A student waters plants in the campus eGarden. (SUNY Geneseo/Keith Walters '11)
The campus community has been celebrating Sustainability Month with lectures from local experts, volunteer work days in the on-campus eGarden, and activities to promote knowledge and protection of nature and responsible resource use.
On Oct. 27, from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m., Elijah Kruger, an environmental educator at the Humphrey Nature Center at Letchworth State Park, will discuss "Wildlife Conservation and Sustainability." It is free and open to the public. Register online.
Kruger says that mounting evidence of a human-driven loss of biodiversity suggests that wildlife conservation cannot be included in sustainable development. In reality, however, wildlife conservation can play a crucial role in sustainability. He will share how Letchworth State Park is incorporating wildlife conservation into a more sustainable view of the future. Kruger has worked for New York State Parks for more than a decade, including five at Letchworth.
There were two other lectures as well, including "The Urban Ecosystem: Developing a New Narrative," in which Chris Widmaier, a Rochester-based instructional coach and science educator with the Rochester City School District, spoke about the need to think differently about cities, and that examining the idea of an "urban ecosystem" helps us better understand how the natural world, the built environment and our social structures relate to each other — and how viewing cities as essential ecosystem offers a way to imagine a sustainable future. Widmaier recently launched Green Collar Collaborations, and works with partner organizations to develop environmental education programs that lead to a hopeful sustainable future through ecological engagement, systems thinking and collective action.
Earlier in October, permaculture designer, teacher and consultant Patty Love led the series with "Permaculture Lifeways for Every Day Sustainability," in which she explored permaculture as an interdisciplinary design approach, based in and derived from the observation of indigenous practices of nature stewardship and natural ecological systems of relationships that strives to repair and create regenerative and reciprocal systems for meeting human needs, while also enhancing the quality of life for all beings, including plants, insects, non-human animals, and fungi.
Learn more about Geneseo sustainability efforts and use our award-winning, interactive map to learn what faculty, staff, students and alumni are doing in this field around the world.