One value apparently held in common by the people of this area - whether rural or urban, Native American or immigrant American, and developer or preservationist - is a love of our land and water resources. "How" we love our natural resource endowment differs among cultures and communities, and made for an interesting exploration by Leadership Shawano County this past October of 2002.

The class started out at Navarino Nature Center, where naturalist Tim Ewing featured the Center's facilities, programs and a rain-shortened nature trail walk. County Planning & Development Department staffers Blake Schuebel and Scott Frank gave a slide show that made the connection between land use and water quality issues. They used the sticky farm environmental permitting process to demonstrate regulatory difficulties from a land manager's perspective.

This "land-water connectedness" theme was continued with a presentation on the Shawano County lakes & rivers classification initiative, given by Lynn Markham of the UW-Extension Center for Land Use Education at UW-Stevens Point. She engaged the group in a lively discussion of shoreland management and zoning, and what these thorny topics mean for a healthy ecosystem and a good quality of life.

Shawano County UW-Extension's Jim Resick led the class in a hands-on, group consensus-building exercise - a skill all leaders should possess. The object of the exercise was to choose community projects the class would take on during the course of their eight remaining months in Leadership Shawano County.  After a traditional Indian feast at Menominee Tribal Enterprise in Neopit, sponsored by former Timbco Hydraulics owners Pat and Ruth Crawford, the class was held spellbound by MTE Head Forester Marshall Pecore. He talked from the heart and from many years of experience about the sustained yield forestry principles adhered to by Menominee Nation. (The Menominee have been recognized by the United Nations for the excellence of their forest resource management program.) That afternoon, the group visited a managed white pine shelterwood site on Menominee land, a hands-on visit narrated by Marshall and by DNR Liaison Forester Mike Schuessler.   Visits to the historic Lutheran Indian Mission School near Mission Lake and to the Stockbridge-Munsee Community's forest nursery site helped round out the day. As tribal elder Clarence Chicks explained, the restored mission school serves as a community center, church hall, and headquarters for Wolf River Habitat for Humanity. At the nursery site, the Stockbridge-Munsee Community's Jack Hietpas (Forester) and Leah Miller (Executive Director) explained the Tribe's land use plan, with an emphasis on the positive goals the Tribe hopes to achieve for its people by implementing the plan.

The Leadership class returned from the day's events a little wiser, and a lot more appreciative of the complexities of managing our natural resources.