by editor | Sep 27, 2011 | Interviews with Educators & Leaders
Interview by Chris Gertschen
Jason Wilmot is executive director of the Northern Rockies Conservation Cooperative.
Jason was raised in Montana and South Dakota. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in Geography from the University of Montana and a Master of Environmental Management from the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. Jason spent over 10 years living in the Glacier National Park area, where he worked in various capacities for the National Park Service. (more…)
by editor | Aug 31, 2011 | Forest Education, Interviews with Educators & Leaders
Interview by Chris Gertschen
Lance Craighead is the Executive Director of the Craighead Institute, an applied science and research organization that builds conservation solutions for people and wildlife in changing landscapes. Its mission is to maintain healthy populations of native plants, wildlife, and people as part of sustainable, functioning ecosystems.
Since its founding by renowned grizzly bear researcher Dr. Frank C. Craighead in 1964, the Craighead Institute has pioneered the fields of conservation and wildlife research. Over the past four decades the Institute has conducted ecological research on grizzly bears in Yellowstone Park, genetic research on grizzly bears in Alaska, conventional and satellite radio-telemetry of wildlife, and the use of remote sensing to map vegetation and wildlife habitat. (more…)
by editor | Aug 10, 2011 | Forest Education
by Chris Gertschen
For the past three decades, I have been an activist, a volunteer, a student and a teacher of conservation. My activist years gave me an advocacy perspective but I quickly saw a great need to expand my own natural science education – to give some foundation and balance to my life and love of the earth. My studies of biology as an undergrad were focused singularly on human biology and physiology. The word “ecology” was not then part of the curriculum. As a graduate student, I was introduced to a whole new world. In the natural history interdisciplinary program that I designed for myself at Boise State University, I studied geology, zoology, ecology and public affairs. And, I began to learn about conservation biology. (more…)
by editor | Feb 8, 2011 | Environmental Literacy
By Eric Shawn
The interdisciplinary study of food has emerged as a theme in sustainability education at Catlin Gabel School, an independent, co-educational school with 725 students in preschool through 12th grade in Portland, Oregon. The focus on food—a necessity for human life, and a subject of much recent thinking worldwide in terms of sustainability—touches many disciplines across the school and touches our learners from age 4 to 18. (more…)
by editor | Dec 24, 2010 | Conservation & Sustainability, Environmental Literacy
Big Ideas from the field of Environmental Education and their Relationship to Sustainability Education
— or —
What’s love got to do with it?
.
.
By Donald J. Burgess and Tracy Johannessen
Introduction
common raven suddenly begins to call from Cornwall Park. I rush to the front porch trying to see what the commotion is all about. Two adult ravens are flapping high over the green canopy, croaking vigorously. Like vigilant Block Watch captains protecting the integrity of a neighborhood, ravens exhibit exceptional observational prowess coupled with intense fidelity to family and place. I scan the forest with binoculars and notice three raven fledglings perched in a scraggly birch tree at the edge of the forest. Scanning higher, I finally detect a distant bald eagle circling over the urban park where the ravens have nested for a decade. Ravens recognize an opportunistic predator like a bald eagle as a “threat to the neighborhood” and they act decisively to protect their home. The raven’s objection is clearly articulated through their vocalizations and aerial antics and the bald eagle soon circles out of sight.
Why is it that when human observers experience an ecological threat and speak out in alarm (warning against drilling oil 5000 feet below the ocean surface or climate change) that our most heartfelt appeals remain ineffective? Is it an inability to understand the true threat to our children? If we truly perceived the ability of humanity to survive as linked to the ecological integrity of our surroundings, would the human response to these cries of alarm be different? What roles do love and caring play? (more…)
