Webinar 2: What is a landscape architect and how can they contribute to land use planning and wildlife habitat?
What is a landscape architect and how can they contribute to land use planning and wildlife habitat?
Date: January 25, 2024 at 12 pm PT / 1 pm MT
Presenter: Leslie Lowe, Registered Landscape Architect, is a landscape designer and owner of Beargrass Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. Leslie has an informed, dynamic, engaged and integrated approach to any particular project and has excellent experience working with non-profit societies and coordinating with their respective governments and other stakeholders. Leslie has worked in Landscape Architecture in Canada and the U.S. since 2008 and became a licensed Landscape Architect in Montana, Connecticut and British Columbia in 2011. Leslie has a Master of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning from Utah State University.
As a Landscape Architect, Leslie weaves connections across a mosaic of land types by finding ways to strengthen wildlife habitat and repair native ecosystems within disturbed human/agricultural environments. In 2020, in partnership with biologist Marc-André Beaucher, she created a master plan for the Creston Valley Wildlife Management Area (CVWMA) for the south end of the Duck Lake Nesting Area that focuses on the Frog Bear Corridor. The master plan identifies how to increase multi-species habitat connectivity through a matrix of open grasslands, wetlands, and riparian or riparian edge habitat. The master plan takes a holistic approach to give the CVWMA a toolbox of ideas to implement and creates a landscape that balances ecological and agricultural values. Leslie’s guidance includes maps, species documentation, plant lists, seed protocols, live staking procedures, and other restoration techniques.
In this talk Leslie will present ideas for what can be done at a site scale for enhancing wildlife corridors and ecological connectivity from the perspective of a landscape architect. Leslie will provide an update on the status of the CVWMA sites with specific examples of results observed for target species such as the Northern Leopard Frog and Bobolink, as well as the significant strides that have been made in the implementation of the master plan.
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