Back from Alabama - New Project Comes In!

Back from Alabama with our Army Corps of Engineers training course. The photo shows the class going on their tour of the Wheeler Wildlife Refuge where they were going to do some exercises in Interpretive Trail Planning and Interpretive Panel Planning. While there I learned we were awarded the contract to develop the Interpretive Systems Plan for the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space District, Los Altos, CA. The open space district has about 25 preserves in its system. We will start work on that project in a few weeks.

Heading Home - then Alabama

At the Heathrow Airport in London getting ready to head home - for a day - then off to Alabama to teach our 3-day Introduction to Interpretive Services course for the US Army Corps of Engineers. As noted in the last post, JVA was awarded the contract to develop the new advanced interpretation course for the COE as well. It has been cold and rain most of this past week - lets hope Alabama weather is warmer.

New Training Project

US Army Corps of Engineers - Advanced Interpretation Course for Project (Park) Managers. JVA was just awarded a contract to develop a new interpretive training course for Corps of Engineer Project Managers and management level staff. This course is now the next advanced level course from our introductory Interpretive Services Course we currently teach for the COE twice a year at the Huntsville, AL Tom Bevill Training Center. The first course will be offered in June, 2010 the week after our introductury course at the Huntsville location. The contract calls for developing a new 4-day training lesson plan, course manual, schedule of instruction, course resource CD, new powerpoint presentations and related field trip logistics for on-site learning experiences in interpretive planning. The photo shows one of our COE courses which includes lots of hands-on activities, like planning interpretive panels.

The Great Fen

This week I am in England doing interpretive training for the staff of The Great Fen/Wildlife Trust. The photos show some of the scenes of this 17 square mile site. Mostly peat farmland (I have never seen such black soil), the plan is for restoration of the area into a Fen habitat, with new interpretive center, trails, interpretive and environmental education programs and more. Quite a bit different from the Mountain Sanctuary we were working on in Korea last week.

Chilly Korea

Made it to Korea and we are starting work on the new site. We are starting to call it a Mountain Ecological Sanctuary and Climate Change Discovery Center. The site itself is huge - but the visitor area is about 200 acres. They are expecing to attract about 700,000 visitors a year! We hope to have the interpretive plan done by April. In the meantime, it is really cold here, but the site is beautiful. A few pics of the Mountain Ecological Sanctuary.