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Welcome to the Great Lakes Town Hall!
Like the town meetings on which it is modeled, the Great Lakes Town Hall
provides a "space" for you to come together with your neighbors
around the basin to share and explore what it means to be a Great
Laker. Have something to say about the Great
Lakes? Join the discussion on the Town Hall today!
This week, Jane Elder in Madison, Wisc.
highlights the meeting United States'
President Obama and Canada's
Prime Minister Harper will have next week to discuss Great
Lakes funding a restoration priorities.
Dave Dempsey
points out Michigan's "wetland
un-protection" legislation which undercuts work to protect Michigan's
delicate wetland ecosystems.
And the Biodiversity Project's Executive Director Jennifer Browning
answers questions about the organization and Great
Lakes work.
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Visit The Great Lakes Town Hall -
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This Week's Daily Post Writer
![Jane Elder 136.jpg]() Jane Elder
has been actively engaged in communicating about environmental issues and
advocating for protection of the natural world and human wellbeing over
the last 30 years. She was the founding director of
Biodiversity Project-a nonprofit communications organization dedicated to
raising public awareness about the diversity of life on Earth and the
urgent need to take action to protect it. In 2002 she received
the Bay Foundation Biodiversity Leadership Award given to
"individuals with proven capacity to help stem the loss of
biological diversity."
Previously, Jane worked for the Sierra Club, heading its Midwest
office for many years during which she founded the Sierra Club's Great Lakes program and later served as the
national director of Ecoregion Programs. Her policy work
spanned air and water quality, toxic pollution, parks, and
wilderness.
Jane currently consults on strategic communications for social
change, with an emphasis on complex environmental challenges such as
biodiversity loss, global warming, ecosystem restoration, and the role of
participatory democracy in achieving effective solutions.
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Read Jane's Essays -
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Our Weekly Editorial
Each week, one of our moderators, Dave Dempsey, Gary Wilson or
Brenna Wanous, writes an essay describing, praising, questioning or
highlighting a Great Lakes issue.
This week, Dave's Friends of the Great Lakes essay features
two recent![dave.jpg]() legislation
proposals dealing with Michigan's
beautiful, valuable and vulnerable wetland ecosystems, one allocating
more money to restoration and one taking it away.
Dave writes,
The Great Lakes plan
unveiled by Michigan makes it clear wetlands are valuable and must be
conserved for a variety of public benefits including fish and wildlife
habitat, water quality and flood water storage.
The wetland
un-protection plan unveiled by Michigan
puts these benefits at risk. Simply put, the federal government can’t do
as good, as quick and as careful a job of evaluating projects, issuing
and denying permits, and policing violators.
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Read and Respond to Dave's Weekly Editorial -
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Monthly Feature: 5 Questions
Each month we premier one of three added features of the Great Lakes Town Hall.
These three consist of Opinion Polls, 5 Questions and the Great Lakes
Spotlight.
![jennifer.jpg]() This
month, Jennifer
Browning, Executive Director of the
Biodiversity Project, is in the hot-seat as we feature the 5 Questions
section. One question we asked Jennifer was
"You're responsible for messaging for two
of the world's greatest watersheds, the Great Lakes and the Mississippi River. How are they similar or
different?"
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Click Here Read Jennifer's 5 Questions and Answers -
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