Birds, bats and bees, oh my! The college was recently awarded an $8,500 grant from the National Wildlife Federation’s 2025 Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom Grant Program, to support several sustainability initiatives according to an Aug. 7 press release from the college.

“This funding will support two major campus sustainability and biodiversity initiatives: the installation of bird and bat boxes across campus and the creation of a native perennial pollinator garden in front of the Pelletier Library,” stated the press release.

The idea for the project came from Hazel Ammons, ’25, an environmental science and sustainability major, whose senior comprehensive project was the basis for the pollinator garden.

When the grant proposal entered the radar of Director of Sustainability Kelly Boulton, ’02, she decided to use Ammons’ work — which she described as “amazing.”

“Hazel’s approach was, ‘How do you not just put in a pollinator garden,’” Boulton said, “(But) how can we use perennial pollinator and wildlife-friendly plants in a way that also meets conventional landscaping aesthetic standards?”

Sunny Stout, ’26, also an environmental science and sustainability major, is one of the students who has been working on the project.

“A lot of the species that Hazel chose for their comp aren’t native flower species that I’ve seen in the other native flower gardens on campus,” Stout said. “One of the goals that I think Hazel and Kelly were thinking about was making this garden look like a landscaped garden, but out of native flowers.”

The grant proposal is roughly split into three parts: $1,400 for bat and bird boxes and signage, $2,000 for the garden and $5,000 for a student worker, according to Boulton.

The garden itself will consist of native perennials, prairie grasses, milkweeds and more.

“Hazel and I did kind of talk about plants, but it was Hazel driving the conversation, Hazel identifying what’s native, what’s going to work,” Boulton said. “I give Hazel full credit there.”

Stout has been working with Assistant Professor of Biology Jennifer Houtz for the last few years in labs, doing summer research and now installing the garden and bird boxes.

Stout’s research this summer involved putting bird boxes in community members’ backyards in Meadville and Erie.

The bird boxes are meant to support cavity-nesting bird species, according to Stout. They are meant to operate as replacements for the lack of dead trees with hollows for the birds to live in.

“They hold species like house sparrows, which are invasive species,” Stout said, “For the noninvasive, it’s bluebirds, tree swallows, chickadees and house wrens are the most common. Tufted titmouse and nuthatches might go in them.”

The number of bird boxes will outweigh the number of bat boxes, due to the cost of building them and the fact that Houtz “has had like a hundred, I think, in her garage and office,” according to Stout.

He said the location of the bird boxes is yet to be determined, but the locations being considered are the Carr Hall Garden, the Prayer and Meditation House, Steffee Hall, Ravine Hall, Edwards Hall, the David V. Wise Center, the 454 House and near the Allegheny College sign at the intersection of North Main St. and Loomis St.

With winter on the horizon, work will inevitably slow, but Stout encouraged community members to whom he provided bird boxes during his summer research to use a paint scraper in October or November to remove the old nesting material from the boxes in order to decrease the chance of parasites.

“There are a couple studies that say that it encourages more birds to nest there next year,” Stout said. “Sometimes they like clean boxes. Sometimes they want ones with old nesting material. It kind of depends on the bird.”

Though the boxes will likely be empty in the winter, mice might take up residence in them, along with bluebirds, though they are less likely to due to a difference in habitat.

According to the college, it was the first school in Pennsylvania and eighth in the nation to become carbon neutral. This work builds on Allegheny’s nationally recognized sustainability efforts and adds to the campus’s role as a living laboratory for environmental research and conservation.