On islands, change is always visible. Poplar Island is a prime example of this ecological construct. In this presentation, Gene Scarpulla will provide a clear overview of Poplar Island’s long history in the Chesapeake Bay, beginning in the 1500s and tracing its major phases of change. He will cover early settlement, the origins of the island’s various names, British activity during the War of 1812, the period of farming and small communities, the era of bootlegging, and the Jefferson Islands Club, visited by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman. He will also outline the island’s steady erosion into several smaller islands,reducing it to just four acres, and the modern effort to rebuild it using dredged material from Bay shipping channels.
That restoration work connects directly to the second part of Gene’s talk. In 2015, he and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologists conducted a yearlong native bee survey on the Paul S. Sarbanes Ecosystem Restoration Project at Poplar Island. Gene will describe the survey methods and summarize the results, including the 94 bee species documented, three first Maryland records, a rare western species, several non‑North American species, cuckoo bees, and plant‑specialist bees.
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