Wild Ideas: A Biomimicry of Saguaro National Park
April 6-10, 2025 | Tucson, AZ
Redemptorist Renewal Center/Saguaro National Park
Join us next spring in Saguaro National Park for another biomimicry professional development and nature exploration experience.
From Hollywood westerns and tourist postcards, the Sonoran Desert is often depicted as a place of menace and deprivation. Conditions can seem harsh. Rainfall is scant and unpredictable. Soils are low in nutrients and organic matter. And summer temperatures can top 120 degrees. Yet plants and animals here have coped with the extremes of hot, dry and nutrient-poor conditions for millennia. Together, they have leveraged scarcity to produce abundance and tapped the power of limits to create one of the most biologically rich deserts in the world. How do they do it? And how can we mimic these successful strategies in designs that will help us flourish in our own hotter, drier and more resource-poor future?
Saguaro National Park lies in the heart of this magnificent desert. It is home to more than 3,500 species of plants, some 70 species of mammals, 200 species of birds, 50 species of reptiles and thousands of species of invertebrates. In collaboration with The Center for Learning with Nature, join biomimicry educators Adelheid Fischer and Megan Schuknecht for an exploration of the park’s diverse habitats and their remarkable inhabitants. Through field observations, classroom presentations, and hands-on projects, you will learn how the thrival strategies of desert plants and animals can inspire you as an educator. You will also work with biomimicry curricula that you can utilize in your classroom, inspiring students to think creatively about science and technology through the lens of a thriving planet.
Certificates available upon request.
