DJS senior seminar’s ‘Wild Phoenix Project’ succeeds with prairie planting

The Wild Phoenix Project of this semester’s Democracy and Justice Studies senior seminar concluded last weekend with a successful prairie-grass planting at the Baird Creek Parkway. Led by Assistant Prof. Eric J. Morgan, the senior seminar focused on historical and contemporary issues related to wilderness preservation and Aldo Leopold’s land ethic ideal. As part of their semester-long civic engagement project, seminar students raised nearly $300 to purchase Indiangrass seed for the Baird Creek Preservation Foundation, visited the Aldo Leopold Center in Baraboo, and held a Wilderness Day consciousness-raising event on campus. Last Saturday, April 26, seminar students joined dozens of community members and area high school, middle school and fellow UW-Green Bay students for the Baird Creek Preservation Foundation’s spring restoration day project. In the tradition of Aldo Leopold’s ethic of land stewardship, seminar students and friends spent the morning along the Mars loop trail planting the grass seed, which will grow by next summer to become a bit of tallgrass prairie interspersed with native wildflowers to replace various invasive plant species.