The New York Community Trust has awarded the Dominican Sisters of Hope a grant in the amount $100,000 to support pollinator conservation on the land at Mariandale. The grant award is a recognition of the congregation’s longstanding commitment to eco-justice and provides the opportunity for Mariandale to become part of a continuous pollinator corridor, connecting Crawbuckie Nature Preserve and the Croton Point Restoration Project.

The opportunity for the grant was created when New York Attorney General Letitia James secured $6.9 million dollars from Bayer and Monsanto for false advertising of Roundup Weedkillers. The settlement was over the herbicide’s adverse effect on pollinators.

The settlement money was allocated to support the New York State Pollinator Protection Plan, which seeks “to promote the health and recovery of pollinator populations in New York State in order to sustain the state’s robust agricultural economy and unparalleled natural resources.”

“Wild pollinators and managed bees, typically honeybees and bumblebees kept by beekeepers, are critically important to the health of New York’s environment…However, over the past several years, the loss of managed pollinator colonies in the state has exceeded 50%,” the plan reads.

The Pollinator Protection Fund, the administration of which was entrusted to the New York Community Trust, then created three grant categories to support New York organizations in sustaining healthy pollinator populations.

Dominican Sister of Hope Nancy Erts, Carlos Santiago, and Sister Bette Ann hold milkweed they won for a grant to help preserve the environment of Monarch butterflies.

The Dominican Sisters of Hope were in the most competitive statewide category, in which only three grants would be funded across the state of New York.

According to Robert Krebs, Director of Development, who wrote the grant application, “The size of the award is certainly impressive…but beyond the actual dollar amount, what is even a bigger victory for us as an organization is that we were chosen in a category where it would have been easy and safe to pick a big public project such as a university, a park, a zoo or even a botanical garden.”

“The bigger win is the acknowledgement that the Dominican Sisters of Hope, a fairly small congregation of women religious, was identified as one of the few organizations that could make the impact that this fund is designed to create,” Krebs said. “That speaks volumes about the work that has already been done, the commitment to land justice, eco-justice, the ministries of Sister Nancy Erts, Sister Bette Ann Jaster, and many others.”

In the application, the Dominican Sisters of Hope were able to demonstrate an already established protected wildlife corridor on the land, thanks to the conservation easement. The fact that Mariandale doesn’t use commercial or residential pesticides or herbicides also helped.

The grant will be used to restore six acres of mugwort to native vegetation.

It’s a two-year project, and one of the requirements of the grant is that the sisters complement their stewardship of the land with preaching about eco-justice.

“It seems to be a natural extension of continuing the sisters’ legacy and charism,” Krebs said. “The most significant part of receiving this grant is the recognition that the sisters don’t just talk the talk, they walk the walk.”