Oct. 28, 2014

Contact Rick Kyte at 608-796-3704 or rlkyte@viterbo.edu

UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN PROFESSOR EMERITUS IN CONSERVATION TO PRESENT “REMEMBERING A LOST BIRD: LESSONS FROM THE PAST FOR A SUSTAINABLE FUTURE” AT VITERBO UNIVERSITY NOV. 13

LA CROSSE, Wis. – Stanley Temple, Beers-Bascom Professor in Conservation at the University of Wisconsin, will present “Remembering a Lost Bird: Lessons from the Past for a Sustainable Future” at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 13 in the Viterbo University Fine Arts Center Main Theatre.

Temple has held the same position at UW-Madison for 32 years, a post once occupied by Aldo Leopold. Temple has spent his career working to save endangered species and the habitat on which those species depend. He is a Senior Fellow with the Aldo Leopold Foundation.

The last Passenger Pigeon died in 1914 in a Cincinnati zoo, marking the end of a calamitous 50 years in which the Passenger Pigeon population declined from billions to zero as a result of uncontrolled market hunting and the resulting disruption of nesting colonies. The loss of one of the world’s most abundant birds stands as the iconic extinction event in U.S. history.

Temple’s presentation will examine the tragic story of the Passenger Pigeon and what it says about the ongoing extinction crisis and humans’ relationship with other species.

Accounts by early naturalists such as John James Audubon describe flocks on Passenger Pigeons darkening the sky. The largest nesting ever recorded occurred in central Wisconsin in 1871, with millions of birds covering 850 square miles with nests in almost every tree. In 1947, Aldo Leopold authored one of the most poignant essays ever written about extinction, On a Monument to the Pigeon, which later appeared in his famous book, A Sand County Almanac.

This presentation is part of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership’s fall lecture series. The event is free and open to the public. No tickets are necessary, but seating is limited. For a full schedule of D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership events, visit www.viterbo.edu/ethics.

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