Conservation in Context speaker series

Returns to the Sea:  Famed conservationist Rachel Carson noted that “(f)or all at last returns to the sea -- to Oceanus, the ocean river, like the everflowing stream of time, the beginning and the end.”   Marine biologist Dr. Elliott Norse, President of Marine Conservation Biology Institute, explores the lessons in the films A Sea Change and Big River, including how so much of modern human activity – from driving cars to eating processed food – ultimately affects the ocean.

We Are What We Eat:  Food is one of our most intimate contacts with the land.  But most Americans are so detached from food production that we don’t know where our food comes from, or what goes into it.  The films Fresh and Food Inc will reshape your thinking about the meal on your plate.  In this event co-sponsored by Shepherd University’s Common Reading Program, “beyond-organic” farmer Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms in Staunton VA discusses the major components of viable local, sustainable, and humane food production, and how such systems help not only our land, but our health. 

Predator Purgatory:  For thousands of years humans have feared, and killed, large predators such as lions and tigers and bears.  Not surprisingly, at the start of the 21st century we find ourselves with a predator deficit, dealing with the negative consequences of losing such major players in natural ecosystems.  Lords of Nature screenwriter Will Stolzenburg and renowned conservation biologist and ethicist Dr. Michael Soulé discuss the ecological and moral dimensions of predator conservation, and how views are changing about predator management. 

Outside the auditorium following the discussion, Mr. Stolzenburg will be signing his book Where the Wild Things Were, some of whose leading characters and locales were featured in Lords of Nature.

Conserving Cultures:  Whether visual or oral, communication is fundamental to humanity. Dr. Keith Alexander of Shepherd University discusses the imperative to preserve ancient languages and art as revealed in the films Linguists and In Place Out of Time.  Explore how these aspects of ancient cultures are linked to place, and how in losing them, we lose a fundamental part of human history.