PARENT SESSION
Symposium #4: Restoration Education.

Organized by: LM Jablonski and KM Rodriguez
Monday, August 5. 8:00 AM to 11:30 AM. Maricopa Meeting Room, TCC.

Taking restoration to the masses.

WINDHAGER, STEVE^*,1, ¹ Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center, Austin, TX

ABSTRACT- After years of land mismanagement and landscape fragmentation, the Texas Hill Country is in dire need of ecological restoration. Following a shift away from traditional ranching techniques, economic pressure has resulted in large-scale land use change across the region. With some 97% of the land privately owned there has been a consequent need for information about viable landscape restoration strategies. The Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center in Austin, Texas, is a botanic garden dedicated to educating people about the beauty and necessity of native plants. The Wildflower Center's Landscape Restoration Program was founded in 1999. The program is designed to: conduct research on land management and restoration in the Texas Hill Country; to educate professional land managers and lay public in the theory and practice of ecological restoration; and to offer fee-based ecological consulting services. The restoration education component is based on four types of learning and involvement: interpretation, professional and lay training, monitoring, and participation. This educational technique is designed to reach the widest audience using the most general information, and pique the interest of visitors to continue learning at increasingly higher levels. This strategy provides the visiting public as well as professional land managers the motivation, model demonstration sites, and the knowledge necessary to support and practice ecological restoration.

KEY WORDS: Restoration Education, interpretation, training