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Award Winners
Conservationist of the Year – Kristen
Wilhelm is a founding member of the Milwaukee
Area Land Conservancy, Vice-Chair of the City of Franklin Environmental
Commission, and staff member with the River Revitalization Foundation.
Through Kristen’s vision, tenacity and passion for land
protection, Milwaukee County citizens are guaranteed access to
pristine natural areas in the heart of expanding urban development.
Most recently, Kristen worked tirelessly over the course of several
years to protect the Fitzsimmons Woods area in the City of Franklin.
Franklin Woods is made up of more than 20 acres of high quality
maple-beech forest, containing woodlands, wetlands, and rare
flora and fauna, and was purchased with the help of Knowles-
Nelson Stewardship Funds by the Milwaukee Area Land Conservancy
in February 2006.
Land Trust of the Year – The
Nature Conservancy in Wisconsin (TNC)
has set an outstanding example of conservation innovation and
leadership. In 2006, The Conservancy played an instrumental role
in the protection of the Wild Rivers Legacy Forest project, the
largest land conservation transaction in state history. By partnering
with the State of Wisconsin, Conservation Forestry LLC and Forest
Investment Associates, TNC helped protect over 64,000 acres of
hardwood forest in northeastern Wisconsin. The Wild Rivers project,
through conservation easements and public ownership, preserves
public recreational access to wild rivers, lakes and forest,
while ensuring sustainably managed working forests. This historic
conservation success would not have been possible without the
hard work of the staff and board of The Nature Conservancy in
Wisconsin.
Policy Maker of the Year – The City
of La Crosse has made tremendous contributions to the
preservation of over 700 acres of blufflands along the Mississippi
River. Since 2001, the City
has partnered with the Mississippi Valley Conservancy to implement
the La Crosse Bluffland
Protection Program. This collaborative conservation initiative
works to protect the region’s
signature landscape feature – an eight-mile stretch of the
Mississippi River Blufflands bordering
the city. Through this partnership, over $1 million dollars have
been raised for land acquisition,
protecting almost half of their 3,000 acre goal. Neighboring towns
are watching La Crosse
closely, and it appears that this collaboration will become a model
for other upper Midwest
communities
Harold “Bud” Jordahl
Lifetime Achievement Award – Geoffrey
Maclay is a founder and president of the
Cedar Lakes Conservation Foundation, and founding member of Gathering
Waters Conservancy.
He has long been recognized as “one of the fathers of Wisconsin’s
land trust movement,” and
has been a lifelong advocate for private land conservation. For more
than thirty years, Geoff has
led efforts to protect over 2,000 areas of natural areas, wetland,
woodland and other valued land
resources within the Cedar Lakes Watershed. Recently, Geoff has worked
closely with the
DNR, the National Park Service and the Ice Age Park & Trail Foundation
to protect some of the
last remaining Kettle Moraine topography in Washington County.
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