A Spartan making a positive impact on Michigan, one plant at a time

On a typical summer day working at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, Kate Reitz walks the woods, wetlands and dunes of the park to survey the plants and collect seeds. “We haven’t made it across all of it yet,” says Reitz about the 71,199 acres she and her colleagues are aiming to traverse as part of a national program in partnership with the Bureau of Land Management.  

Reitz, a 2012 environmental biology and zoology graduate in Michigan State University’s College of Natural Science, works as a biological science technician in Sleeping Bear Dunes, part of the world’s largest freshwater dune ecosystem. Daily, she conducts grid surveys — systematically inspecting plants in a transect — and carries out seed collections, of which one portion goes to seed banks for research and the other portion is used for restoration in the park itself.

“We’re protecting the natural resources, and I think it can sometimes go unnoticed,” says Reitz about the efforts she and her colleagues are making to control invasive species and address forest health issues. “Because it’s not a building or a road, I feel like some people who visit the park don’t really see the work that we do.”

Creating conditions for growth

A closer look reveals visual clues to Reitz’ work. The restoration projects, for example, make use of tubes that are placed around trees to identify them. While surveying, Reitz says, “I have a measuring tape and flags I sometimes use and always have plant identification books with me.”

And perhaps the most impactful on the landscape are the prescribed burns, controlled applications of fire by experts that manage vegetation and reduce the risk of wildfires. It’s an essential strategy for restoring natural ecosystems that depend on fire and a part of her work that Reitz is especially proud of.

“I participated in a 900-acre burn last spring, in an area that I also was able to do the baseline plant surveying for. I would say that was a pretty big accomplishment.”

A natural progression shaped by MSU

Reitz grew up in Fife Lake, a village near Traverse City, Michigan.

When it came time to choose a college, she picked MSU — in part because her mother had attended — and enrolled in environmental biology, drawn by the diversity of topics it offered.

While at MSU, her trajectory took a more defined shape as she pursued experiences she couldn’t get anywhere else. “I took two different summer classes at the bio station in two different years,” she recalls. “I wish I had done it sooner! I think that was the most impactful for me.”

The W.K. Kellogg Biological Station is MSU’s largest off-campus education complex, located in Ross Township, between Kalamazoo and Battle Creek. It’s one of North America’s premier inland field stations, where undergraduate and graduate students in biology-related studies can conduct field experimental research in aquatic and terrestrial ecology and participate in educational programs.

Protecting Michigan as a Spartan

After graduating, Reitz spent two years in West Virginia as a volunteer with AmeriCorps and served with the U.S. Forest Service. “Looking back on it now, it was a very good experience. I think it’s important for especially environmental professionals to get out in other ecosystems and habitats and learn what’s going on in those places,” she says. “It definitely helped when I came back here to work.”

At the moment, though, she doesn’t have a desire to go elsewhere. From being a Spartan in East Lansing, to taking the Spartan outlook out into the world and then back to Michigan, “being a Spartan — to me it’s about, especially in a small, rural place like this, being a positive part of my community and being a positive part of Michigan’s workforce. It’s about the natural resources that I work on and protect in my day-to-day.

“If Sleeping Bear Dunes wasn’t a national lakeshore, it would most definitely be developed by now,” says Reitz about the value of conserving the area, which hugs 35 miles of Lake Michigan’s eastern coastline and attracts over 1.5 million visitors each year. “I think the work that we do there is not only beneficial for people everywhere but also for the local community. Michigan is just a really beautiful place worth protecting.”