Purdue Fort Wayne’s Environmental Resources Center, now open for 25 years, is presenting its annual Conservation Conversation on Sept. 25.
This year’s theme, “Changing the Climate,” will be this region’s premier gathering on climate change and conservation, highlighting how climate change is already shaping the lives of cultures and the natural world we depend on.
As one of PFW’s Centers of Excellence, the ERC’s mission is to promote the understanding and conservation of the natural resources of the region through scientific research, educational opportunities and outreach.
Here WBOI’s Julia Meek discusses the Center’s progress with director Bruce Kingsbury as well as what the next 25 years holds in store and how this year’s conversation will explore real solutions for the environmental future.
Event Information:
ERC’s Annual Conservation Conversation
Purdue Fort Wayne International Ballroom
9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. on Sept. 25
Adults: $10.00 Students: $5.00
For tickets and event schedule visit the ERC’s website.
This is a transcript of our conversation:
Julia Meek: Dr. Bruce Kingsbury, welcome.
Bruce Kingsbury: Thank you for having me, happy to be here.
Julia Meek: Now you are celebrating 25 years there at the center. In a word, what kind of wild ride has it been?
Bruce Kingsbury: Well, it's certainly been a wild ride. It started out with me wanting to have a way of doing outreach and engagement with areas of expertise that I had in wildlife, particularly reptiles and amphibians.
And halfway through, I asked for permission to expand our umbrella, focus a little bit more locally and rebrand ourselves as the Environmental Resources Center, because before that, we had a different long name that nobody would...
Julia Meek: Could remember? [both chuckle]
Bruce Kingsbury: Could remember, but we’ve got a better handle now.
Julia Meek: Next question, 25 years, can you believe it?
Bruce Kingsbury: Yeah, yeah. I'm delighted that this has gone for so long, and I was so happy that my efforts were supported at the beginning as one of the, I think, the initial Center of Excellence on campus, and we're still going.
Julia Meek: And that really is quite a designation as well. You're standing there in good company. So a quick look back your core mission, furthering understanding and conservation of the region's natural resources through scientific research, education, community outreach, as you were mentioning, how is that working for you? Are you finding that that is a winning combination, along with your grunt work to make all this happen?
Bruce Kingsbury Yeah, I do think so. It is a diverse portfolio, and a lot of what we do the general public would not see because the research is happening all over the place, and sometimes outside of Fort Wayne.
But you can't go to the ERC and see us doing our research because we're out tromping in some wetland or floating around on the river. So that's very different. But over time, we've had more and more outreach and engagement events, and now we have some traditions in place.
Conservation Conversation's been going for years. We have other events like Naturally Inspired, World Wetlands Day and a bunch of other things. And so now I look forward to, well, it's time to do this event or that event and feel pretty good.
Julia Meek Indeed. Yeah, and you did hit the ground running with that focus on imperiled species that you noted, you've added wetlands and water quality to the agenda, and now sustainability, these are heavy hitting issues. How do you go about prioritizing problems, and then what happens next? As you say, you jump into the research, but how do you even know what to tackle?
Bruce Kingsbury: Well, some of that was initially generated by my research expertise, but even in the early days of the center, it was pretty clear that we didn't just do wildlife. We were doing water quality issues, and many of the species I'm interested in were in wetlands, and so that was kind of a natural to acknowledge that we were working on those sorts of things.
But then you also have something like sustainability. If you are an Environmental Center, sustainability is pretty important. And then also what happens is, if we have supporters that are helping us with the operations, then they might have interests that they are particularly interested in, and the whole portfolio is of interest to me.
And so, what I look for is where these kinds of things meet. And then this was never intended to just be the Bruce show, but we actually have other faculty and community members that have expertise, and we engage them.
So, on campus, for example, we have people that are in biological sciences, that might do bat research or plants, or folks in other fields, like sociology, and they are all interested in the environment and its sustainability and that kind of thing. And we want to take advantage of that expertise. And we do.
Julia Meek
And its the issues that you're covering, they are intertwined. How much are they directly affecting or causing, causing and affecting each other, I might ask?
Bruce Kingsbury: They're definitely interconnected. And perhaps the primary reason for that is a lot of them are generated from impacts, from us, from people, anthropogenic impacts, we would call them.
And so, the loss of habitat can affect wildlife. Climate change affects wildlife. If you look at sustainable practices, then that is if you have less demand on external resources, you can protect habitat. You can also try to fight climate change by utilizing fewer resources so they are all interconnected.
Julia Meek: They play on each other.
Bruce Kingsbury: They do play on each other. And if you have a mindset with interest of protecting some of it, you probably can relate to protecting the other components as well.
Julia Meek: As a natural outcome.
Bruce Kingsbury: Yeah, and I have expertise in wildlife and habitat and wetlands and things like that. I'm not an engineer, but a lot of solutions are based on engineering, finding technical solutions to things. So, there's a need for a lot of different kinds of expertise.
Julia Meek: And obviously you can make dramatic improvements as a group, as the center itself, but they're likely never going to go away, which is your job security, unfortunately. It's also your ticking time bomb. Does that worry you, and how do you manage to measure success then?
Bruce Kingsbury: It does concern me. And there's actually a psychological field which is called conservation depression, and if you are paying attention to these issues, it's depressing, and it can feel hopeless.
And actually, one of the things we need to work on is giving people hope, so that they stay engaged, but they're all crucial topics and conservation, which is, of course, my expertise, has been called a crisis discipline, where we need to do is act now.
We don't have all the information, and we don't have time to get all the information, but we do have very good material to work with, and we need to act promptly with what we know.
Julia Meek: That time bomb is actually ticking.
Bruce Kingsbury: It's actually ticking.
Julia Meek: Does it energize you or load you down?
Bruce Kingsbury: I think it does a combination of things. It can be exhausting. I worry about not having been effective enough in efforts that I've made, but I can also reflect on the positives that I've achieved.
I can look back on things like habitat management, restoration, that sort of thing, and I can see my fingerprints on practices that occur across the nation. And so that actually makes me feel pretty good.
But at the same time, I continue to be worried about climate I see that especially of late, we've had all kinds of losses in terms of protection. The policy is going the wrong way, the concerns about the threat of science to elements of the establishment, so to speak.
It's, it's a tough time, and we're, we're losing, so we have to find places we can get our wins.
Julia Meek: And catch back up or leap forward.
Bruce Kingsbury: Try and try to move forward.
Julia Meek: So, with all of that in mind, Bruce, back to this year's Conservation Conversation, the theme, which is climate change., why now and just how much is this critical to our well-being, right here?
Bruce Kingsbury: The timing has a couple of elements. One is the ticking time bomb. We look for themes that have some impact on the community and on us societally, and climate change is clearly one of those.
We've tackled all kinds of things, like wetlands was one we did another time, and some of them are challenging, and we've tried to talk to or speak to the audience and speak to one another about what can we do? And those are difficult conversations to have, but we're trying to have a positive impact on all this.
When we think about why we're doing climate change now, it is quite apropos to take it up and not even intentionally. Since we decided on this theme last year, we have witnessed a severe loss of protection of the environment and purposeful, intentional removal of policy defunding to 99% of the scientists who have expertise in these areas.
The threats are clear, and yet we're facing an arrow when policy is going the other way. The other thing I will say is, since all of our activities are supported externally, separate from the university, although we're housed and they keep the lights on, the support comes from private donors and that kind of thing.
We do have an excellent support from the Waterfield family, Dick and Marnie Waterfield. And a critical thing on their minds is what to do about climate change. So that was quite appropriate for us to pick that up.
Julia Meek: Thank you for doing so, and you have lots to talk about at your Conservation Conversation this year. How are you breaking things down? What type of discussion topics are on the lecture side of the agenda.
Bruce Kingsbury: Yeah, so part of the event definitely is the lecture series that we have. And when you look at a topic like climate change, there are so many things to talk about, and many of the topics that we could talk about are not what you would first think about.
For example, what's the science of climate change? That's kind of an obvious one, and definitely we'll be going after that. Then some more material will be policy. But what do you do about feeling hopeless? Giving hope is another kind of a topic you can talk about.
We want to try to reduce climate change, but it is happening. We can witness it now; in Fort Wayne, we can witness it. And so how do you be resilient? How do you mitigate the effects of climate change? And that brings up something that's on the docket for the day, but something that people who have been at least around for a while can certainly realize that the climate is changing in Fort Wayne, in Indiana.
And you can hear people talking about, well, there used to be more snow in the winter, but sometimes people think that climate change isn't affecting us, and what we need to do is show that you don't have to live in Miami to be affected. And have the Arctic melting and the ice cap on Greenland melting and raising water levels to be affected.
We have more severe weather events. We have changes in rainfall. We have new diseases and pests in Indiana that we didn't have before. So, we're affected. Businesses are affected. Agriculture is affected.
It is not something where we just look from afar and see that the glaciers are disappearing. We're actually being impacted now, and it's going to cost us money.
Julia Meek: And maybe our lives, and so you really do have some issues to tackle on that Thursday, September 25, that you're going to be doing all this. And by the way, how will you be balancing the social side of this conversation?
Bruce Kingsbury: We have the series of presentations, but we also have displays. We have tabling for different organizations from around the area to come join in the conversation. Then we need time to talk about things and also have some fun.
So we are going to have a wonderful lunch that everybody who registers can have the lunch. And we have a reception after the end of the presentations, during that we'll have some nice jazz music in the background to listen to while we have conversation and have some appetizers.
There is a cost, that's $10 for general audience and $5 for students, but the value of the lunch that you would get exceeds the cost of attending the event. I mentioned the Waterfields, they're our sponsor. NIPSCO is a wonderful sponsor this year, and we also have another. We call them the anonymous, generous local couple, who have turned into great sponsors for this event.
So, it costs us a lot more to put this event on than it costs the attendees to attend. You're definitely going to get your money's worth if you come join in the fun. And it's, it is another opportunity for us to involve students. The jazz combo is our music students.
We also, by the way, have a lot of engagement by students in the event itself. We're going to have some of our interns briefly talk about what their projects are about. We're going to have a set of posters that other students can talk about their work. It's a great event.
Julia Meek: And a lot of the behind the scenes, things, including the research and all that real hard work that has to be done, will be on display and talked about, because these interns, these students, everybody involved here, including the community, has a savvy part that they play already.
Bruce Kingsbury: Yeah, that also reminds me to give a shout out to my staff who work so hard to make this event a success, and they will work all the way up to the event, and then they'll work during the event.
But as you note, a lot of these things don't see the light of day until you have some kind of opportunity like this, and so we do use this as a chance to showcase things that the ERC is doing, because we do have a lot going on.
But we also give opportunity for students from other universities to come talk about what they're doing. And of course, non-academic entities from across the region will be there to talk about what they've got going on.
Julia Meek: And you're hoping the whole community will come out and support this?
Bruce Kingsbury: Yeah, definitely. I anticipate that the people who will come to this event already believe in the cause, and my hope with this is to give them ammunition to speak to others in a scientifically informed way, to have hope that there are things that they can do and actually give them some ideas on what they might do.
We'll also have faculty there, students, but really a lot of the audience, historically has been community members who have some knowledge of the topic, but they want to learn more.
Julia Meek: And in your mind, Bruce, what is the key to understanding this daunting situation?
Bruce Kingsbury: That...that's the million-dollar question. I think that that is a big challenge. Gus Speth has a quote that I won't say in its entirety, even if I could.
But the problem that we face now is not loss of species, loss of habitat, pollution, things like that. The problem that we really have has to do with us, and that we're too greedy, we are uninformed, and we lack will.
And what we need to do is find a way to work through those things and act responsibly in terms of policy, to work together to basically save the planet.
Julia Meek: So, what does your own research, as well as your gut feelings, tell you about this particular region's ability to really make a difference?
Bruce Kingsbury: Well, I do feel like we have a lot of challenges. That in many ways ties to what I was just speaking to. I do think it's very difficult for people to act in a way where you are thinking about the next generation or two generations.
Maybe the silver lining of seeing climate change happening now is that instead of thinking, oh, this is going to happen later and that we have time, we don't have time. It's happening right now, and if we don't hurry up and do something about it, it's just going to get worse, and that's going to affect everybody.
And unfortunately, if you have a lot of money, you can go to higher ground, you can figure out where you're going to get your clean water and things like that. But a lot of people are not in that position, and this is going to affect a lot of people who are going to have no control over what happens to them in.
Julia Meek: In that case, then, this last year has been a hard one. You've addressed that, for all nonprofits and certainly for the environment. How badly is your work affected? What does the near future look like? Near future.
Bruce Kingsbury: There are a couple of elements near term. One is that we, like many nonprofits, have been very impacted by what has happened in recent times, and I'd put in a plug, and I'll say that if you are interested and supportive of the kinds of things that we do, that we actually need your support now, right now.
And in fact, the ERC is in transition now, and it's particularly important for us, just like for many other organizations, that contributions that happen right now will actually really be beneficial. And the other element of that is I think things are going to get worse before they get better.
I think about that financially, but actually what I'm focusing on is that we're in a period where policies are being removed, agencies are being defunded that would have been focused on protecting the environment.
We have the crazy example of defunding a perfectly functional satellite which collects climate change data, but the current administration doesn't want to have evidence that there's climate change. So what do you do?
You let the satellite fall out of the sky. So, it's going to get worse. But a colleague of mine just this morning used the phrase capacity building, and he was dead on. And that is when we have an event like this, we can inform people.
We can build an understanding of what the problems are. We can be ready for when the opportunity comes where policy might swing the other way, or sentiment might swing the other way, that we're ready for that and we can accelerate improvement.
Julia Meek: I hope that is true, and I hope you're going to see it through.
Bruce Kingsbury: Thanks.
Julia Meek: And again, especially in this very near future, what's one simple, practical thing individuals can do here, as well as all of us collectively could do about it right now?
Bruce Kingsbury: The things I think that we can do right now are to be informed and to share that information and to endeavor to sway those who are not locked into one position to consider the science and the consequences of inaction.
And also, hopefully vote, either by voting or voting with your money, so that you are making decisions about the sustainable approach to things, even if they cost a little bit more money. For example, we use Styrofoam because it's the cheapest. Well, why not use paper or something compostable?
It's going to cost a little more, but that is you contributing to a better Earth in the future, we can afford to make those kinds of exchanges, and hopefully, then over time, we will change policy, and we will collectively have a better effect on sustainability.
Julia Meek: Sounds like you're saying the things we could do in that way which are certainly doable, we're buying time to make more time to make a difference.
Bruce Kingsbury: And in fact, one of our speakers in their title, it's essentially about going for wins by slowing things down and buying time so that there's more left to try to save later.
Julia Meek: And meanwhile, looking out into the next 25 years, Bruce, what kind of a wild ride are you hoping is next, and where do you hope it's going to take us all?
Bruce Kingsbury: Well, I certainly look forward to having the ERC continue out into the future. We have some excellent support coming online, and we're out there beating the bushes looking for more. I think that all of the topics that we've touched on today will remain issues for 25 years.
I also hope, as we, using that phrase again, build capacity at the ERC, that we'll just add pillars of activity underneath our umbrella and will be more and more effective in a positive way with respect to the environment, sustainability, wildlife, all these sorts of topics.
Julia Meek: Dr Bruce Kingsbury is a professor of Biological Sciences and director of Purdue Fort Wayne's Environmental Resources Center. Thank you for sharing your story, Bruce and all the hard work you do. Here's to the next 25 years, many blessings on that journey.
Bruce Kingsbury: Thank you very much, and thanks for the opportunity to talk about the event and share what the ERC is all about.
