How do we describe it, this sense of connection to a particular place? I just know I have it.

When I think of places I feel connected to, I start with the Pine Lake of my childhood and the view from the hilltop that is indelible in my memory: the expanse of ice and snow of winter, the tender greens of spring, the limpid sunsets over water in the summer, the geese filling the sky in the fall and the island – always a bit mysterious.

There are smells and sounds and textures that fill in this sense of place for me – wet sand, juniper needles on bare feet, summer humidity humming with mosquitoes and the night music of frogs. Add the bite of winter wind, oak leaves piled high in the crisp days of fall, the smell of early spring when the ice was breaking up, the summer buzz of lawnmowers and Tiger baseball on the radio under the ash tree by the lake. These fragments of memory weave a vivid portrait that says “home.”

Pine Lake isn't the only place that resonates in my bones. I think of the way my heart lifted when I was on the trail to Mosquito Beach on Lake Superior this summer (the name keeps out the timid, leaving this exquisite destination to those of us who know its charm). I hadn't been there in more than a decade, but it was a joyful reunion with a place that makes me want to sing. I feel that same sense of connection to the north shore of Kauai after the last bridge, a certain alpine meadow in the Canadian Rockies, the Clark Lake narrows in Sylvania Wilderness, and the little park across the street from my home in the city, replete with ancient oak trees and a thousand-year-old effigy mound. Each of these places has its own beauty, but what we share is experience. They are more than scenery; they are relationship. From starry nights around the campfire to the feel of my hands planting seeds to restore the prairie in the local park, we are woven together in acts and memories that shape the land and shape who I am.

The environmental education field tells us that experiential learning is one of the most powerful ways to promote awareness, knowledge and a sense of stewardship for the environment. I have no doubt that my experiences with natural places have influenced who I am and inspired me to work to care for the wonder and beauty of our living planet. There are great curricula, wonderful nature films, and mountains of data that affirm the value of protecting biodiversity and the environment. But that old cliche, “there's no substitute for experience” may trump them all.

At our summer BioBlitzes this year we saw first hand the learning that was taking place when people participated in a biodiversity inventory in a real place with real critters and plants. I saw a young girl describe her experience on a spider hunt as “real cool,” and a high school student energized enough to go out on searches for various types of species hour after hour.

He, and others, asked when we were going to do this again – they wanted more of this experience. The wallpaper of anonymous green in the city park was suddenly filled with details, complex relationships, and people sharing “aha” moments of discovery. I suspect for that inquiring young man, and others who joined us that day, it will never just be “the park” again. Perhaps we have changed in some small way, their sense of place.

I realized on a plant walk how my knowledge of plants shapes the way I see a landscape. I've never felt compelled to view the world through a field guide, but I realized watching others discover things for the first time how much I did know about trees, flowering plants, what grew on a particular soil, what was native, etc. It made me realize that it was like viewing the natural world with a “higher resolution” of detail, and how generic and homogenous a forest can seem if you don't know an oak from an ash. You can read about the difference, you can look at a picture, but if you know an oak and an ash, well, it has context and meaning.

I remember reading about Leopold's enthusiasm for bur oaks in college. Now that I live across from a park that has a dozen of these marvelous trees, his passion for bur oaks is tangible .

One of our great challenges in building constituencies for biodiversity protection is finding ways to provide experiential learning that builds a sense of relationship with the natural world, and cultivates the sense of place that allows us to feel connected to the land. I was lucky. My mom was determined that her children would grow up in the country. Today, there are a lot more people, and a lot less “country” to go around. In fact, Pine Lake has fallen prey to the ravages of developers, and that sense of place can only live in memory now. But whether it's a city park, a community garden or a summer wilderness destination, I'm persuaded that we all need a connection to a living landscape, and increasingly, we need mentors and teachers who will open up our eyes to the magic in the tapestry. Once it is ours, how can we not care, and seek ways to protect it?

Jane E. Elder

A Sense of Place
How do we describe it, this sense of connection to a particular place? I just know I have it.

When I think of places I feel connected to, I start with the Pine Lake of my childhood and the view from the hilltop that is indelible in my memory: the expanse of ice and snow of winter, the tender greens of spring, the limpid sunsets over water in the summer, the geese filling the sky in the fall and the island – always a bit mysterious. There are smells and sounds and textures that fill in this sense of place for me – wet sand, juniper needles on bare feet, summer humidity humming with mosquitoes and the night music of frogs. Add the bite of winter wind, oak leaves piled high in the crisp days of fall, the smell of early spring when the ice was breaking up, the summer buzz of lawnmowers and Tiger baseball on the radio under the ash tree by the lake. These fragments of memory weave a vivid portrait that says “home.”

Pine Lake isn't the only place that resonates in my bones. I think of the way my heart lifted when I was on the trail to Mosquito Beach on Lake Superior this summer (the name keeps out the timid, leaving this exquisite destination to those of us who know its charm). I hadn't been there in more than a decade, but it was a joyful reunion with a place that makes me want to sing. I feel that same sense of connection to the north shore of Kauai after the last bridge, a certain alpine meadow in the Canadian Rockies, the Clark Lake narrows in Sylvania Wilderness, and the little park across the street from my home in the city, replete with ancient oak trees and a thousand-year-old effigy mound. Each of these places has its own beauty, but what we share is experience. They are more than scenery; they are relationship. From starry nights around the campfire to the feel of my hands planting seeds to restore the prairie in the local park, we are woven together in acts and memories that shape the land and shape who I am.

The environmental education field tells us that experiential learning is one of the most powerful ways to promote awareness, knowledge and a sense of stewardship for the environment. I have no doubt that my experiences with natural places have influenced who I am and inspired me to work to care for the wonder and beauty of our living planet. There are great curricula, wonderful nature films, and mountains of data that affirm the value of protecting biodiversity and the environment. But that old cliche, “there's no substitute for experience” may trump them all.

At our summer BioBlitzes this year we saw first hand the learning that was taking place when people participated in a biodiversity inventory in a real place with real critters and plants. I saw a young girl describe her experience on a spider hunt as “real cool,” and a high school student energized enough to go out on searches for various types of species hour after hour.

He, and others, asked when we were going to do this again – they wanted more of this experience. The wallpaper of anonymous green in the city park was suddenly filled with details, complex relationships, and people sharing “aha” moments of discovery. I suspect for that inquiring young man, and others who joined us that day, it will never just be “the park” again. Perhaps we have changed in some small way, their sense of place.

I realized on a plant walk how my knowledge of plants shapes the way I see a landscape. I've never felt compelled to view the world through a field guide, but I realized watching others discover things for the first time how much I did know about trees, flowering plants, what grew on a particular soil, what was native, etc. It made me realize that it was like viewing the natural world with a “higher resolution” of detail, and how generic and homogenous a forest can seem if you don't know an oak from an ash. You can read about the difference, you can look at a picture, but if you know an oak and an ash, well, it has context and meaning.

I remember reading about Leopold's enthusiasm for bur oaks in college. Now that I live across from a park that has a dozen of these marvelous trees, his passion for bur oaks is tangible.

One of our great challenges in building constituencies for biodiversity protection is finding ways to provide experiential learning that builds a sense of relationship with the natural world, and cultivates the sense of place that allows us to feel connected to the land. I was lucky. My mom was determined that her children would grow up in the country. Today, there are a lot more people, and a lot less “country” to go around. In fact, Pine Lake has fallen prey to the ravages of developers, and that sense of place can only live in memory now. But whether it's a city park, a community garden or a summer wilderness destination, I'm persuaded that we all need a connection to a living landscape, and increasingly, we need mentors and teachers who will open up our eyes to the magic in the tapestry. Once it is ours, how can we not care, and seek ways to protect it?

BioBlitzes Make the Connection in the Great Lakes Basin

Early one morning last July, Biodiversity Project launched its first Great Lakes BioBlitz. In a scene similar to those taking place throughout Green Bay's Baird Creek Parkway on this summer day, Charles Frisk was leading citizen volunteers into the woods and down to the water. Frisk, President of the Baird Creek Preservation Foundation, was about to introduce fish seining to his team which included 10 volunteers ranging from five to fifty-year-olds. As they paused to identify the fish in the nets, Frisk scratched his head and remarked, “This far upstream we've never found a yellow perch before and I've been doing fish studies here now for four years.” The team leader seemed surprised and pleased.

Less than a month later, at our Superior BioBlitz on Wisconsin Point, Kurt Mead, a naturalist for the Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning Center near Finland , Minnesota , was adding his team's finds to a growing list of species. Mead had led the dragonfly team and announced another discovery at the end of the day: “Enallagma clausum (Alkali Bluet) is a new state record for Wisconsin and is a very exciting find.  I will be co-authoring a scientific paper based on this find that should run in The Great Lake Entomologist .”  

These “aha” moments were one of many shared at three Great Lakes Forever BioBlitzes that Biodiversity Project organized this summer in three Wisconsin coastal communities -- Green Bay, Superior and Milwaukee. Designed as part festival, part educational event, part scientific endeavor, a BioBlitz brings together scientists, volunteers, and the public to see how many species they can count in a day-long biological survey of a single community green space. Biodiversity Project decided to experiment with these place-based, experiential learning models as part of its Great Lakes Forever pilot project. Our aim was to help people discover the nature in their own “backyards” and to understand the value of protecting biodiversity for the Great Lakes and in their own communities.

Biodiversity Project was fortunate to have the assistance of more than 280 volunteers. We were joined by scientists and naturalists from several University of Wisconsin campuses and other community colleges, local and statewide nonprofit groups, and citizen volunteers ranging from seven to seventy years old.

Using local volunteer knowledge and recommendations for the right “sense of place,” we identified city parks to be “Blitzed” in each community. We scouted locations that had water bodies – Baird Creek Parkway in Green Bay had Baird Creek, Wisconsin Point in Superior was bounded by Allouez Bay and Lake Superior, and Riverside Park in Milwaukee had the Milwaukee River. These locations not only helped us to engage the public in aquatic exploration, but also helped build awareness that Great Lakes is an ecosystem that extends well beyond the shorelines. While city parks are not necessarily protected for biodiversity, they still harbor a diversity of species, and they were easily accessible for our volunteers and the media.

We set up our base camps at sunrise at each site on “Blitz day.” The base camps functioned as laboratory, classroom, lecture hall, restroom, and cafeteria. We jumpstarted our day (and the first shift of volunteers) with a cup of shade-grown coffee (never miss a teachable moment). They arrived with microscopes, sweep nets, identification guides, informational displays and enthusiasm. For the next 12-hours, at any given hour, volunteers could sweep for insects, determine what watershed they live in, learn about rain barrels and gardens, and meet and interact with scientists and professionals working in their community to protect the ecosystems in these lakefront communities.

As Charles Frisk observed, “The nice thing about an [event] like this is 20 years from now we can do it again, and we can see if the biological health of Baird Creek 20 years from today is better or about the same or has gotten worse." Twenty years seemed too long to wait for most of the volunteers, as the most common question at the end of the day was “When are we doing this again next year?” Many wanted to continue the search, to bring their friends and neighbors next time, and to explore – to Blitz – yet another park in their neighborhood.

Future Blitzes? Biodiversity Project hopes to continue hosting and supporting BioBlitzes, but it will depend on future funding and partnership opportunities. We would love to identify a partner who could help us build BioBlitzes into a national program like Audubon's Christmas Bird Count. If your organization is interested, please contact us.

Were our BioBlitzes , worth the intense pre-Blitz volunteer and resource recruitment? Here's what one of our Green Bay volunteers concluded: “Knowledge and understanding are essential for appreciation, pleasure, and respect. There was no better way to inform many people about the Baird Creek treasure than to have the BioBlitz…Your efforts are appreciated.”

Tips on hosting a Bioblitz:

•  Plan ahead. There are lots of logistics and details to manage, and an early start will help make the day a success.

•  Draw biological expertise from local universities and colleges, draw educational materials and help from local environmental groups and programs, and draw fuel – food and drink – from local vendors that protect your, and others', watersheds through organic and sustainable harvesting methods.

•  Pick a manageable time frame. We hosted 12-hour events. Maybe yours will be 24 hours to catch those night creatures, or just a few hours working with a high school biology class. The idea is to promote discovery and connection.

•  Take advantage of lessons learned and resources from those who have “blitzed” before you. We're very grateful for the suggestions from the Connecticut State Museum of Natural History and Chicago Wilderness.

And, if you're interested in learning more about the Great Lakes Forever program or some of the lessons we've learned from our Wisconsin BioBlitzes, please contact Jeffrey Potter: jpotter@biodiverse.org .

•  The smaller the community, the bigger the story: The events received the most coverage in communities with the smallest population – Green Bay reporters turned out en masse, while only a single reporter covered the story in Milwaukee . This isn't to say that similar events would not receive press in an area with a larger population, but if your organization has a state or regional focus it could be worthwhile to host events in smaller locations where you might make a bigger splash.

•  Partners can broaden the appeal of your event story: The Great Lakes BioBlitzes relied on partners for their scientific expertise, but they and their affiliate institutions also increased the diversity of interests represented at the event. Local reporters are interested in finding out what their local “leading experts” have to say about local issues; inviting scientists from a nearby university or government institution can help gain media interest.

•  Prepare to “pitch” before and during an event: The day of an event can be a hectic one, but remember to prepare for the media. For our BioBlitzes, organizers prepared the media with a press release, media kit and follow-up calls and made certain to have duplicate materials on hand the day of the event. Reporters and photographers were handled based on the story they were seeking and interviews were arranged with participants most likely to fulfill each story's goal. This is a tried and true formula for getting the media to cover your event – build relationships, make the calls and keep them informed and, some might say, make their job as easy, pleasant, and efficient as possible.

•  Be creative and have fun: Unlike so many “earned media” events, which are designed to get the press to pay attention to either a specific issue or organization, the BioBlitz was essentially a “service” event that brought value to the community in its own right. Promoting biodiversity can and should be fun, be creative and think of new ways to introduce the public to biodiversity. How about a Bio-Bee where people compete to name the most native and/or invasive species in your bioregion, or performance art or street theater that celebrates local biodiversity? By offering the community a fun and unique way to learn about biodiversity you are also likely to catch the attention of local media.

Meet Willow Russell: As serendipity would have it, Willow Russell moved in just down the street from Biodiversity Project when she first came to Madison .  After passing the office many times and doing a little homework she recognized, for the first time, an organization that was focusing on the exact issues that had brought her to the University of Wisconsin for her graduate studies.  She poked her head in one day in February and has been here ever since, first as an intern for Erin Oliver, then as a BioBlitz Co-coordinator with Tami Lee, and now as a part-time Special Projects Assistant for the Project. Willow is enrolled in the Conservation Biology and Sustainable Development program at UW -Madison and is focusing on consumer behavior and its relationship to biodiversity.   

Fond Farewells: Biodiversity Project bids farewell to two of our colleagues this fall, Erin Oliver and Tami Lee. Erin Oliver is off to new horizons, and is consulting on projects related to environment, food, health and communications. Tami Lee has hopes of returning to the “grant making side of things,” working for foundation, corporate, or other charitable entities.  She and her husband are also considering a venture into small business.  We owe them each a large debt of thanks for their years of service and all they have contributed to our successes here at Biodiversity Project.

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This has been an exciting year for Biodiversity Project. Our Great Lakes Forever pilot project, launched as a test in Wisconsin this summer, has received tremendous attention and we're excited about moving forward with this and other communications programs in 2005. We have a motivated staff and a dedicated board, and since last year, we've had a generous group of individual donors to help supplement our program budget.

Each gift, no matter how large or small, makes a significant difference for the work we do to increase public awareness of, and protection for, biodiversity. And, just as the web of life relies on an incredible diversity of species to survive,we are strengthened by the thoughtful individuals that make an annual contribution to Biodiversity Project.

Your support makes possible every aspect of our operation, including production of this newsletter. Biodiversity Project offers a variety of ways to make your donation. This November, keep an eye out for our annual appeal letter in your mail—you'll find everything you need to make your tax-deductible donation enclosed. Donations are also possible via this site - just click here. Of course, you can always use the donation form in each of our regular newsletters.

Finally, if you are considering a way to increase your support of the Biodiversity Project, you may be interested in various forms of deferred or planned giving. Through gift planning, individuals are often able to make a much larger contribution than they ever thought possible while at the same time realizing financial benefits.

Your will, trust or other estate planning tools may include charitable dispositions. Some methods can provide current tax benefits as well as lifetime income for the donor and/or a beneficiary. If you would like to learn more about such plans, please contact Mary Devitt at the Biodiversity Project, mdevitt@biodiverse.org.

Could Bar Coasters Really Help Save the Great Lakes?

The Great Lakes coastline is famous for its rocky beaches, sandy dunes, recreation, and, if Biodiversity Project gets its way this year, its educational bar and restaurant coasters. The coasters feature a striking picture of the Great Lakes and the words, “Welcome to your wonderful, important, magnificent, vulnerable Great Lakes .” The back side offers some educational points about Great Lakes protection concerns.

The coasters are one of the communications tools being tested as part of Great Lakes Forever communications campaign. Biodiversity Project piloted the Great Lakes Forever campaign this summer in Wisconsin , and plans to take the program to other Great Lakes states in 2005 and beyond. The program is testing innovative communication strategies and techniques, including the educational drink coasters in coastal pubs and restaurants. Other approaches have included signs in coastal state parks, BioBlitz events (see related stories in this newsletter), radio and magazine ads, and media outreach. All of the materials and activities are backed by a Web site, www.greatlakesforever.org , which features additional information about the Great Lakes and steps we can all take to help protect them.

'We are pleased to be part of this creative initiative,” notes Laurie Tomasek, co-proprietor of the popular Yardarm Bar and Grill on Lake Michigan in Racine . 'Our restaurant and bar depends on tourism and the tourists depend on the Lake , so it was natural for us to support this effort.” Asked how customers were responding to the coasters, Tomasek added, “The graphics are great and they're great quality coasters. These really hit home – some people have asked, ‘Where can I sign up?'”

Nearly 20,000 Great Lakes Forever coasters are being used at local restaurants and bars all along Wisconsin 's Great Lakes' coastline, from Racine , through Milwaukee , to Door County , Bayfield and even into Duluth , Minnesota . Response has been very positive so far. Nearly every restaurant and bar we've approached has welcomed the idea. All of them realize how special the Great Lakes are and they know that when the Lakes are protected, it's good for their lakeside establishments as well. This is just a first step, but as far as collaboration with our Great Lakes businesses go, I'd say that this is a home run.

Look for the “Coastal Coasters” throughout September in pubs and restaurants on Wisconsin 's Lake Superior and Michigan shorelines and don't forget to check the flip side for facts about the Great Lakes ' vulnerability.

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