Homeground ecology 101: Sara Stein to speak at ESA Meeting
On Sunday, August 5, 2001 at 5:00 pm Sara Stein, acclaimed natural science writer and gardener, will speak at the public plenary session of the Ecological Society of America's 86th Annual Meeting. This year's meeting will be held in Madison, Wisconsin August 5-10. In an address entitled, Homeground Ecology 101, Ms. Stein will discuss the importance of connecting ecology to everyday life.
Sara Stein has often been credited with heralding the backyard biodiversity movement of the last decade. A long-time author, Stein began writing about her own land management adventures in the early 1990s. While researching one of her books, she was surprised to realize that many of the once familiar inhabitants of her own property were no longer there. Her research into the reasons for the plants' and animals' absence inspired her well-known volume on the importance of local ecosystems, Noah's Garden. Her work has been compared to that of Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Henry Thoreau, and her books have often translated some of the toughest ecological science into plain language which has been embraced by non-scientists everywhere.
Ms. Stein's books include My Weeds, a gardener's botany, and Noah's Garden, which relates the ecological restoration of her property in suburban New York. A sequel, Planting Noah's Garden, describes her further pursuits in backyard ecology, and explains how to transform the traditional, lawn-bound home garden into natural habitat. Noah's Children: Restoring the Ecology of Childhood, published this June by Farrar, Strauss, & Giroux, explores a child's need to be connected with natural habitats, for children's own sake and for the sake of all of our futures.
ESA's 86th Annual Meeting will take place in the magnificent Monana Terrace Convention Center in Madison, Wisconsin. Located between the Wisconsin State Capitol and the shore of Lake Monona, the Center melds modern technology with Frank Lloyd Wright's organic design. The modern city nestled among nearby lakes, wetlands, and wild habitat provide the perfect setting for this year's theme of "Keeping all the Parts." The Meeting's five-day program will include a full agenda of symposia, scientific fieldtrips and workshops, and exhibits featuring recent scientific texts and publications.
For more information about this lecture, and all ESA Annual Meeting activities, visit the meetings section of the ESA website: http:esa.sdsc.edu/madison.
A photo of Sara Stein is available. Editors should contact: Nadine Lymn, nadine@esa.org.
The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a scientific, non-profit, 7,800-member organization founded in 1915. Through ESA reports, journals, membership research, and expert testimony to Congress, ESA seeks to promote the responsible application of ecological data and principles to the solution of environmental problems. ESA publishes three scientific, peer-reviewed journals: Ecology, Ecological Applications, and Ecological Monographs. Information about the Society and its activities is published in the Society's quarterly newsletter, ESA NewSource, and in the quarterly Bulletin. More information can be found on the ESA website: http://esa.sdsc.edu.
