January 27 – 6-7 PM | Growth Planning Based on Community Values
With Elaine Clegg, Program Director, Idaho Smart Growth
Recommended Book: Half Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life by Edward O Wilson
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Elaine Clegg is the Program Director for Idaho Smart Growth. Elaine joined the Idaho Smart Growth staff in 1998. An Idaho native, she has been an activist in growth management issues in the Boise area since 1984, including serving as neighborhood association board member and president, and now as a Boise City council member.
One of Elaine’s passions is rooting growth discussions in community values. Elaine has been working throughout Idaho to lead community based placemaking charettes that have led to transit master plans in places like Sandpoint, downtown revitalization plans in Idaho Falls, and area of city impact plans across Idaho.
In this talk, Elaine will discuss how the communities of the Wood River Valley can start to find common ground based on shared values. She will describe how identifying widespread values across the valley can build a shared foundation for all communities to come to the table over.
As Idaho continues to experience unprecedented growth, now is the time to give voice to what makes the Wood River Valley so special, and how we can accommodate growth without undermining the fundamental elements that create the home we all love.
Elaine will lead a robust discussion on values mapping with lots of opportunity for input from the audience. This is an opportunity to learn from each other about our common values – there might be surprises but we hope to find lots of overlapping common ground. Head to the Community Library’s website find out how you can join the discussion to find local solutions for our Valley in the face of growth. This presentation will be a robust conversation between Elaine Clegg, Scott Boettger, Executive Director for the Wood River Land Trust, and the community. Your voice is what will make this evening a success, so please come, and bring a friend!
February 24 – 6-7PM | Restoring Tributary Health to Stage Zero
With Brian Cluer, Fluvial Geomorphologist, NOAA Fisheries – West Coast Region
Recommended Book: A River Runs Through It by Norman Maclean
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Restoration on the Big Wood River is not new to the Wood River Land Trust – our very beginnings were rooted in the acquisition and restoration of the iconic Boxcar Bend Preserve. From those humble beginnings in 1996, the Wood River Land Trust has directed our tributary and river restoration efforts using the best science available.
Brian Cluer, Fluvial Geomorphologist with NOAA Fisheries in the West Coast Region is currently on the cutting edge of some exciting new restoration techniques. After decades of looking at how to mitigate stream degradation using in-channel techniques to add habitat elements or increase some natural processes, Cluer and his colleagues started to wonder what it could look like to examine valley-wide restoration.
This exciting talk will lead the listener through different restoration techniques, their applications, and what bringing our tributaries back to “Stage Zero” health can mean for the overall health of the Big Wood River.
Brian will discuss that while these valley-wide treatments are dramatic and exciting, that Stage Zero is an outcome, not just a technique. In less degraded systems, restoration to Stage Zero can also be achieved using a raft of Light Touch, Process-Based Restoration (LTPBR) approaches, especially when beaver can be reintroduced.
Following Brian’s discussion, Ryan Santo, River Initiative Director for the Wood River Land Trust will talk about the work the Land Trust is doing to restore the Big Wood River into a world class trout fishery. Brian and Ryan will then take questions from the audience and will provide ways for listeners to get involved.
This event is part of the Thinking Globally, Acting Locally speaker series - a partnership between the Wood River Land Trust and the Community Library. In this series we discuss how we can take local action in the face of global and regional challenges. For more information, or to register, please visit the Community Library at www.comlib.org
March 24 - 6-7PM | Designing an Inclusive Outdoors
With Keith Christensen, Department Head, Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, Utah State University
Recommended Book: Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century edited by Alice Wong
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The Wood River Valley is an outdoors mecca – with world class mountain biking, amazing skiing, and miles of phenomenal trails to run, it’s hard to imagine that there are residents who live here who can’t take advantage of all this Valley has to offer. But, according to census data, there are approximately 2,200 people living in Blaine County with a disability that prevents them from using traditional outdoor infrastructure. This is also the only protected class that anyone can enter at any time – often in the blink of an eye.
Keith Christensen, Department Head for the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at Utah State University has immersed in these discussions around creating inclusive outdoor spaces. As a scholar in both the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning and the Center for Persons with Disabilities, Keith engages in meaningful scholarship which is both emancipatory and empowering for disadvantaged populations’ integration in community life.
At Utah State University, Keith’s research is at the intersection of landscape architecture and disability studies. This blending is based on understanding disability through a social constructivist perspective as the limiting of opportunities to take part in community life because of physical and social barriers. Keith's research emphasizes inclusive design and planning practices which support participation in community through the removal of environmental barriers to social access, rather than the regulatory aspects of site specific design.
As such, his scholarly efforts stress macro-level environmental factors and spatial processes (i.e. suburbanization, transportation patterns, segregate planning strategies, recreation amenities, etc.) which contribute to social disparities among individuals with disabilities and other disadvantaged populations.
In this talk, Keith will discuss the intersection of smart growth planning and designing an inclusive Wood River Valley. As the Wood River Valley continues to grow, age, and expand, understanding where to plan for universally accessible spaces is a critical part of the planning process. Following Keith Christensen’s talk, Wood River Land Trust’s Community Lands Steward, Hannah Meenach will discuss specific examples of where to find inclusive trails on the Wood River Land Trust’s Preserves, and will open up the discussion to the community and audience members.