Conservation Hall of Fame to add Eldred
The Wisconsin Conservation Hall of Fame will hold a virtual ceremony April 25 to honor four members, the organization announced Thursday.
Since last year's event was canceled due to the coronavirus pandemic, the 2021 ceremony will include recognitions of those it planned to fete in 2020 – Stephen Born, Jens Jensen and Stanley Temple – as well as Gary Eldred, who was recently announced as this year's class.
The WCHF was established in 1985 to advance the conservation legacy of Wisconsin.
One-hundred and two members have been inducted since its inception, including Aldo Leopold, John Muir and Gaylord Nelson. The non-profit organization is located in the Schmeeckle Reserve Visitor Center on the UW-Stevens Point campus.
Eldred, 73, of Boscobel is a self-taught conservationist who became one of the state's leaders in prairie restoration.
From the age of 12 Eldred said he spent as much time as he could hunting, fishing and trapping, and in the process, became a skilled amateur naturalist and developed a strong interest in conservation.
Then, in his mid-20s he read “A Sand County Almanac” by Aldo Leopold.
“That new perspective on nature and conservation, especially the chapters on land ethics, began a subtle transformation of my thinking,” Eldred said.
Together with seven other “prairie aficionados” in Green County, in 1976 Eldred was instrumental in securing protection for the Muralt Bluff Prairie.
It began a more than four decades long effort to secure and restore prairies in the region.
Eventually the local group he founded incorporated into a nonprofit organization and later combined with two other groups to form The Prairie Enthusiasts.
The organization has nearly 1,400 members and eleven chapters in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Minnesota, owns and manages more than 2,100 acres and works with landowners to protect more than 1,000 additional acres.
Due to the cancellation of last year's event, WCHF officials opted to include sessions at the 2021 ceremony to also honor Born, Jensen (posthumously) and Temple.
Each will run about an hour and will include background on the the inductees and details on their significant contributions.
Born is a UW-Madison professor emeritus who specialized in environmental planning and water issues through his work at the university, state agencies and nonprofit conservation organizations. He also served in leadership positions of the River Alliance of Wisconsin and Trout Unlimited, and with Jeff Mayers, is also co-author of “Wisconsin's Trout Streams: The Anglers Guide.”
Jensen is considered one of America's foremost landscape architects who was a strong proponent of parks, forests, scenic areas and nature sanctuaries and advocate for the use of native plants in landscape and habitat rehabilitation projects.
In 1935, Jensen moved from Highland Park, Illinois, to Ellison Bay, where he established The Clearing Folk School, which he called a “school of the soil” to train future landscape architects and to immerse people in nature for “spiritual renewal.” Upon his death in 1951, an article in the New York Times called him “dean of American landscape architecture.”
Temple, of Mazomanie, is one of Wisconsin's most influential living conservationists. He is professor emeritus at the UW-Madison Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology and a senior fellow at the Aldo Leopold Foundation in Baraboo.
Temple's areas of expertise include endangered species, phenology, habitat fragmentation and invasive species.
He created and was the first editor of the peer-reviewed journal Bird Conservation and has or continues to serve in advisory roles for The Nature Conservancy, the International Crane Foundation, the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology and the Aldo Leopold Foundation.
The 2021 WCHF virtual ceremony is free and open to the public. For more information, email sbuchhol@uwsp.edu, call (715) 346-4992 or visit wchf.org.