The People + Nature Conference is a 3-day event with inspiring speakers, a design charette, educational field trips, and much more.
The first-ever People + Nature Conference will bring together diverse stakeholders to examine how conservationists, urban quality-of-life advocates and others can work together to create communities that are more walkable, compact, transit-friendly and green. Creating such cities and towns, where people want to stay, play and live, is key to slowing the sprawl that threatens our diminishing wildlife habitats and farms and preserving biodiversity. The conference, set for Oct. 20 – 22, is hosted by Houston Tomorrow, the Katy Prairie Conservancy and Texas A&M AgriLife Extension.
The People + Nature Conference begins Oct. 20 with the unique opportunity for participants to attend one of four outdoor field trips, including:
- The Big Transect – The Katy Prairie Conservancy will lead a bus trip beginning in the urban core, proceeding to the suburban ring, and finishing in the countryside.
- Urban Bright Spots – Join Houston Tomorrow by rail and bicycle to see work being done by local food advocates and conservationists to establish urban agriculture and wildlife habitat in the heart of the city.
- Into the Wild – This explores the wonders of Galveston or Christmas Bay and highlights the many economic, cultural, and water quality connections between our local bays and estuaries and our towns and cities.
- Bird City USA – City safari by Houston Audubon and Houston Parks & Recreation Department to find birds all over Houston’s parks.
The conference officially kicks off Oct. 21 at Rice University’s BioScience Research Collaborative, 6500 Main St., (adjacent to the Texas Medical Center) and continues through Oct. 22. Each day begins at 8:30 a.m., with breakfast and lunch provided and sessions in the mornings and afternoons.
