Victoria-Virginia International Landcare Fellowship brings insight to Virginian landcare
David Robertson, visiting professor of forestry and program leader of the Landcare Center at Virginia Tech, has announced that Stephen Guy will be the first Victoria-Virginia Landcare Travel Fellow in a partnership launched by the Australian Landcare International (ALI).
Guy, who is the Victorian Landcare coordinator of the Lismore Land Protection Group in Australia, has come to Virginia this fall to share his landcare experience and to learn from Virginia’s landcare movement.
Through this fellowship, Guy is visiting with state and local politicians, farmers, foresters, students, technical specialists, and other citizens to share experience on landcare and learn from Virginian community groups. Both Virginia landcare groups, Catawba LandCare and Grayson LandCare will work with Guy.
In anticipation of his fellowship Guy said, “I’ll be really interested to see what connections we can make, given that so many social changes we face here at home are parallel to the North American experience.”
Training courses, workshops, and some classes will be held at Virginia Tech that will implement ideas brought over from Australian landcare.
The College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech consistently ranks among the top five programs of its kind in the nation. Faculty members stress both the technical and human elements of natural resources and instill in students a sense of stewardship and land-use ethics. Areas of studies include environmental resource management, fisheries and wildlife sciences, forestry, geospatial and environmental analysis, natural resource recreation, urban forestry, wood science and forest products, geography, and international development.
