Book Talk - Arthur Pearson

On Monday, November 5, at 7:00 p.m. in the Center for Natural Sciences building room C101, Illinois Wesleyan University, Bloomington, Arthur Pearson will give a talk about his recently published book, “Force of Nature:  George Fell, Founder of the Natural Areas Movement."  

Mr. Pearson is the Director of Chicago Program for the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation, where he guides the Foundation’s support for land conservation and the arts. The following information about his book was taken from the University of Wisconsin Press web site.  “Efforts to preserve wild places in the United States began with the allure of scenic grandeur: Yosemite, Yellowstone, the Grand Canyon. But what about the many significant natural sites too small or fragile to qualify as state or federal parks? George Fell was determined to save these places, too—prairie remnants, upland forests, sedge meadows, ocean beaches, desert canyons, caves and gorges, and the full spectrum of other habitats essential to biological diversity.  Force of Nature reveals how a failed civil servant, with few assets apart from his tenacity and vision, initiated the natural areas movement. In the boom years following World War II, as undeveloped lands were being mined, drained, or bulldozed, Fell transformed a loose band of ecologists into The Nature Conservancy, drove the passage of the influential Illinois Nature Preserves Act, and helped spark allied local and national conservation organizations in the United States and beyond.”

Co-sponsored by the JWP Audubon Society of Bloomington-Normal and the Illinois Wesleyan University Environmental Studies and Biology program.

Free and open to the public.

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