What is the Valley Stewardship Network?

VSN is a locally based, funded, and managed non-profit organization comprising neighbors and friends of the Kickapoo Valley. Our primary goal is to promote a balance between a healthy environment and strong communities.

Stewardship is for Everyone!

To engender a broad base of community involvement, VSN networks with other community groups interested in water quality, sustainable forestry, support of family farming, resource conservation, and economic development. VSN is actively involved in:

* Collaborating with organizations for workshops and activities in such areas as sustainable forestry, organic and alternative agriculture

* Raising awareness of the need to control invasive species threatening our forests and waterways

* Working with student organizations to take on projects that demonstrate good stewardship of our resources

* Working with others to identify mechanisms that can support the development of low-impact tourism and other culturally and environmentally sustainable economic development

* Facilitating the formation of a citizens' working group to develop methods and partnerships for land preservation

* Providing educational programs and resources for newer landowners

History

Valley Stewardship Network grew from the local steering committee of the Trout Unlimited Home Rivers Initiative in cooperation with Community Conservation, Inc. of Gays Mills. This group met from 1997 to 1999 and they provided GIS computers, software, local data layers and teacher training to eight local Kickapoo watershed schools and also drafted a final Kickapoo Management Plan. The group envisioned a citizen-driven, non-regulatory organization, operating neighbor to neighbor, as the path to grassroots success in preserving the quality of life in the Kickapoo Watershed. VSN is that group and was incorporated in October of 2000.

VSN is continuing the ethic and work of this founding group by developing an information and mapping distribution system for citizens of the rural townships within the four watershed counties—Crawford, Monroe, Richland and Vernon. VSN is actively involved in land use planning community outreach and education.

The Kickapoo Citizen Water Monitors sample sites along the Kickapoo and its feeder streams, working with local labs and water chemistry specialists, to establish baseline water quality data and to better identify possible threats to continued water quality.

Biological diversity inventories are planned to augment the general data layers in our GIS systems and to assist landowners in managing biodiversity.

Board of Directors

* Jamie Johnson, Chair
* Bill Motlong, Co-chair
* Maggie Jones, Secretary/Treasurer
* Joe Swanson
* Angie Scotland
* Dan Peper
* Ron Uhe

Staff

* Jessica Luhning, Projects Coordinator (contact)
* Gary Thompson, WQM Coordinator (contact)
* Kathy Fairchild, Program Manager

Advisory Board

* Paul Bader , Kickapoo Woods Cooperative
* David Bruce, Organic Valley
* Gary Eldred, Prairie Enthusiasts
* Laura Hewitt, Trout Unlimited
* Dr. Rob Horwich, Community Conservation
* Cynthia Olmstead, Conservation Easements