Date/Time
Date(s) - Oct 22, 2026
9:00 am - 5:00 pm
Categories No Categories
October 22, 2026: Hidden Lake Environmental Center Launch & Wetland Trail Grand Opening
Camp Newaygo is celebrating a major milestone this fall: the launch of the Hidden Lake Environmental Center, our new year-round environmental education and training initiative, and the Grand Opening of the rebuilt Wetland Trail.
This is a day with two connected parts. Join us for one or both!
Part One: Hidden Lake Environmental Center Launch (Professional Development Day)
9:00 AM – 4:00 PM | Free | Advance registration required
We’re kicking off the Hidden Lake Environmental Center with a full day of speakers, learning, and networking for educators, environmental professionals, conservation partners, and community leaders from across the region. Whether you’re coming for one session or the whole day, we’d love to have you.
Please register for the full day even if you can only attend part of it. You’re welcome to come and go as your schedule allows.
Free breakfast and lunch are included.
Capacity: 100 registrants
Registration deadline: October 18, 2026
Schedule
9:00–9:30 AM | Arrival, Coffee & Welcome
Registration, coffee, light refreshments, and networking.
9:30–10:30 AM | The Love of Birds, Versus a Love of Birding
Will Keller (Grand Rapids), co-host, The Real Birding Podcast
In a Love for Birds and Birding, Will expounds on what he has learned from his years of birding across the globe, working with birds, and hosting the Real Birding Podcast. It is an exploration of the ways birding differs from a casual or even scientific interest in the avian world and the fantastic but often bizarre places a love for birding can take you.
10:30–11:30 AM | The Secret Life of a Bog: Why Peatlands Matter
Dr. Dominic Uhelski, Michigan Technological University
Peatlands cover just a small fraction of the Earth’s land, yet they store an outsized share of the planet’s soil carbon, quietly shaping the climate far beyond their boundaries. Dr. Dominic Uhelski draws on years of fieldwork sampling bogs and fens across the Upper Midwest to reveal how these slow, waterlogged landscapes form, function, and respond to disturbances like fire and drainage, and why protecting and restoring them, including the bog right here on the Wetland Trail, matters more than their quiet appearance might suggest.
11:30–11:45 AM | Break
11:45 AM–12:30 PM | Tracking the Invisible: Using eDNA to Detect Invasive Species
Dr. Charlyn Partridge, Annis Water Resources Institute, GVSU
Dr. Charlyn Partridge shares how her lab developed simple, low-cost traps to catch airborne genetic traces (eDNA) left behind by invasive species like the hemlock woolly adelgid, allowing researchers and land managers to detect an infestation long before visible signs of damage appear. A look at how cutting-edge genetic science is giving conservationists an early warning system for protecting the forests and habitats we depend on.
12:30–1:30 PM | Lunch & Networking
1:30–2:30 PM | Waterfront Porch: From Cleanup to Community
Dr. John Hartig, University of Windsor
The story of how Detroit is turning to the Detroit River, building a new waterfront greenway called the Detroit RiverWalk in an effort to help reconnect people with nature, revitalize the city and region, and foster a more sustainable future. One of the largest waterfront redevelopment projects of its scale in the United States.
2:30–2:45 PM | Break
2:45–3:45 PM | The Psychology of Bird Identification
David Allen Sibley (Massachusetts), author/illustrator, Sibley Guides
Using photos, drawings, and a few interactive tests, David Allen Sibley explores how we perceive the world around us, and how our brains both help and hinder our efforts at bird identification. Book signing to follow the session.
3:45–4:00 PM | Break & Transition to Grand Opening
Part Two: Wetland Trail Grand Opening & Ribbon Cutting
4:00 PM | Free and open to the public | No registration required
Camp Newaygo’s Wetland Trail, a boardwalk through a bog and wetland environment that has served generations of visitors, students, and birders, was originally built in 1987 through a major community volunteer effort. In September 2024, a fire destroyed a significant portion of the boardwalk, closing the trail and creating the need for a major rebuild.
Camp Newaygo chose not to simply replace what was lost. Over the past two years, staff, volunteers, donors, and an AmeriCorps NCCC team have worked to rebuild the trail while expanding accessibility, habitat restoration, and environmental education along the way.
Join us as we cut the ribbon and reopen this beloved trail to the public.
4:00 PM | Ribbon Cutting Ceremony
4:15–5:00 PM | Inaugural Wetland Trail Walks
Be among the first to walk the newly restored boardwalk.
Location
Camp Newaygo
5333 South Centerline Road, Newaygo, MI 49337
Questions?
Contact Jalisa Danhof, Director, at jalisa@campnewaygo.org or (231) 652-1184.
Speaker Bios
Will Keller
Birder, Environmental Consultant, and Co-host of The Real Birding Podcast
Will Keller is a lifelong birder and environmental consultant whose passion for birds took on new meaning during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, when chasing rare sightings across West Michigan drew him into a tight-knit community of local birders. Shaped by years spent gulling at wastewater treatment plants, scoping owls at dawn, and chasing rare birds across county lines, Will brings a warm, funny, and deeply knowledgeable voice to everything he does in the birding world.
Dr. Dominic Uhelski
Michigan Technological University
Dr. Dominic Uhelski is a peatland and fire ecologist at Michigan Technological University’s College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science. He earned his PhD studying the fire history and long-term carbon storage of hemi-boreal peatlands, sampling nearly thirty bogs and fens across northern Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota to reconstruct centuries of fire activity using peat cores and radiocarbon dating. His research digs into how fire, hydrology, and plant communities shape the ability of peatlands, some of the most carbon-dense ecosystems on Earth, to store carbon over the long term. He has also contributed to national peatland mapping and restoration efforts through the U.S. Forest Service, helping identify where and how peatland restoration can have the greatest climate impact.
Dr. Charlyn Partridge
Annis Water Resources Institute, GVSU
Dr. Charlyn Partridge is an Associate Professor of Water Resources and molecular ecologist at Grand Valley State University’s Annis Water Resources Institute. Her lab studies genetics and genomics across a wide range of species and questions, from tracking invasive hemlock woolly adelgid using airborne environmental DNA (eDNA), to assessing the population genetics of wild lupine in endangered Karner Blue butterfly habitat, to studying the effects of microplastic pollution on aquatic wildlife. She has presented her eDNA-based invasive species detection work internationally, including at the International eDNA Meeting in Otsu, Japan, and has collaborated with state and federal agencies, including Michigan’s DNR and the U.S. Forest Service, on developing better detection tools for invasive forest pests.
Dr. John Hartig
University of Windsor
John Hartig is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, serves on the Board of Directors of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, and chairs the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s Great Lakes Way Advisory Committee. For 14 years, he served as Refuge Manager of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge. John has received numerous awards for his work, including being recognized as a 2022 Crain’s Detroit Business Notable Leader in Sustainability, the 2015 Conservationist of the Year Award from the John Muir Association, and a 2010 Green Leader by the Detroit Free Press. He has authored or co-authored more than 160 publications on the environment, including eight books. John’s book titled Waterfront Porch won a 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the “nature/environment” category.
David Allen Sibley
Author/Illustrator, Sibley Guides
David Allen Sibley is the author and illustrator of the series of bestselling nature guides that bear his name, including The Sibley Guide to Birds, widely regarded as the gold standard for North American bird identification since its publication in 2000. Sibley began painting birds at age seven and has spent more than four decades observing and illustrating them, work that grew out of years traveling across the continent watching and sketching birds before completing his own field guide. His other titles include The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior, Sibley’s Birding Basics, and What It’s Like to Be a Bird. He has contributed articles and illustrations to Smithsonian, Science, The Wilson Journal of Ornithology, Birding, BirdWatching, North American Birds, and The New York Times, and is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Award for Lifetime Achievement from the American Birding Association and the Linnaean Society of New York’s Eisenmann Medal. He lives and birds in Massachusetts.