.

Published in 2020, Sally Cole-Misch’s award-winning novel, “The Best Part of Us,” explores a family’s connections to an island in the Canadian waters of an inland lake just north of Lake Huron, and how those ties are tested through nature and family dynamics.

The authors are available for in-person and online conversations and presentations with libraries, book clubs and other groups throughout the region during the 2024-2025 period.

The Great Lakes, Great Read website, https://www.greatlakesgreatread.org, offers further details on the authors, their books, book discussion questions, a toolkit and other resources, including contact lists for states and provinces.

This initiative is made possible by an Ideas to Action grant from WiLS in Madison, Wisconsin. In-kind support was provided by the staff with the Wisconsin Water Library at UW Madison, Wisconsin Sea Grant, the Wisconsin Library Association and UW-Parkside. Wisconsin Sea Grant and the University of Wisconsin Water Resources Institute support the Wisconsin Water Library.

Several organizations, including the Wisconsin Water Library at UW Madison, Public Libraries of Saginaw, the Gail Borden Library and the Library of the Great Lakes have partnered to create and carry out the Great Lakes, Great Read program. For more information and to sign up to participate, visit https://www.greatlakesgreatread.org.

— Wisconsin Sea Grant

You received this email because in the past you have provided us your email address : ###EMAIL### to receive notifications when new updates are posted. No longer interested in receiving emails from Sea Grant? Please click below to unsubscribe. Funding provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the State of Wisconsin. © 2020 University of Wisconsin Sea Grant Institute. All rights reserved.