Fish & Wildlife Service—National Conservation Training Center
Conservation and Community Public Lecture Series
Speaking with Jena Thompson
Speakers:
Mark Madison
Jena Thompson
[audio start]
Mark: Hi. Today’s June 30th, 2009 at the National Conservation Training Center. I’m Mark Madison and we’re here with Jena Meredith who works for the conservation fund and heads up their Go Zero project. And she was just out here for our first annual Student Conservation and Climate Congress, which we’re bringing about 90 high school students to introduce them to new green technologies and opportunities to affect the environment in a positive way. Welcome.
Jena: Thanks Mark.
Mark: How are you doing?
Jena: Great.
Mark: Tell us a little about Go Zero.
Jena: Sure. Well, Go Zero is actually a program of the Conservation Fund, and the Conservation Fund itself is a national environmental non profit. We work in all fifty states. And our main focus traditionally is land conservation. And we do that pretty well. Across the last 20 years or so, we’ve protected upwards of 6 million acres, but it’s the how we do it that really does make a difference. And that’s in the integration of both economic development and environmental protection. So our method has been to kind of look at those creative interfaces between where the environment and economics intersect and then how to more proactively engage others in helping us make a difference. And the program that I run is called Go Zero, and it actually helps individuals and corporations and even schools take a look at different slices of life and the carbon emissions associated with those slices of life. And we take that emissions, we measure it, and we plant the equivalent number of trees in protected national wildlife refuges across the nation that will suck up or sequester the appropriate…
[audio end]
