Monday, August 21
Michigan's Amazing Aquatic Sources...The Why
Gary Whelan
Michigan Department of Natural Resources, retired
Gary has a B.S. in fisheries management from the University of Wyoming and a M.S. in fisheries management from the University of Missouri. He has worked as a fisheries biologist for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources for 35.5+ years and prior to that worked as a research biologist for Michigan State University. Recently he retired from being a Program Manager for the Michigan Department of Natural Resources – Fisheries Division, responsible for all operational aspects of the Fisheries Research Section.
In addition to his former state duties, he continues to be involved with the National Fish Habitat Partnership as he has for the last 18 years, initially one of the Core Team that wrote the Plan and for the last 17 years, as the Co-Chair of the Board’s Science and Data Committee directly responsible for the National Fish Habitat Assessment. He is a life member and Fellow of the American Fisheries Society (AFS). He has served in numerous leadership roles for AFS, currently 2nd Vice President, was involved in multiple Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA) committees on national fisheries issues and was the second President of the Instream Flow Council. He has authored or coauthored 53 peer-reviewed publications with 6 in progress or review at this time. While his educational training is as a stream ecologist, he has been blessed with a wonderfully diverse career that has ranged from studying 5 micron fish parasites and many other fish pathogens to understanding stream and watershed functioning to examining the consequences of environmental history on aquatic resources to analyzing hydropower impacts statewide to examining fish habitat on a national scale to managing complex fisheries research and fish production systems for the State of Michigan.
Additional Speakers and Talks TBA...
Coming soon!
Tuesday, August 22
Talk title TBA
Camille Dungy
Camille T. Dungy is the author of four collections of poetry, most recently Trophic Cascade (Wesleyan UP, 2017), winner of the Colorado Book Award. She is also the author of the essay collections Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden (Simon & Schuster, 2023) and Guidebook to Relative Strangers: Journeys into Race, Motherhood and History (W.W. Norton, 2017), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Dungy has also edited anthologies including Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great.
A 2019 Guggenheim Fellow, her honors include NEA Fellowships in poetry (2003) and prose (2018), an American Book Award, two NAACP Image Award nominations, and two Hurston/Wright Legacy Award nominations. Dungy’s poems have been published in Best American Poetry, The 100 Best African American Poems, the Pushcart Anthology, Best American Travel Writing, and over thirty other anthologies. She is University Distinguished Professor at Colorado State University.
Return of Detroit River's Charismatic Megafauna
John Hartig
John Hartig is a Visiting Scholar at the University of Windsor’s Great Lakes Institute for Environmental Research, serves on the Board of Directors of the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, and chairs the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan’s Great Lakes Way Advisory Committee. For 14 years, he served as Refuge Manager of the Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge.
John has received numerous awards for his work, including being recognized as a 2022 Crain’s Detroit Business Notable Leader in Sustainability, the 2015 Conservationist of the Year Award from the John Muir Association, and a 2010 Green Leader by the Detroit Free Press. He has authored or co-authored over 140 publications on the environment, including eight books. John’s recent book titled Waterfront Porch won a 2020 Next Generation Indie Book Award in the “nature/environment” category.