May 13 Chapter Meeting

Title of Talk:
The Davis Rewilding Society: Building a Student-Led Conservation Community

May 13, 2026 at 7:00 PM

The meeting will be held at Shepard Garden & Arts Center, 3330 McKinley Blvd. , Sacramento.  This will be a “hybrid” meeting and will be streamed on Zoom. Click here to register and attend via Zoom.

Hybrid Meetings Are Going Away

Thank you to everyone who has stuck with us as we have worked through the last few years running hybrid chapter meetings.  In the interest of providing a better experience for all who take the time to attend, starting in the fall, SVCNPS is proposing to discontinue the hybrid format and move our monthly chapter meetings to in-person only during March, April, May, September, and October (approximately correlating with Daylight Savings Time) and Zoom-only in November, January, and February (Standard Time).  We hope that this change will help to avoid some of the technology issues that we have encountered in the past and provide a more interactive experience for attendees.  As a reminder, we do not hold chapter meetings in December, July, or August, and the June meeting is replaced with an in-person potluck. We look forward to seeing all of you in-person at Shepard Garden and Arts for the September Chapter Meeting following our summer break!

Summary

        

The Davis Rewilding Society (Rewilding) was founded by three UC Davis students in fall 2021 to improve urban habitat using native plants and increase student accessibility to nature. Five years later, the organization has evolved into a leadership team of 11 officers and a community of 2000 Rewilders dedicated to native plant conservation and habitat restoration.

Rewilding has planted and maintained 5 native gardens across campus, hosts regular lectures and socials that educate students about Californian ecology, and organizes free trips to see Californian biodiversity up close. Rewilding is a story of how powerful youth- and volunteer-led restoration is in recovering habitats and building engagement around native plants, and a strong case for a seemingly unlikely key to native plant conservation: community. We will share how our organization runs, stories of Rewilding’s community and conservation impact, and personal narratives from multiple generations of leaders.

Speakers Bio

Meera Putz (former President), Erin Chung (President), and Olivia Horstman (Vice President) will be the primary presenters. Their fellow officers, Anastasia Karp, Christopher Apel, and Nadia Cartier, will join them onstage briefly to share a personal testimonial about their experience with Rewilding.

Meera Putz (she/her) first fell in love with California native plants through her childhood adventures in the Coastal Redwood forests near her Bay Area hometown. She was drawn to environmental action at a young age by her love of nature, but found her true calling for ecological restoration through a habitat restoration volunteer program with Grassroots Ecology as a sophomore in high school. Now a graduating senior at UC Davis, Meera has spent her college career educating and inspiring her fellow students about California ecology and restoration through her leadership of the Davis Rewilding Society, where she served as President for two years. Her post-grad ambitions are to pursue a leadership career in a restoration nonprofit or parks department and to continue supporting native plant conservation and community-based stewardship.

Erin Chung (they/them) has always been passionate about art throughout their childhood, however, their love of nature and the environment had been a silent yet consistent throughline in their life, whether that be weekend hikes, camping with their temple group, or lying on the grass on their front yard. During Erin’s 2nd year of college, they discovered the importance of CA native plants and were thrilled to find Davis Rewilding Society. From Greenhouse Assistant to Planting Projects Manager, Erin was able to maintain Rewilding’s current CA native gardens and create a new sensory and pollinator themed CA native garden with ~100 plants incorporating crafty garden features such as painted seating and handmade windchimes. Erin Chung is currently a fourth year UC Davis undergrad studying Sustainable Environmental Design and Art Studio, and as President of Rewilding, they plan on continuing Davis Rewilding Society’s mission of connecting and educating people to California habitat restoration and native plants while introducing an intersection between art and the environment.

Olivia Horstman (she/her) is a 3rd year undergraduate studying Environmental Science and Plant Biology and the Vice President of Davis Rewilding Society. She began her journey into restoration through a student-led club in high school, and was excited to join Rewilding in her first year. As a former assistant on Rewilding’s publicity team, she has created educational materials for club events, designed event flyers, and filmed native plant spotlights for social media. She loves learning about California’s native plants and sharing them with Rewilding at two collaborative meetings she’d led. One of her goals as vice president is to facilitate the culture of interactive learning that first drew her to the club.

           

Photos courtesy of: Meera Putz, Erin Chung, and Olivia Horstman, Anastasia Karp, Christopher Apel, and Nadia Cartier, Keira Folkers, Meera Putz, Cynthia Ball, Julia Michaels, Felix Gilson.