Environmental Working Group Home

   Welcome to the homepage of the Bozeman Sunrise Rotary Club’s “Environmental Working Group”. We strive for an environmentally friendly Rotary Club through programs established by Rotary International to sustain humanitarian health. 

Rotary shares an interest in protecting our common legacy: the environment (https://www.rotary.org/en/our-causes/protecting-environment).

Added in June 2020 as the seventh area of focus, Rotary International (RI) is committed to protecting the environment by supporting global projects that conserve natural resources, advance ecological sustainability, and foster harmony between people and nature. This focus empowers Rotarians to tackle climate change, reduce environmental degradation, and address environmental justice issues. RI has been addressing environmental issues in relation to humanitarian health for decades, providing the basis for this area of focus.          

Inspired by RI’s global efforts on protecting the environment, Bozeman Sunrise Rotary Club established an environmental working group (EWG) in 2026.  Our initial work is to provide education on eco-friendly habits with weekly environmental tips in our news bulletin, and following procedures developed by Rotary to conduct green events (https://esrag.org/green-events/) by recycling, composting, and eliminating plastic.  

The EWG is also supporting efforts to maintain a healthy Bozeman watershed by registration into a freshwater initiative. In 2023, Rotary International (RI) and the United Nations (UN) Environment Programme formed a strategic partnership to tackle one of the most pressing challenges of our time: protecting, restoring and sustaining freshwater ecosystems.  The initiative is known as the Community Action for Fresh Water (CAFW) (https://www.communityactionforfreshwater.org/).  The program encourages clubs to organize and partner with local groups for river cleanups, to raise awareness in their communities about the importance of healthy waterways, and to conduct basic water quality tests.

The EWG is initiating participation in Rotary’s Operation Pollination (https://esrag.org/pollinators/), a network of gardens planted across North America to help sustain insect pollinators necessary for our food production (with potential partners Bozeman Rotary Noon Club, Sacajawea Audubon, Montana Native Plant Society, Montana State University, and City of Bozeman). First, we plan to enlarge the pollinator garden at Glen Lake Rotary Park in partnership with Bozeman Rotary Noon Club. We are also collaborating with local non-profits and the City of Bozeman to help with a pollinator garden on city property. Operation Pollination (https://operationpollination.net/) recognizes the importance of pollinator habitat both restored and maintained on public and private lands. Through collaboration and outreach, an interconnected mosaic of pollinator habitat interspersed between public and private land will be developed to stabilize and/or increase populations of pollinator species throughout the project area.

We meet on the second Thursday of every month at 5:30 pm. Locations vary for our meetings and usually take place at the Bozeman Public Library.