Our Land and Water: Conservation for a Sustainable Future, sponsored by UW-L’s Joint Committee on Environmental Sustainability, will feature three area land and water conservation experts — Gretchen Benjamin, Tim Jacobson and David Vetrano —who will each give an individual presentation then participate in a panel discussion with questions and answers.
Gretchen Benjamin has spent her career on the Mississippi River working for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for almost 25 years and recently moving into the non-profit world of The Nature Conservancy as assistant director of its Upper Mississippi River (UMR) Program. She will discuss the work of the The Nature Conservancy with respect to the Mississippi River and the Gulf of Mexico.
Tim Jacobson is the Executive Director of Mississippi Valley Conservancy, a nonprofit land trust headquartered in La Crosse. He will discuss threats to Wisconsin’s natural landscape and agricultural lands and non-regulatory approaches to protecting and enhancing the best parts of our landscape for future generations.
David Vetrano is a fisheries supervisor for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. He is directly responsible for the fisheries on over 1500 miles of rivers and streams and several small lakes in the La Crosse area. Vetrano will provide a short history of how past agricultural land use practices have completely altered the Driftless Area landscape. He will also show how those past practices still affect us and why there is tremendous potential for a much more sustainable future for agriculture and tourism.
