The theme of our Building a Land Ethic Conference in June is “Bridging the Urban-Rural Divide.” Water both connects and divides rural and urban communities. It is shared resource that sustains lives and livelihoods. Yet it has increasingly become a point of contention between upstream and downstream water users within watersheds. On the second day of the conference, Friday, June 23, Aldo Leopold Foundation Senior Fellow Stan Temple will facilitate a panel discussion on this topic.
Dr. Temple will introduce the session by sharing some of Aldo Leopold’s insights on water and watersheds. Nancy DeLong will discuss how economics can cause and potentially solve rural-urban conflicts in the Midwestern watersheds. Eduardo Santana will review how watershed-based education at a new regional museum is bringing rural and urban communities together in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. Steve Laubach will discuss the importance of a shared water ethic in bridging urban-rural challenges within watersheds. Stan Temple will moderate a follow-up group discussion.
Panel participants:
Stanley Temple (moderator)
Stan is the Beers-Bascom Professor Emeritus in Conservation in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. For 32 years he held the academic position once occupied by Aldo Leopold, and during that time he won every teaching award for which he was eligible. He has a Ph.D. in ecology from Cornell University where he studied at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology. He is currently a Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation where he continues to work on conservation issues at scales from local to global. He has received major conservation awards from the Society for Conservation Biology, The Wildlife Society and the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, among other recognitions of his conservation work. He has been President of the Society for Conservation Biology and Chairman of the Board of The Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin. He has authored over 300 publications on ecology and conservation.
Nancy DeLong
Nancy DeLong works on agricultural sustainability. She has a Bachelor of Science from the University of Iowa and a Master of Science from the University of Nebraska – Omaha. She is currently on the staff of Sand County Foundation where she leads the foundation’s soil and water conservation program. She served as interim executive director of the Conservation Technology Information Center following a career with DuPont Pioneer as Global Director of Sustainable Agriculture Systems. She directed the company’s efforts in conservation-based agriculture to help farmers and ranchers protect their freedom to operate and improve their livelihoods while being the best stewards of natural resources. She serves on the Conservation Technology Information Center board of directors, the H.A. Wallace Endowed Chair Advisory Committee and the National Cover Crop and Soil Health Working Group. Nancy and her husband Marc live on a small acreage in Iowa and have restored a native savannah.
Eduardo Santana Castellón
Eduardo is a wildlife biologist at the University of Guadalajara (PhD University of Wisconsin-Madison). He has worked for 35 years in bird monitoring and conservation in Mexico, USA, Central America and the Caribbean, and in creating conservation institutions such as the Sierra de Manantlán Biosphere Reserve, the Ayuquila River intermunicipal watershed governance mechanism and most recently, the Guadalajara Museum of Environmental Sciences. He has served on the governing boards of the Society for Conservation Biology, the Association for Tropical Biology and Conservation, and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. He has published over 100 articles and book chapters. For their work in western Mexico he and his colleagues have received numerous national and international awards and recognitions.
Steve Laubach
Steve is an outreach specialist and a lead grant writer for the UW-Madison Earth Partnership program. He holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. from UW-Madison. His doctoral research examined the history of conservation and ecology in land management and education. From 2000-2007, Laubach taught biology and environmental studies at Aldo Leopold’s high school alma mater, the Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Steve is the author of Living a Land Ethic: A History of Cooperative Conservation on the Leopold Memorial Reserve, which highlights private landowner efforts to conserve the landscape around Aldo Leopold’s shack. In his work for Earth Partnership and as a consultant in land and water conservation, Steve emphasizes watershed health and historical perspectives through efforts to enhance biodiversity, reduce nutrient inputs to waterways, and restore communities. He will return to Lawrenceville in Fall 2017.
Conference registration is open now. Early bird rates are valid through April 21.