Naturalist Shawn Severance

Severance and Lincoln. | Mark Bialek

“There’s another queen bee! We’re gonna watch her,” Shawn Severance whispers beneath the brim of her oversized sun hat.

In the trail system she designed at the Kidder-McKeachie Scio Woods Preserve, she moves with the ease of someone who has spent a lifetime paying attention, scanning fallen logs and spring wildflowers while the wind whistles through the trees.

“We came out earlier, no bees! And now, all the bees are out,” she says, delighted. “Another one? And another one!”

Severance grew up in rural Jackson County, wandering the woods with her toy poodle, Brandy. Her parents shaped both her love of nature and her sense of community responsibility. Her father, Russell—an engineer and avid gardener—spent countless hours cultivating berries, vegetables, and grapes, teaching her to appreciate the cycles and gifts of the earth. He died in his nineties while tending his grape arbor, the place he loved most. Her mother, Marcia, nurtured a different but complementary tradition, teaching Shawn foraging traditions passed down through generations of women. Though she never formally worked outside the home, while raising six children, Marcia cofounded a community food co-op during the 1970s oil crisis, when soaring food prices left many families struggling.

Today, Severance roams the woods with her rescue dog, a German Shepherd mix named Lincoln. She is also busy raising two children, Sal, eighteen, and Ethan, fourteen.

While Severance describes herself as intrinsically shy, she comes alive in the woods. She tends Washtenaw County’s nature preserves with purpose and affection, stopping to pull invasive garlic mustard and pausing to admire the wildflowers—spring beauty, trout lily, and wild geranium—that sustain pollinators each spring.

Her path to becoming a naturalist was winding, not strategic, but nevertheless seems meant to be because of all the skills she developed along the way. After earning a degree in animal physiology at MSU, she moved to Ann Arbor in 1994 to study developmental neurobiology at U-M. She earned a second master’s degree in landscape architecture, leading to years of work in green building, teaching, and campus planning at WCC before joining the parks commission.

“What has always impressed me most is her insatiable curiosity about the natural world and her ability to share that knowledge in a way that inspires both newcomers and seasoned naturalists alike,” says Lisa Brush, executive director of The Stewardship Network, who has known Severance for nearly two decades. “Shawn has a rare gift for making people feel connected to nature and excited to keep learning.”

Related
Lisa Brush and Jim Frey: A climate action power couple (Jan. 2026)

That curiosity is on full display during the Community Pollinator Survey, a countywide project Severance leads with retired entomologist David Cappaert to better understand the relationship between native bees and the plants on which they depend. Residents can volunteer throughout the spring and summer to help document pollinator activity and learn how to support bee populations at home.

Severance takes in a sharp breath and pauses to check the time. “It’s just after four o’clock. I have to tell David this is when they seem very active.”

Several queen bumblebees are buzzing about and then burrowing beneath small logs. “They nest in old chipmunk burrows, but I didn’t know they’re right under these logs,” she says. “I learn something every time I’m out here.”

For Severance, the work is as much about helping people reconnect with nature as it is restoring it.

“One of the things we’re finding is the incredible importance of flowering trees for bees in the springtime,” she says, her face bright. “Because it’s 10,000 flowers all day: dogwoods and redbuds, chokecherries, and all these beautiful willows and maples. These springtime flowering shrubs seem to be magnets for pollinators.”

Beyond the pollinator surveys, Severance brings her passion for teaching into programs year-round for all ages through Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission. This summer, she’s offering a Friday Night Geology Hike, Gold Hour Nature Hike, Log Cabin Day, and more.

“I never lost contact at all with the wonder of nature,” she says. “And every time I go out, there’s something remarkable and something that I didn’t know before. Kids are doing that all the time. They are so fun to work with, because they’re natural scientists. They are teaching me.”

On top of all the different hats she already wears for her work, Severance can add a firefighter helmet. She earned firefighter certification to conduct prescribed burns for forest restoration, a practice rooted in Indigenous land stewardship. “Some Indigenous people burned parts of their territory every year,” she explains. “It made a kind of forest that worked, from berry production to open forest hunting.”

Severance stops in front of a patch of wild geraniums.

“The Earth speaks in flowers,” she says. “And when you perform a prescribed fire, you’re asking a question of the land, and then it speaks back to you in flowers.”

Outside of her official work, Severance has volunteered for fourteen years as an instructor at the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility and the Washtenaw County Youth Center, teaching residents how wild bees support food systems and how to cultivate pollinator-friendly gardens. Extra produce is donated to Food Gatherers. She also steers a team that coordinates the statewide Michigan Naturalist Program through MSU Extension, now in its fourth session.

This October marks Severance’s twentieth year as a parks naturalist with the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission. When asked how she wants to celebrate the milestone, she pauses before answering thoughtfully and definitively, “I want everyone to come out and cut invasive bittersweet vines with me.”

When she was a graduate student at U-M, Severance often walked the trails at Parker Mill County Park. “I would think, somebody really needs to take care of the natural areas here,” she says. “And now, I have the privilege of doing just that.”

Shawn Severance’s twenty-year anniversary/invasive bittersweet vine removal is on Friday, October 30 from 6–7:30 p.m. at Parker Mill County Park.