Conversations around our changing climate and its effects on birds, habitat, and people can be a very large, daunting, and sometimes depressing task. But over the past year, Spring Creek Prairie (SCP) staff have found a few creative ways to keep these conversations positive, engage community and new audiences, and strengthen and build local partnerships with its Climate & Culture Conversations program.

At the end of summer 2024, SCP created its second in the series of Climate & Culture Conversations, this one entitled Climate & Culture: BIRDS & WORDS. Nebraska State Poet Matt Mason collaborated on the words portion of the event, providing poetry-writing prompts to inspire the attendees to write honestly and creatively about their experiences with climate.

TAKING ACTION FOR CLIMATE! The idea is simple. Here’s our approach.
Let’s have conversations about the climate!

• Include a writing or art prompt
• Review up-to-date science data from climate scientists
• View quotes from local youth about how they are being affected by climatic changes.

With this approach, the programs have flourished with interest, discussion, and positive outlooks on understanding!

The event also hosted local scientists, writers, and birders to discuss some larger climate issues in a panel discussion with the attendees, all moderated by SCP’s Jason “the Birdnerd.” The event was in partnership with the City of Lincoln’s Parks & Recreation Department and held at Pioneers Park Nature Center (PPNC), a longtime collaborator on environmental education.

Following up on the success of the above event, PPNC and SCP partnered again in the summer of 2025, this time inviting a group of climate scientists from Climate Up Close to come and present. These scientists from NOAA, Harvard, Princeton, & Cornell tour the country providing the most up-to-date information on our changing climate and dispelling any myths with an engaging presentation, and then take questions and provide time for open discussion with the audience. The topic was so popular, the Lincoln area booked the group for three other conversations over the last weekend in June of 2025 at local churches and an astronomy center.

These positive and powerful conversations have been a wonderful way for SCP to be a part of the community conversation around climate, actions for birds, habitat, and people, and to continue to build new and strengthen existing partnerships. We look forward to building on this momentum over the next year.