To all those of you who attended, thanks for helping make the 2010 Land Conservation Leadership Awards event the biggest yet!
When you coincidentally give three awards to Madison area honorees at a Madison-held event, turns out you draw a pretty big crowd. We had to order more food! We maxed out the room! Those are good problems to have.
It also happens, when you throw a party for conservation leaders in Wisconsin, that the room is full of a tightly woven community of people who work together regularly, have served on the same boards, have been employed by two, even three organizations represented in the room.
It might feel, to some, as if land conservation is the project of just a few usual suspects doing the same things they’ve done together for years. Our party was a festive reminder that the conservation movement is populated by some leaders with long careers yet ahead.
This year we held a photo contest. Early this summer, we joined a high school field trip to Lulu Lake Preserve, and encouraged those students to enter. One of them did, and he won, and his photo became the award we gave our Lifetime Achievement Honorees. Evan Eifler, now a UW-Madison Conservation Biology major, has been an intern for The Nature Conservancy chapter that our Awardee Gene Roark helped found.
Perhaps Evan will be the 2061 Lifetime Achievement Award Winner, himself?
Our Policy Maker of the Year Alderman Nik Kovac passed comprehensive river protection legislation as a freshman member of Milwaukee’s Common Council. As his photo reveals (he’s the one on the right), he’s, how should we say this…young! He has years of conservation leadership ahead before it will be fitting to nominate him for his lifetime of conservation achievement.
It’s not too early to nominate winners- both young and, um… wise – for the 2011 Land Conservation Leadership Awards. If you’ve got ideas, email info@gatheringwaters.org.Our newsletter will be out soon with more detail about all five award winners.
And Save the Date. The 2011 Land Conservation Leadership Awards Celebration will be Thursday, September 29th.
