CHE’s 2024 Place-based Workshop was held at the UW Arboretum in Madison on May 14–16, 2024.
Established in 1934, the Arboretum was formed in a time of economic, social, and environmental crisis, which we associate today with the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl. It was here that Aldo Leopold, the first director (then research director), pioneered the concept of ecological restoration, based on the idea of restoring ecological diversity and function.
Leopold’s idea of the “land ethic” emerged directly in response to intensive land use practices that, under conditions of environmental stress, made vast swaths of the middle west and the plains uninhabitable. Ecological restoration, Leopold held, restored the landscape to a more natural state, and in the process, represented care for the environment — and a departure from prior conservation practices that focused on land protection or “wise use” of “natural resources.”
Befittingly held on the 90th year of the Arboretum’s existence, the workshop explored some of the issues that parallel a current moment of crisis, where climate change demands we address urgent solutions and in which we face a reckoning about land ethics and biocultural restoration that are as much social and cultural as they are ecological.
During three days of presentations, workshops, and activities, CHE associates and guests immersed themselves in place-based investigations around these and other questions, which represent the interests and missions of both CHE and the UW-Arboretum.
