Home
News & ALERTS
Issues
Forum
Archives
Conservationist's
Alternative
Klawitter
Memorial
Downloads
Join Us
About Us
Contact Us
Site Map
Links
|
The Protect Our Woods Board
of Directors
|
|
Kristen Becker has
lived in Southern Indiana her whole life (23 years). She has developed
a deep connection and love for the land of Southern Indiana. Her roots
have grown deep as she has communed with the culture of people and
landscape of this special place she calls home.
She grew up in Jasper, and graduated from Indiana University in
Bloomington with a B.A. in Religious Studies and a B.A. in the
Individualized Major Program (IMP) May 2006. Her IMP major was
titled “A Holistic Approach to Environmental and Cultural
Awareness.” A “holistic approach” encourages
one to ask deep questions about the reality one participates in and to
explore one’s connection with the interconnected system one lives
within. She has been greatly concerned with the direction in
which our society is going, and has become aware that a new vision for
the future must be articulated and lived. She believes we can no
longer plunder our environment and nations of people and that we are
destroying the life-supporting systems that sustain our very existence,
and are reaching the point of no return. She feels we must act
with responsibility to future generations and in respect to the
past.
Throughout the five years of undergraduate
exploration she has learned about the richness of community.
Bloomington has fostered her growth on all levels these past years, and
she has connected with a broad network of active community members
engaged in social and environmental issues. She first came in
contact with Protect Our Woods in the summer of 2001, just after
graduating from Jasper High School. She moved to Bloomington and
became an active volunteer with Indiana Forest Alliance for three
years. She took the opportunity to lobby in Washington, D.C. for
the protection of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and has
connected with activists from all over the United States through a
variety of functions. Each national venue gave her a great sense
of gratitude to represent Indiana forestland.
In the Fall of 2005, she traveled to Southern India in the state of
Tamil Nadu. She lived in an international community named
Auroville, and took classes on local and global sustainability.
She believes sustainability must begin with one’s personal
choices; from the food one eats, to the energy one consumes through
consumer purchases or just by living in this oil hungry society.
She is interested in education and is currently giving
presentations at schools and various group meetings about her cultural
experience in India, and the community of Auroville. Her partner
is an organic farmer and she’s putting energy into working at his
beautiful garden, Indian Creek Farm, just outside of Bedford, IN.
She’s looking into starting a massage and holistic healing
practice of her own. She’s very excited for the
possibilities that are before her. She feels it is critical time
to begin sustainable practices for her own footprint on this Earth, and
she’s eager to bring awareness to our community concerning the
growing threats to Southern Indiana’s biodiversity.
|
|
|
David Coyte was born and
raised in S. Indiana. He trained as a cabinet maker and carpenter
and in the 1980’s began demolishing old houses for the City of New
Albany and recycling the lumber to rehabilitate other old
buildings. He helped develop and run Floyd County’s first
volunteer recycling drop-off center and led efforts to establish
curbside recycling in Clark and Floyd Counties. While a resident
of New Albany he ran for public office twice and served 9 years on the
Planning Commission.
His experiences in planning and environmental issues evolved into a
focus on transportation and energy. As he explains it, “There is
nothing that more dramatically impacts the environment and our
consumption of energy than our transportation investment
decisions.”
In 1992 he helped form the transportation education and advocacy group CART (see the links page) which
continues to challenge the Ohio River Bridges project as an obsolete
solution in a world than can no longer maintain the existing road
system. CART advocates for rail investments because of the much greater
efficiencies in operation and maintenance. In the mid 1990’s
David’s research on oil resources led CART to predict the rising energy
costs we are now experiencing.
David believes in action and in the need to address our growing energy
problems in a sustainable way. He and his partners in Soft Energy
Associates have just begun rehabilitation of a retired hydro-electric
plant on the Kentucky River. He also believes that rural and
urban areas need to work together. “The most important thing you
can do to save the rural environment is to make our cities clean, fun
and affordable so folks don’t want to leave them.” David’s broad
and practical experience and special understanding of transportation
and energy issues is a real asset to POW’s board.
|
|
|
Libby
Frey resides in Bloomington,
Indiana. She was named the IPALCO Environmentalist of the Year for 2001
|
 |
Jim Kennington lives in Ferdinand Indiana. He is active in Dubois County transportation issues.
|
|
|
Kathy
Klawitter is Secretary of Protect Our Woods. She is a kindergarten
teacher and school administrator living in rural Orange County. |
 |
John
Maier (left) is a recycling
and home improvement contractor living in rural Orange County.
.
|
 |
Jeanne
Melchior is President of Protect Our Woods. She has
been involved with Protect Our Woods for more than 20 years. She has
been newsletter editor for much of that time, and was part of the fight
to protect Tillery Hill. She regularly speaks out against new highway
construction including I-69, the US 231 Bypass in Dubois County, and
the SR 145 project through the heart of the Hoosier National
Forest. Her vision of public forests is to simply let them become
what they will without interference. She feels we need undisturbed
forests where other life forms can carry out their lives and where
humans can respectfully go to experience what is left of unexploited
nature. We need to focus on protecting entire ecosystems rather than
individual species. She opposes all logging on state and national
forests and is active in forest campaigns.
Jeanne has a BA degree from Spalding College in Louisville, KY, and a
MS in English from the University of Kentucky. She is a professor of
Humanities at Vincennes University Jasper Campus where she has taught
writing for nearly 25 years. She writes often on environmental topics,
and most recently has had articles published in The Bloomington
Alternative and in Branches.
A long time bioregionalist, Jeanne frequently participates in spiritual
and deep ecology events. She is a Reiki master, an idealist, a dreamer.
When not reading, writing, or teaching, she enjoys going for long walks
and spending time exploring the hills of rural southern Indiana where
she lives.
|
|
Karyn Moskowitz has devoted herself for over a decade to consulting,
education and research at the interface of economics and the
environment. She has worked closely with local grassroots community
groups in Appalachia and elsewhere, with some of the major regional
coalitions of grassroots organizations working on forestry issues,
regional advocacy and educational groups, as well as national
environmental nonprofits.
With a BA in Biology and an MBA in Business Administration, she has
been repeatedly called in to research, write position papers and
consult on difficult policy questions, litigation and controversies
over the management of public lands and corporate timber extraction.
She has produced dozens of research reports, media interviews, popular
articles, invited seminars and presentations in the Southeast and
Northwestern USA, while managing to find time to run for the U.S.
Senate as the Green Party Candidate from Oregon in 1998. In 2002, she
received a Rockefeller Fellowship and completed a cutting edge
documentary on the fate of communities that grow at any cost.
A "communitarian" by nature, Karyn believes that communities and civic
engagement hold the key to many of the world's most pressing problems,
including economic disparity, pollution, and access to food and health
care. She is co-founder of numerous nonprofit organizations including
Community Media Project, Shagbark Conference and Retreat Center in
Paoli, and Orange County HomeGrown, as well as partner at
Bloomington-based GreenFire Consulting Group, LLC, (see the links page) and adjunct faculty
in the Department of Business at Ivy Tech Community College. Karyn is the Public Lands Coordinator for Protect Our Woods.
|
|
Barry Nichols has a
deep respect for the rural way of life, and rural culture. He is
committed to preserving farmland and public lands, and believes
success for both go hand in glove. He has worked
with
landowners, small businesses, government agencies, non-profit
organizations, and schools to educate, avoid environmental impacts,
protect and enhance environmental integrity, and restore functionality
to ecosystems. While rural communities are increasingly under
financial pressure, this situation is made worse by poorly
planned development at any cost. It is this same poor
development, and out-of-balance economy it creates, that further fuels
the selloff of family lands, speeds the breakup of extended
families, and destroys liveable rural communities. He believes the healthy long-term outlook for rural
communities lies in enhancement
and preservation of local economies. His message to
politicians is that while the needs of rural southern Indiana are great, but
they should also remember WHY rural southern Indiana
is so special. They need to find creative ways to enhance and
sustain this culture and land, rather than throw the same unwise
corporate practices at southern Indiana, that have wrecked many other communities.
|
|
Margarita Nichols |
|
Ben Post works in the urban planning field,
serving as a geographic information system (GIS) analyst in the public sector in
Louisville, KY. He has a strong interest in hiking and loves the outdoors,
and spends a lot of his recreational time within the forests and rural areas of
south central Indiana. He is very passionate about the importance of good
urban and regional planning practices, especially those that promote the
strengthening of urban core areas while containing development and sprawl.
He believes that land is a precious resource that should be recycled,
and that urban redevelopment and containment are critical to the health of our
farms and forests.
|
|
Jeremiah Rasche
|
|
Anne Tangeman resides in Jasper, Indiana.
|
| |
|
| |
|
| |
|
|
