We are pleased to announce that the Land Restoration School has received two years of funding support through the Daybreak Fund, https://www.daybreak.fund/grantees. With gratitude, and honored to be among this group of superb recipients doing such important work.

LRS 2023 alum Nathaniel Wurzer has authored a story about Downer Woods with photographer Eddee Daniel for The Natural Realm. Nathaniel is also a co-founder of the Mycological Society at UW-Milwaukee.

“To the Mycological Society at UWM, Downer Woods represents nature close to home. It is a piece of somewhat disturbed woods that contains old oak trees—likely relicts of the indigenous influence on the landscape. This is no exaggeration; some individuals within Downer Woods have been estimated to have started growing in the late 1700’s*.

… “The Mycological Society at UWM is grateful to have connection with Downer Woods, which has been an ideal location for accomplishing our mission of education and building relationships between nature and humans. We exist to cultivate a community of fungal education and celebration. The Downer Woods is a place where we can look for fungi species, observe the habitat around us, and learn about the entangled relationships of beings in the local ecosystem. This interest helps people to understand what is going on in the nature where they live, where their place is, and to look closer at their surroundings.”

Read the full article here.

The LRS 2023 cohort presented summaries of their ecological restoration plans, developed for real sites, on August 3rd, 2023, in Port Washington. Terrific work by all! Read their full ER plans, or watch the presentation video, here.

Twenty-three cohort members from the 2023 GRÓ Land Restoration Training Programme under the auspices of UNESCO, and eight cohort members from the 2023 Land Restoration School in Wisconsin, shared a video conversation in July 2023.

LRS guest faculty Bazile Panek was interviewed by WUWM public radio!

https://www.wuwm.com/2023-06-20/emerging-leader-says-indigenous-knowledge-is-needed-western-science-alone-not-going-to-solve-climate-change

“Massive storms and eradicate temperature shifts are just two, sometimes devastating symptoms of climate issues we face. What’s also clear is that it’s going to take an all-hands-on-deck approach to mitigate climate change and adapt to sustain life.”

A few visual highlights from week one.

Listen here (or read pdf). Thank you to WUWM’s Lake Effect public radio.

“The school will have a new base just 30 miles up the road from Milwaukee at the UW - Milwaukee Field Station.

“Co-founder Dan Collins says the station is not only a perfect place to learn about biodiversity but ‘A palette of different kinds of habitats — upland forest, we have meadows, we have prairies, we have emergent aquatic wetlands,’ Collins says.

“The location brings the school closer to communities Aten and Collins want to be of value to. ‘In the past, we haven’t made the opportunity for people to come into this knowledge and this type of career. So we want to be a door opener allowing people and supporting people to learn this practice of ecological restoration,’ Collins says.”

We LRS colleagues had a wonderful time presenting to the engaged participants in the Society For Ecological Restoration (SER) Midwest-Great Lakes conference in Baraboo and at the Aldo Leopold Foundation this week! And hanging out at the conference with 2023 cohort member Lindsey, too. Heard frogs and a woodcock, saw owls and cranes and eagles, bloodroot, dutchman's breeches, and visited the Leopold Shack!

We loved our days learning and sharing at the Wisconsin Wetlands Science Conference in Stevens Point. We made great connections for the future and got to share the LRS story with so many!

We had a great time on our video meeting with the Director and Deputy Director of the program that is an inspiration for us and our ‘big sister’ in Iceland, the Land Restoration Training Programme. GRÓ LRT, founded in 2007, is a program under UNESCO serving countries that need more trained Ecological Restorationists. We both make deep investments in a small number of dynamic new voices in the world of restoration ecology. Iceland began its forest and soil conservation programs in 1907 after centuries of deforestation. There is a lot to learn from our new friends! Together we are planning for LRS restorationists to visit with LRT fellows this summer by video and compare notes. Follow GRÓ LRT on facebook.

The Land Restoration School will be hosted by and in residence at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station at Cedarburg Bog for the summer of 2023. Apply to be part of the 2023 cohort here.

This renowned Field Station is located within the largest intact wetland complex in southeastern Wisconsin. It contains a range of habitats including upland glacial landscapes from oldfield to forest, several kinds of wetlands, and deep and shallow bog lakes. The UW-Milwaukee Field Station provides a range of wonderful learning landscapes and educational facilities. It is a well-aligned complement to the program and fundamentals of ecological restoration taught by LRS. The LRS 2023 will also be partnering with the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust for additional nearby sites for field learning and restoration planning.

Read LRS alumni Emily Sautebin’s delightful article in the Fall 2022 Crossroads newsletter. It begins: “My summer at the Land Restoration School at Crossroads was metamorphic. My love for the environment grew this summer, and I started to see the world around me differently. The passion of my colleagues and teachers was contagious. I was lucky to get to see Crossroads’ fields and forests through their eyes.”

In the newsletter, Board President Jim Stawicki says, “The inaugural year of the Land Restoration School not only trained seven remarkable individuals in the field of ecological restoration, it yielded an equal number of plans authored by these same learners. As capstone projects to their LRS experience, the cohort presented ways to enhance the restoration of select areas on Crossroads’ preserves.” Hopefully we will see those plans, and maybe those restorationists, engaged to continue Crossroads’ restoration work!

Read the full article here or at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel here. An excerpt:

Patterson, who teaches environmental education for Nearby Nature in area schools, also brings students to the property to learn. Like most adults who walk by, many of the students don't realize the little park exists beyond the sidewalk.

“They're really surprised when they turn the corner,” she said. “Because they didn't know (this was here). And they are very inquisitive, which I appreciate.”

That’s what Nearby Nature is all about — not only restoring natural spaces in areas of the city that have been historically overlooked, but also providing education about those spaces.

"The goal of Nearby Nature is to connect and expose and reintroduce Black children to nature,” Patterson said. "And beyond that, when we're done with our lesson plan, or if we don't come back to that school the following year, I still want to be connected, so at some point if in the future they remember that lady that came and talked about butterflies, now they might want to study lepidoptera. I hope to inspire on that level where they think about me later.”

Week Eight – Emergence – from eight weeks of intensive land restoration study. The exceptional LRS cohort of seven will join the universe of people deeply knowledgeable in the process and techniques of ecological restoration. Congratulations! These seven stars of the Plow (aka Big Dipper or Ursa Major) will point the way as we continue our work together. We will see each other in the wind and the trees.

Dan: This summer we started a land restoration school. It was an immersive eight-week experience teaching ecological restoration with and among a remarkable cohort of seven promising restorationists and twelve faculty – faculty who absolutely felt privileged to be among the seven. Many ways in, many ways forward, were among our mottos. We all arrived skilled and unskilled and when we left we were all more than when we came as individuals but now connected in ways we never imagined.

Nancy: These eight weeks have been pure flow of energy – an unfolding and unpacking of what learning has been and could be, of seven emerging experts observing, then assessing, then imagining the healing of habitats... Filling in the connections of earth, soil, plants, animals, water, climate, people, ancestors... Exploring unexpected ways and media of communicating… Becoming a cohort of lifelong colleagues… And somehow, with admirable persistence, the determination to learn what was needed, and hard, intense work, developing distinctive and inspiring ecological restoration plans that are surely the first of a life filled with actions to heal the earth.

Chris: Over the summer, I helped to launch a land restoration school. It is the first of its kind. Two experienced and passionate restorationists and more than two handfuls of academic experts created the content and activities to transform seven willing participants into professional restorationists in their own right. The results, presented last night, sparked hope and inflamed a community.

Week Seven – Centering. The LRS cohort are each developing an ecological restoration plan - creatively, diligently, with a foundation of restoration ecology. Reviewing case studies, further assessing sites, developing maps, writing persuasively and poetically, practicing lightning talks, coaching one another, with more plant ID and a behind-the-scenes native plant nursery tour (thank you, Door Landscape). You’re invited to the presentations and celebration of the inaugural alumni on Thursday, August 4th, at 6:30 pm in the Crossroads Learning Center auditorium!

Week Six – Synthesis! This is the beginning of the knitting together of each of the cohort’s Ecological Restoration plans. Thanks to guest faculty Chris Young, Karen Stahlheber, and assistance from Brooke Ulrich (a delightful yoga session in the shade of the cedars), Chrissy Hanke and Jason Miller. How to find helpful reference material, how to recognize expertise, the components of an Ecological Restoration plan and practical case study examples; map-making tutorials; field quadrat survey assessments; and a stunning dragonfly or three. Putting it all together.

Week Five – Firsthand! Leading off: a field day shared with visiting Ground School interns of Gathering Ground from Washington Island – then guest faculty Ken Bradbury (Wisconsin State Geologist), Karen Stahlheber (UW-Green Bay), Carmen Ebert, Becca Klemme, and Greg Kleinheinz (UW-Oshkosh ERIC Lab). Karen elaborated for us that we are restoring a process – the process of succession. And, that to make a decision, sometimes you have to simplify. The art of defining the problem. Companions of crayfish, toad, dragonfly larvae, caddisfly, conductivity, groundwater, karst, transects, quadrats.

In keeping with George Box’s quote, on our classroom wall, “All models are wrong, but some are useful”, we’ve been learning ecological succession and discussing some very, very useful ecological models. Gleasonian v. Clementsian ecology is nicely summarized in wikipedia and excerpted here. This short and vivid essay connects not only Gleason and Clements, but Cowles, Curtis, Whittaker and Cronquist too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_A._Gleason_(botanist) (accessed 14 July 2022)

Henry Allan Gleason (1882–1975) was an American ecologist, botanist, and taxonomist. He was known for his endorsement of the individualistic or open community concept of ecological succession, and his opposition to Frederic Clements's concept of the climax state of an ecosystem. His ideas were largely dismissed during his working life, leading him to move into plant taxonomy, but found favour late in the twentieth century.

Week Four – Forward! Led by Jason Miller, Karen Stahlheber, Chrissy Hanke, with a special visit with Cream City Conservation by Vicki Elkin of Fund for Lake Michigan. Plant taxonomy and field ID, plants and ecological restoration, mapping invasive species, and inspiration from red-bellied snakes. From LRS curriculum chair Chris Young, “Let’s look to the future we want to see: this talented and dedicated team of restorationists developing abilities (conceptual and practical) to transform land (and communities)!”