Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
ways traditional places of childhood learning in agrarian societies. Borrowing from
that idea, our recycled barn will still be a place of learning, as much about the won-
ders of nature and how people can restore the earth as about calves being born or the
art of stacking hay.
Intended program use of the Center brings full circle the philosophical and pro-
gram integration of all Prairie Plains activities: ecological restoration and preserve
stewardship, land education, and ways for people to participate in activities. We wish
to continue expanding all of these activities in many ways yet to be determined. One
critically important aspect of this integration is an idea to bring new ideas and faces—
and youth—to our Center. We plan to train college and graduate student interns,
forming a cadre of ecological restorationists to go out into the world. To us, as alluded
to earlier, the term “restoration” is an inclusive and flexible term defined by context
and individual situation, connoting a whole system approach including nature and
biodiversity, the human environment, culture, and agriculture. We will adopt a farm
school model based on curriculum study of land stewardship and ecological restora-
tion around the globe in this inclusive sense, while doing our time-honored process of
restoring hundreds of acres of regional prairie and wetlands. What an opportunity—to
learn by practicing the art and discipline of restoration on the wide open Great Plains
of North America! Not only will student interns learn about restoration, they will also
be involved in the education of others at the Center, acting out our educational motto
of
Come to Learn—Go Teach
, they will be exposed to a large piece of the central
Plains landscape and will learn about the agriculture, economics, and communities of
the region.
Upon completion of the Charles L. Whitney Education Center, Prairie Plains Re-
source Institute's formative era will essentially be complete; the founding purposes ex-
pressed in its charter will be fulfilled. We will enter an era that will be radically differ-
ent from its three formative decades. By all appearances global warming, resource
competition, biodiversity loss, and economic stress, among a host of other topics, will
dominate society's concerns. In the middle of North America's breadbasket, the global
situation has alarming connotations for the sustainability of water and soil resources,
the sustainability of a perennially stressed rural population, as well as the vitality of the
native grassland ecosystems.
To face these challenges, in beginning the next chapter of Prairie Plains we are en-
visioning two new programs. Ribbons of Prairie through the Great American Bread-
basket is a fifty-to-one-hundred-year program enlarging upon our early interest in
restoring stream corridors to high-diversity prairie in cultivated agricultural areas,
such as eastern Nebraska. An obvious benefit to Prairie Plains from Ribbons of Prairie,
provided that we can encourage ongoing restoration funding, is that we will increase
our restoration acreage. On a visionary societal level, stream corridor restoration offers
an interesting multifaceted way to get serious about soil erosion and groundwater and
surface water quality and quantity in Nebraska, tying into existing soil and water man-
agement policies as well as agency programs. In addition there can be enormous bio-
diversity and wildlife habitat benefits. And there are numerous other social, eco-
nomic, and quality of life benefits to be gained after the land work is done—places for
