The Land Trust Rally

On Saturday I visited the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, including the John Curtis Prairie restoration that Aldo Leopold worked on, mentioned in my previous entry. I also got to see some sandhill cranes in rural fields, a breathtaking experience.

Then I attended two days of sessions on trail design and construction, communication skills for managing conservation easements, methods of protecting working farmland, forest management, and using Natural Heritage Program data to inform conservation decisions. The plenary sessions, held in the historic Orpheum Theater to accommodate the conference's 1,800 participants, were intended to inspire and incite us to conservation action.

Madison is a beautiful town situated between two lakes, with lots of small restaurants, a spectacular capitol, and one of the nation's best farmer's markets (it took me an hour and two laps around the square to see it all). One of the speakers noted that many of our greatest naturalists, including Wisconsin's John Muir and Aldo Leopold, lived in cities, not out in the country they loved. A common theme at this conference was that liveable cities, which include open space everyone has access to, help protect open spaces elsewhere.

Another theme was that our natural lands are central to our nation's identity—Americans identify ourselves with nature in contrast to the cultures from which we came—and that to destroy them or simply ignore them endangers our identity, our culture, and our ethics.