The Bear Creek riparian buffer in Story County is a busy place! One day this past summer, members of the Leopold Center's Agroecology Issue Team participated in a tour for U.S. Congressman Tom Latham and partners in the Iowa Buffer Initiative.
It also happened to be the day that a Chinese television crew was filming the Bear Creek project for a segment on successful sustainable agricultural practices in the United States. The show, Global Village, will air this fall to an audience of about 150 million people. Since the project began in 1990, more than 4,500 people from 30 countries have visited the area.
Members of the issue team received the top conservation award from the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship's Soil Conservation Division. The award recognizes individuals for their leadership and service to the state's soil and water conservation programs. It was presented during the annual meeting of soil and water conservation district commissioners in September.
Advisory Board member Neil Hamilton, who writes an occasional Iowa View column for the Des Moines Register, featured the project in his August 14 piece:
The real heroes are the farmers and landowners who live along Bear Creek. [They include] people such as Ron Risdal and his wife Sandy, who first agreed to let the ISU team use their farm for the experiment. The project has grown to stretch over five miles up Bear Creek, and many of the Risdals' neighbors have joined the effort. These landowners are leading by example. They are showing that farming doesn't have to fight nature, and water pollution and nitrate warnings don't have to be a given in modern farming. In their own way, these people embody Aldo Leopold's belief that we are part of a community with nature and the land. For their quiet leadership, we all owe them our thanks.