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Marketing and University Communication UW-Green Bay, CL 815 2420 Nicolet Drive Green Bay, WI 54311-7001 (920) 465-2626 E-mail: hildebrs@uwgb.edu Last update: 10/2/07 |
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In
the News Archive - Year:
December 24, 2002 UW-Green Bay students give sisters a hand Conservation plan being developed for St. Francis By Jean Peerenboom
This year, they offered their land as a real-life classroom to 14 University of Wisconsin-Green Bay students.
The Bay Settlement Franciscans worked with students during the fall semester to develop a land-use plan that incorporates their views on stewardship, preservation and development for about 200 acres they own near their Bay Settlement Road convent in Green Bay.
Stewardship of the land is a strong Franciscan value and one that the sisters are becoming more aware of, said Sister Paulette Hupfauf, a member of her community's Leadership Team.
For the students, it's a way to apply their education and idealism to a real-life situation. The students presented their findings and recommendations in two meetings in December.
For instance, UWGB student Ben Nelson analyzed the whitetail deer population and what can be done to address the issue.
"About the only things deer don't eat are daffodils and foxglove," Nelson said.
Both the students' professors and the sisters expect this to be an ongoing project that will be taken up by new students in spring. "We aren't in any spot where we're ready to do anything," Hupfauf said. "We're just educating ourselves. It gives us a much broader picture."
The sisters initiated the project in March when they developed a committee on land ethics. They contacted Bill Niedzwiedz, professor of public and environmental affairs at UW-Green Bay, in May. "Sister Paulette ... said the sisters own an awful lot of land that has had a variety of uses over the years. They were interested in seeing how it could be used from the standpoint of land preservation, protection and stewardship," Niedzwiedz said.
Hoping to get more people involved, Niedzwiedz turned to fellow professor Bob Howe and the 10 students in his Ecological Applications class.
"When Bill described the opportunity, it got me very excited," Howe said. "Thanks to the sisters we have a landowner who embraces far-sighted thinking and alternate approaches to development. I was interested right away because of the educational opportunities and the opportunity to make a difference."
Each student selected a problem or component of sustainable development. Some of the projects looked at biodiversity in suburban housing development, community gardens, composting, small woodlot management, buffer strips, managing runoff and drainage in a suburban area, pest control and landscaping.
The land was divided into three parcels:
• The buildings and land surrounding the motherhouse, including a garden, on Bay Settlement Road.
• The rest of the farmland that goes almost down to the bay. (Both of these parcels are in the city of Green Bay.)
• The woods and land near the cemetery in the town of Scott.
Niedzwiedz uses conservation design.
There are primary conservation areas protected by governmental rules, steep slopes, floodplain or wetlands. Then there are secondary conservation areas: land that is used for planting, land that is wet but not classified as wetlands, and areas of vista, such as an old, aesthetically pleasing tree.
"We identify them and include some of them into the areas of protection. The objective is to set aside 50 percent of the land into some sort of open space," Niedzwiedz said. "When we take away the primary and secondary areas, what's left will be where houses and infrastructure go."
Students spent several months doing land inventories and research, which included analyzing results of a questionnaire filled out by all members of the Sisters of St. Francis of the Holy Cross.
The questionnaire asked sisters to reflect on which Franciscan values they thought should be used to guide land use, what changes they would like to see and how they understand "sustainability."
Hupfauf and the two professors said a next step might be to get comments from the neighbors, town and city leaders and businesses.
"It will take us a while to make any decision. We need to continue to show what it will look like 10 years from now. We're hoping we can look at the whole community and do something that betters the whole community," Hupfauf said.
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