Transcript
What inspires you from WFSU Public Media? Here's this week's Voices That Inspire. My name is Peter Kleinhens, and I work at Tall Timber's Research Station in Lincoln, Servancy as the Ossilla River Watershed Coalition Coordinator. It's hard to remember not having a deep love for the outdoors. I used to go hunting and fishing with my dad growing up in Ohio, and I also spent a lot of time walking along the river called the Old and TNG River with them, and we would catch snakes and frogs, and he'd point out all the different life forms that we would find under rocks and dangle snakes in front of me and kind of get me over my fear. And I think that played a really big role. And my mom is more of like an animal rescue kind of the person. So I think I got like the individual animal approach from her and kind of the ecosystem approach for my dad. At Tall Timber's, really what I'm trying to do is get as much land conserved as possible within our region. I'm part of a really awesome team within our land conservancy who's working on that. But I'm focused specifically on the Ossilla River Watershed. The river goes underground over 30 times. There's huge Spring Fed river feeding into the Ossilla called the Wasissa River, great recreational opportunities, interesting geology, paleontology. That's really what I'm trying to accomplish is get this special place preserved forever. Certainly something I'm motivated to do. My personal and professional life is to get more people exposed to what's around here. Once you get exposed, it's pretty hard not to realize how special it is. It's important that people recognize that Earth Day really is every day. We are not separate from the natural world. The end of the day, we breathe air, we drink water and we eat food. And all three of those things come from the natural environment and some capacity at some point. My name is Peter Kleinhens and I work for Tall Timber's research station and Wayne Conservancy. You're listening to voices that inspire.