MADISON — A free public program focusing on the recently established Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape area — which includes all or portions of Bartholomew, Brown, Jackson, Jennings and Johnson counties — will take place at 6:30 p.m. May 1 at Ivy Tech in Madison.
Program coordinator Michael Spalding will speak at the meeting hosted by Big Oaks Conservation Society. The Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape program established last year works with partnering organizations and landowners to find conservation solutions that support rural working landscapes, conserve natural resources, and ensure the long-term sustainability of military installations in the region.
Those facilities in the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape Project area include Camp Atterbury, Muscatatuck Urban Training Center, Naval Support Activity Center Crane and Lake Glendora Test Facility. The region encompasses part or all of Brownstown, Columbus, Crothersville, Franklin, Freetown, Edinburgh, Medora, Nashville, North Vernon, Seymour and Vallonia.
Along with the military installations, the southern Indiana region encompasses six state parks, seven state forests, nine state fish and wildlife areas, 39 state-dedicated nature preserves, Hoosier National Forest, Muscatatuck, Big Oaks and Patoka River national wildlife refuges and private forest and farmland.
Serving as program coordinator for the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape is part of Spalding’s work with for the Conservation Law Center in Bloomington. The eighth generation of his family to call Indiana home, Spalding grew up in rural Shelby County and received a bachelor’s degree in Forestry from Purdue University in 2005.
Spalding has spent the past 17 years performing conservation work in 55 counties in Indiana on public and private lands. He resides in Brown County with his wife, who is also a forester, and two sons, where they enjoy making maple syrup from their forest.
Learn more about the Southern Indiana Sentinel Landscape at sentinellandscapes.org/landscapes/southern-indiana.
