Find Your Wild Place. Breathe It In.

www.wilderness50.org

What is your wild place? Where do you go to re-energize and unplug from the daily grind? September 2014 marks 50 years since the signing of the Wilderness Act into law which set aside an initial 9.1 million acres of wildlands. Today, nearly 110 million acres in over 750 wilderness areas throughout the United States fall under the protection of this Act.

Iowa's wilderness once consisted of vast prairies that covered 30 million acres. It is said that Iowa is the most altered state in the nation as this prairie landscape has been reduced to less than one-tenth of one percent. Iowa is also one of six states without designated wilderness areas. But we can still find a natural setting in which one can relax, unwind and find adventure in a wild place.

Join Polk County Conservation on September 2nd from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. at the Jester Park Lodge to celebrate all things wild and protected under the Wilderness Act. Chris Adkins, a Naturalist for Dallas County Conservation, will start the conversation on wilderness. We will explore questions ranging from what designates an area as "wilderness" and where we might find that in Iowa. What is the value of these special places to the citizens of Iowa? What the future holds for these wild spaces will be discussed as well as our role in its preservation. Special guest presenter Dallas Chief Eagle, champion hoop dancer, will also demonstrate traditional Lakota hoop dance as he engages the audience via dance and story to view our position in nature and our relationship to nature.  

"If future generations are to remember us with gratitude rather than contempt, we must leave them something more than the miracles of technology. We must leave them a glimpse of the world as it was in the beginning, not just after we got through with it."
- President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964

 









 

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