PdC high schooler makes deep-rooted commitment to conaervation
Elizabeth Carlson (fourth from right) at the Kids for the Boundary Waters meeting with Sen. Tammy Baldwin. This organization was created to build a community of young wilderness advocates who are involved in the fight to defend the pristine waters, forest and wildlife of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.
Upcoming Senior Elizabeth Carlson stands on a frozen Big Donahue Lake, while at Conserve School in Land O’ Lakes in northern Wisconsin.
By Peyton Meisner
For Prairie du Chien High School senior Elizabeth Carlson, conservation plays a major role in her life.
In 2018, Carlson was accepted into Conserve School after a couple of rounds of interviews. The Conserve School is a semester school for environmentally and outdoor-minded high school students located in Land O’ Lakes, along the northern Wisconsin border with Michigan. She spent the first semester of the 2018-2019 academic year there.
While there, Carlson felt she picked up a new comprehension of conservation, “My entire class schedule was tailored to the environment. For example, in my English class, we read works from famous conservationists like Aldo Leopold and in my history class we learned about the history of conservation,” she explained.
Carlson feels grateful she was accepted into the school and noted that she forged many fun and exciting adventures. “It was an honor to be accepted and I had a great experience and met many great friends along the way,” she added.
Carlson used her training at Conserve School to help promote an issue very important to her, the Save the Boundary Waters campaign. The campaign is dedicated to protecting the clean water, clean air and forest landscape of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and its watershed from toxic pollution caused by mining copper, nickel and other metals from sulfide-bearing ore.
Earlier this month, Carlson, alongside 74 other students, went to Washington D.C. to lobby for the campaign. While there they met with Wisconsin Senators Tammy Baldwin (D) and Ron Johnson (R) to discuss the issue.
Carlson said their trip also was intended to “call out the Trump administration” for its 2018 decision to end an environmental review to study a proposed ban on copper-nickel mining within a 365-square mile area of the Superior National Forest south of the Boundary Waters. The study was set to last up to two years. But last September, after 20 months of the review, U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue announced the agency was ending the study, saying the analysis “did not reveal any new scientific information.”
“The trip was a great experience and I feel that it helped spread our message on a wider level,” Carlson said.
Carlson will be a senior this fall at Prairie du Chien High School.
