Renee Kivikko, Thomas Springer, and Amelia Hansen

[00:03] RENEE KIVIKKO: My name is Renee Sukivico. I'm 59 years old. Today is July 14, 2023, and we're in kalamazoo, Michigan. I am here with Amelia Hanson and Tom Springer and they are both friends, and we've worked together with an organization called Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. My name is Amelia Hansen I'm 59 years old, too. And today's July 14, 2023. We're in kalamazoo, Michigan. I'm here to interview my friends Tom Springer and Renee Kiviko. We all used to be. Well, I still am associated with this organization, Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy.

[00:44] THOMAS SPRINGER: I'm Tom Springer I'm 63. This is July 14, 2023. We're in canals of Michigan. The name of my interview partners are Renee Kiviko and Amelia Hanson. And we are longtime friends who've been involved with conservation through the southwest Michigan land Conservancy.

[01:08] RENEE KIVIKKO: So I guess I'm gonna start with Renee I know that you have been with southwest Michigan land Conservancy. You started with the organization a very long time ago. Can you tell me how that started when you first started working there, just what it was like? Sure. I have to go way back for this, but I started hearing about this organization that was being formed called Southwest Michigan Land Conservancy. And I was at that time working for the Kalamazoo Nature center. And the rumor was getting out that they were thinking about hiring their first time full time executive director. And my boss there at the nature center said, hey, you should go apply for that job. So I did. And that was in 1948. So I started as the first full time executive director there and enjoyed a great, just a little over six years with the organization, and it was a great experience. How about you, Tom? How did you first get involved with, I want to say Southwest Michigan land Conservancy, but our acronym is SWMLC, which sounds terrible, but so much easier to say swim, like swim lake.

[02:26] THOMAS SPRINGER: Well, interesting enough, I got involved about 100 yards away from here. So over here is Bronson park near the Campbells Republic Library. We are now. And there was Earth Day, and there's all the booths out there and everything. And a couple weeks earlier, I was, I submitted this letter to the editor, this rant against suburban sprawl, you know, the guy shaking his fish at a clouds type of thing. And I'm walking down this sidewalk with all these booths. There were somebody saying, hey, you're Tom Springer And I looked around, and it's Gary stock, who was then the first leader of Swimlink. And he called me over the table. He said, I saw your op ed piece and the Gazette. I really liked it. I mean, this is from a thumbnail sketch of me, right? So he just. How he picked me out, it was really interesting. And I. Of course, you know, you're flattered that somebody actually read it. And he started explaining to me what they're in the process of doing. And they were having an organizational meeting at the Portage library, and he told me about that, and I invited me to come, but it was totally out of the blue. I don't think I even saw his table. He just yelled at me, and I went over there, and he asked me to volunteer, and I did. So that's the power of being direct, with asking people to participate in things that they care about.

[03:38] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah. You couldn't kind of turn him down that way. So once you started volunteering for him, Tom, what did you do?

[03:49] THOMAS SPRINGER: Well, it was interesting because my background was writing in public relations, so naturally it gravitated toward helping them. You know, the beginnings of a newsletter and maybe news releases. But I think the big step for me was that I didn't see coming was I went to a board meeting with a nonprofit organization, which I'd never done before. I didn't know how they worked. I didn't. Roberts rules border, and these people are seconding things and making motions and all this. It seems sort of oddly like a courtroom. At first, I just sort of paid attention and listened to all these smart folks who knew so much more about how to do this. I pictured myself going out and clearing brush on trails that had no idea of what it took to ran an organization. So I think for the first year or so, I just tried to go to meetings and listen and learn how this thing worked, which was much more complex than I realized it was going to be.

[04:38] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah. How about you, Renee I know you were executive director. What was that like? Well, it was actually interesting, because I've been working in the nonprofit field ever since I got out of college, and. But I'd never actually run one myself. A lot of the work I'd done at the Kalamazoo nature Center was towards the end, anyways. I was there for ten years, but towards the end, I was doing just a lot of grant management, helping projects get going and whatnot. So I was used to like, managing projects, and managing an organization was a big step up. But I remember getting hired and then walking into. We were on Cox Avenue then, and this old school. I walked into this old classroom with this table in the middle, and these board members, and Tom was one of them. And I'm like, oh, wow, all these people. And I need to get to know them and figure out, you know, what their vision is. And so it was exciting and overwhelming all at once. And back in those early days, we were pretty bare bones. You know, we were bringing the money in as best we could, and it was going right back out the door, and everybody pulled together. And I think some of those early days were some of the most, I guess, rewarding, because I would be working away and all these really great volunteers, and there were some really, really insightful people on the board, and they realized that we didn't have everything we needed. And so one day, somebody walk in. This was Ross Moni, actually, not long after starting. He says, you know, Renee now that you're here, you're gonna have to start doing these public participations, presentations, and getting people involved, and like, yeah, you're right. And he's like, let's go shopping. And he actually took me out, and we. He bought the organization a cyberjector and one of those portable overheads. This was a while ago. This was before LCD's, so that, you know, I would have some tools to actually go out and do presentations. And it was just like that in the early days, even if it wasn't cash, it was like, you need a piece of equipment, you need something. And it was really, really great to see the community pull together around building this organization.

[06:56] THOMAS SPRINGER: Yeah, I remember when we got a new fax machine, it was a big deal. It's like, well, we got a fax, which then was beep, beep, beep. Things were coming out, you know, but it was this old classroom, and it still really had this heavy elementary classroom vibe. I mean, she could have been a schoolteacher, right? She's about that age, and people were painting and doing all kind of stuff, just general fix up stuff, like you would to, like a dorm room or something. But it was that. That hands on vibe, you know, that connection that people had to it that really. It grew into different forms. But it started was pulling together to get our space fixed up so we can have a place to meet and talk about everything.

[07:32] RENEE KIVIKKO: And I think there were a lot of people who cared a lot, and it wasn't so much that I had to do all the work. I would say most of my early time there was trying to organize the people who wanted to do the work. So, you know, there was always a committee meeting. There was always somebody in the office doing something, and, you know, teams of people who were going out and walking property to do inventories and assessments. And, you know, it was just really great. So it was a lot of herding cats in those early years, but that's what built the organization. It was just people dedicating time and their expertise. It was really, really great. How do you think you got so many people interested and involved? Well, I think it started because there were some really great, well respected people on the board to start. I mean, we had folks like Jim Richmond, who was very well networked in the community, Richard Brewer, professor at Western, Bob Plesnick, a lawyer in town. You already mentioned Gary stock, Kim Travers, well known naturalist. These are just people who knew people and just were positive, well connected, and invited people like Gary did to just get involved. And then I was at the nature center for so long, I also knew people. So it was just everybody bringing people they knew and getting people to step in and talk and work together. So it was rewarding.

[09:05] THOMAS SPRINGER: You make it sound like it was easy back then, right?

[09:08] RENEE KIVIKKO: There were some long days, I gotta say.

[09:11] THOMAS SPRINGER: I don't know if you wanna get into this, but, you know, you were probably mid twenties then, I guess, or something, maybe. And so this is the mid nineties. She's a woman leading this organization. A bunch of men, I guess they're probably all white. Mendez, who were in their fifties and sixties, really accomplished in their profession, really passionate about the earth and the work of the land trust, but also used to be in charge in dictating things. I'm not going to say it was all the tension there, but that was a dynamic that was there, right? I mean, for you to come into that position and work with a group of people that you did, there was.

[09:43] RENEE KIVIKKO: A little bit of that. And, I mean, there were some really great women like Carol Birch involved. Emma pitcher, back in the day was involved. But, yeah, there were some old guys, and, you know, they were used to running their own businesses or being the professor in the front of the room or whatnot. So there was a little bit of that. But when push came to shove, I felt like they had my back, you know, because, you know, there were dynamics. This was 30 some years ago, but it all worked out. And I think I worked hard and proved myself, you know, that I could make things happen and just kind of listened to everybody and then pulled together what I thought was the best recommendation. And most of the time, the board was like, yeah, that sounds right on. And they got behind it and kept it going. So.

[10:39] THOMAS SPRINGER: Well, it wasn't easy to do. And she was no pusher, I can tell you that. She's diplomatic. But at some point, I mean, that was really important, the organization, to do that, because this is a whole side issue. But this had been mainly run by volunteers who had this great passion. So this is the transition, right? We're going from this volunteer run organization, a place that has an office, it has somebody on a payroll. And that transition, as anybody knows about nonprofits, is always, it's important, but it can have its challenges. But I thought you negotiated that really well, because it's all of a sudden we got our first full time leader. You know, this isn't just running out of somebody's kitchen anymore. And so that was, that happened. And you handled it smoothly.

[11:20] RENEE KIVIKKO: It had its moments. But because we didn't have staff, I needed a working board, people who were doing things, and I needed volunteers who were doing things. I do think that after a few years, I mean, when I started, I was the only one. When I left, we had five staff, if I remember correctly. And there were some bumps along the way with the micro management piece. But, you know, when the board started seeing the progress, and I'm going to do a shout out for Richard Brewer on this one, I said, you know, I was literally working at least 80 hours a week, just, you know, six, seven days a week, because there was just so many things to coordinate between doing the work in the office, evening committee meetings, weekend workdays, catching up on things. And I said, if we're going to actually grow the organization and do more land protection and do our stewardship, we need more staff. And Richard actually heard that. And he and I sat down and just kind of started talking about what it would take to do that and did like a one page concept. And he said, what if we go to some of the leaders we know in the community who have some means and asked to do like a little mini pledge challenge thing, so if we can get five of our friends who can do 10,000 a year for three years, so that would give us 50,000 a year to give the baseline for starting to get some staff on, to get you somebody else in the office. And I said, okay, well, let's try it. And we put it together. And I didn't go on the first meeting. Doctor Brewer went, met with doctor Batts and his wife Jean. And I had a conversation, and I knew that there was a conversation, and of course, I knew doctor batts from working at the nature center. And he called me up, and this is actually kind of a funny story. See if I can remember all of the deets. But Doctor Brewitt asked for 10,000 a year for three years, and he calls me Renee I'm not going to do 10,000 a year. I'm like, okay, can you give me some feedback? What is it you're. You're thinking, we should be doing it. I'm gonna give you $25,000 a year. And. And then, you know, you need to go ask these other folks for the same, you know, basically. And I'm like, oh, wow, okay, great, thanks. And after you get that part done, basically get this pledge challenge thing done, then I'm gonna be another hundred thousand dollars. I'm like, oh, thank you. Thank you so much. He's like, after you get things going, get your staff on board or whatnot, I'm gonna be another $250,000 for your reserve endowment. Like, okay. I picked myself up off the floor and called Richard up, and we revamped the campaign. And that's really the inflection point that started growing the organization. That was for our third staff person. We had hired Pam Larson as our second full time, and she ran all the membership and communications and admin so that I could do the land protection stewardship. You know, I'll do all that public facing work. So it was just. It was just kind of that. Stabilize, go up a level. Stabilize, go up a level. And we just kept doing that. And I used to call it, I would clone myself. I'd work really, really hard until I could prove that we needed that next person. Then we'd hire them. And then I worked really, really hard. And then we proved we need that next person. And I. So that's what I did.

[14:52] THOMAS SPRINGER: And I used to kind of worry about her. Cause I'm like, she's working all these hours. She's gonna burn herself out. Or she'll do so good, she'll be a flight risk, and somebody will snap her up. Right. Cause at the time, they didn't like to send our staff to, like, the land trust alliance place. Cause they said, oh, that's what's where they go. Poach, you know, their prospects. Right. But what you did, I mean, that is a huge vote of confidence in Renee as a person that Lou Batts had in her. I mean, that's. You can't say that wasn't the case, because, yes, he was a generous man, but he's also very savvy, you know, and knew what a good investment was. And it was the trust that he had of Renee that led to that. Richard knew him, but even so, that's a phenomenal fund. I work in development now. I'm like, holy cow, I wish I could pull that off, but that's fantastic.

[15:42] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah, I'm just gonna go back to the beginning again, because, Tom, you were on that first board, and they'd been through a couple rough patches, but we're still persistent to move forward. And do you remember that retreat we did at Bill Westray's farm out in the side field?

[16:00] THOMAS SPRINGER: Right.

[16:01] RENEE KIVIKKO: That was kind of the first time we all kind of sat there in nature in the woodlot next to his farmhouse, and just talked about what the future of the organization is going to look like. And, you know, that that was a fun day, and those are important.

[16:16] THOMAS SPRINGER: You know, there's a different feeling or atmosphere than when you're in a boardroom and you have a process to fill it. It's just to sat down and have an opportunity to be free of that structure of a board meeting. For people to do that, you know, it's like, that's what it comes to mean. It shows the importance of retreats, I think, which I've always felt are really valuable and important and transition points for organizations to be able to do that. Yeah.

[16:39] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah, that's a fun day. What did you guys see as the. What was the vision? What was the vision? I'm trying to even remember. It was just being together that was so important. I think we just made. I don't know that the vision changed, but I think it was like, you know, we were really focused mostly on high quality natural areas at that point.

[17:04] THOMAS SPRINGER: Right.

[17:05] RENEE KIVIKKO: And it was just really a recommitment that this is our goal, to save as many natural areas as we can and to find a way to do it as quickly and responsibly as we can and just get down to focus.

[17:20] THOMAS SPRINGER: And, you know, when we develop a system, too, because when you just. Your job is to protect land, you don't have any land. If somebody comes to you and says, I don't need a parcel, your temptation is to say, sure, you know, we'll figure that out later. Because, you know, like a bank with no money in their assets, right. You're going to take what you're going to take. But I think from that we begin to be more selective, I think. And once you're more focused on what you're looking for, what you will protect, and, you know, don't get properties end up being problems later on down the road, which still happened, there's still going to be some of those, but that, that time spent together, it gets everybody on board. Right. And that's the value of a strategic plan. It's not the plan itself. It's the agreement that you come to that you're going to move forward on all these different axes. And I think that one that was important, that we sort of got a handle on what we're going to protect and how we're going to do it.

[18:09] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah. And we didn't have anything really written down to begin with, and so it was really iterative. And the volunteers would say after they saw more land, it's like, well, we should do more of this and less of that, and we should look for these things. And it was an iterative and collaborative process to really figure out what was most important to us as an organization and what kinds of things should we be looking for when we were on the land, and we're talking about the land acquisition side. But stewardship was also really, really important to this organization from the start, which isn't always typical of the land trust communities. Cause now that I work at land Trust alliance as vice president of education and I'm working across the country, I see lots of deal junkies out there, and it's hard to get them to focus on stewardship. But coming from an organization where stewardship was first even before we acquired the land, I really appreciate that so much more now that I'm doing the job that I'm doing. And, you know, for any property that we took on and owned, it was always right up front, what are our goals? How are we gonna make sure we have the resource to take care of it? And that's really, really important when you're in land trust work, because you're making a promise to those landowners to take care of this land forever. And it's one thing to say that for free land, but then we also started doing conservation easements. We did the first conservation easement while I was there. And it's actually a totally different promise when you're sitting there looking at a landowner saying, we're going to help protect this land forever because they're going to still own it, and other people are going to be on this land, but you have to be ready to defend that land if somebody violates this agreement. And I remember doing the very first one with Ken and Alice Jones and sitting there and they're signing everything, and we're going through the process like, holy crap, what did I just process? That was one of my. Oh, my gosh.

[20:15] THOMAS SPRINGER: But that leap of faith. And I think of the. I think Sarah Holtmark was the first preserve we had. Was that right?

[20:22] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah, I think Sarah gave us the first fee land property.

[20:25] THOMAS SPRINGER: So here we are, this organization that is making this bold, really audacious statement that from our rented old classroom in this old elementary school, we are going to promise to protect your land for 50 or 100, 200 years. Right. And it's like somebody had to be first, you know? And this is a beloved piece of property that she owned. Want to see it protected. So I always really admired her for being the person to stay, step forward and do that, because somebody always has to be first, right? I guess, you know, when a surgeon gets done with their training, somebody's got to be first, right? So that was the first one. And it was incredible to me that, because I remember thinking that, okay, so who's going to really come forward and donate land to us? You know, we're a bunch of well meaning people, and we want to do good, but to really donate somebody to somebody that you could sell, that you could pass on heirs, that was bold. But it resonated with people in a way that, and obviously our staff did that we could pull that off. We did. I mean, still going strong, right?

[21:27] RENEE KIVIKKO: What do you think made her do it? What prompted her to do it? Sarah actually had already donated some land to the Michigan Nature association, which is a statewide land trust. And so she wanted to help this local land trust get started. So she donated a little piece of land right next to that preserve. So I think, you know, she already had experience doing this work, and she wanted to give us a good start. I think in the back of her mind, I thought if they fall apart, I could just turn it over to m and a. But she took the gamble and put her name with, you know, ours to say, yeah, we're gonna make sure they get a start and give them their first piece. So, yeah, when, when you guys first, in those early days, did you have any vision of it becoming anything like it is now? At this point, Swinblik has protected over 18,000 acres, and we were operating in nine counties, and we have 56 limited access preserves and 18 public preserves. And I can't remember over 100 conservation easements. And did you ever see it going this way, or were you just kind of one. One step at a time, next, you know, one day at a time kind of thing?

[22:44] THOMAS SPRINGER: I guess I would have thought 5000 seemed like a lot at the time, you know, and if we could, I thought if we could get a preserve in every one of our nine counties, that would be an indicator of success, and 5000 really seemed like a lot. But beyond that, I think we're just looking focused on growing incrementally and dealing with the issues at the time that could help us do the next deal. But Renee I'm sure she thought more strategically about it than I did.

[23:10] RENEE KIVIKKO: You know, I don't know that I would have guessed we'd be at the numbers we are now with swimmerlic, but I do know we were being very deliberative in those early days, because to actually get the trust to do land or an easement, you need to be known. And so we did start off with, like, we need to get to know people in Kalamasu county, and then we had a couple of good leads. We need to get to know people in Barrie county and Van Buren county. So it was very county by county going in. A lot of my evenings were spent at township meetings, going to community meetings, so we just kind of started circling around. I remember when I was in Branch county, which is a very rural, agriculturally focused county, I would go and I meet with the farm bureau, you know, and I remember walking in and the guy said, what you're doing is really, really important, but what you have to know about this community is you can have to get one opinion leader who's kind of the leader of the herd, and if you can get that person to do it, then everybody will do it. But you had to figure out in each community how to kind of break through. And my other funny story on a breakthrough is drain commissioners. There's a lot of drains, a lot of water issues everywhere in this part of the state, and drain commissioners are tended to be good old boys, and, you know, sometimes they were a little challenging because they had low trust of us, environmental, conservation, radical people. But I just kept at it, and, you know, would meet with the drain commissioners in the different counties, and I got invited to a regional drain commissioner meeting, and so I came, and this one commissioner named Spike, by the way, you know, I'd been working with him, and he invited me to come and, you know, I introduced myself and gave him an example of a couple projects. But she's good. You can work with her. That's all I needed was blessing one drain commissioner. Basically, give me his blessing. And I broke through, you know, that that's what the early work was, just getting out there, and I think that.

[25:23] THOMAS SPRINGER: There was a temptation there. And from the start, the board people were passionate about conserving land, but you did, you had political adversity on there, which is important because we all know the profile of somebody who tends to be a college professor in biology versus somebody who's working in real estate or somebody who's worked running a business. Right. But that passionate that we had for meeting in the middle, it allowed us to avoid some, I would say some ongoing situations where there was a contentious issue around saving land. Okay. And I won't get into them. They're right around Campbell Zoo. And for us to spend our political capital on something like that in the long term, it wouldn't be wise, because that allows people to say, well, of course you did that. You're just aligned with this group over here to really try to serve all people. We were resistant to that and tried to stay politically neutral so that we could work with somebody who's far right, who's far left, but really wants to protect their land and see if that's, that's important. And I think it's probably harder to do now than it was then. But. But even so, being able to do that, have that representation on your board, it also opens up different avenues of access to the changemakers and the leaders that you need. You know, and people can trust and say, yeah, they, you know, they did this work for us. And so I think that, and I remember a couple, those really heated discussions, or at least not heated discussions, but there were issues where land was going to be developed, and, you know, it was really tempting to want us to dive in there. But, you know, you do that and you, there's a cost to pay for it because people can have long memories, and I think we are wise to sort of just try to work collaboratively. And that really bore fruit later on when we grew and started working more with city and county and state government on things that we could be reliable and not just firebrands, you know?

[27:15] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah, I would say that, you know, sometimes we would, you know, maybe do a walk through and identify if there's anything critical there. But we weren't the ones going in front of the room and making a lot of public statements. Anything we did was basically science based, objective information. Yeah. And I do think just, I feel like I want to acknowledge, at least at the point I started, you know, how the different flavors of board leadership kind of help shape things. Because when I was first hired, Jim Richmond, who was a CEO, C suite at Stryker in those days, very business savvy. He was the chair of the board when I started. And then very quickly after I started, he got, they were doing a reorgan he got transferred and asked to run a division in New Jersey. So pretty quickly after that, you know, Jim, of course, was very business savvy. He was going to be very instructive, I'll use that word. And he had to leave town. And Carol Burch, who was the loveliest soul in the world, was the incoming, then vice chair, to take over. So I went from somebody who was intimidating to Carol, who has just totally had my back, you know, helped smooth things out with the board. And after being with her for a couple years, somebody said, who do you think should be the next? And that's when I said Richard Brewer, because I knew he would be disciplined and he could be, helped me really get some things organized. So we got some of that business, I mean, network of really informed leaders like Doctor Batts and others engaged. And then after Richard was Becky Chia, a retired corporate attorney. So just doing that kind of back and forth and bringing different skill sets forward at different times from the board leadership standpoint, I think also made a really big difference. But the fact that our board had those kind of skills and they weren't alone, that could be tapped, was really impressive in those early days.

[29:28] THOMAS SPRINGER: Yeah, I was surprised. I figured it would be a lot of people who wanted to save land, right. And to see people from, we had accountants, cpas, you have attorneys, you had people who work in a business. We had people in higher education. But that sort of diversity helps with just networks in the broader community, you know, and that, I think just one thing to say about Richard, and we talked about this other night, but Richard, Richard's an academic, and I've worked in higher education some. And the focus when you're an academe, especially if you're doing research, is to focus on your research, to focus on getting your research grants, getting published. Those are all the incentives, and they're good incentives to do that work. But Richard was somebody who really the model of an academic, who was willing to take outreach, the community, and establish that organization to do some of the good work that he believed in as an ecologist. He was on the board of the kennels of Nature center, where I work now as vice president development. He helped start up a nature center, and these are two organizations that still stand. And had he been an academic who was focused mainly on getting published and getting research grants, that wouldn't have happened. I'm not saying that's a bad way to be in your career, because you have to be that Richards, his gift to the community to be able to establish these groups that have done so much good work. It really, really lives on, and you can see that. What, how many acres is it now? It's 18,000. He's protected. California Nature center is like 63 year old, 63 years old and going. But that's the calorie of people we had early on that helped set the tone for the organization.

[31:06] RENEE KIVIKKO: Yeah. It's interesting to me that all the different issues and goals and thresholds that you guys met in the early days, they just still continue on. Now they're just kind of at maybe more of a macrocosm, but it's still all the same kind of issues now. That's organization building. You're never done, you know, and bringing on new board members, getting fresh perspectives. All of it, all of it just is iterative. So, you know, somebody says, hey, we're done. I'm like, are you really? Organization building is forever. And with the commitments to the community, that's where we are. This is kind of a different question, but all three of us have worked in conservation for all of our professional lives. Do you think it's changed you in any way from maybe a trajectory you had before? Or maybe it's not changed, but it's shaped your view on things. Has it had an effect on you? I think for me, it just reminds me how important the long view is. You know, you just need to keep your eye on the ball. If, you know, that deal doesn't happen or something goes a little sideways, you just keep going because there's more to be done, and land is forever, and you just keep doing your best and just keep going. I think that's the. The biggest lesson I've had.

[32:49] THOMAS SPRINGER: I don't think I'd be who I am without finding community, people who have these interests that I do personally. That was enriching part, right? I love the outdoors. I love nature, love camping, love backpacking, love hiking and all that stuff. But I could probably identify about a half dozen trees, and it's in stripes. So you get to the point where you want to grow in your knowledge and care for the outdoor world in creation. And being around people who had that knowledge was incredible. To go on a field trip to people like Richard Brewer or somebody who can identify ten different bird calls while they're having a conversation, you know, and be able to cherry pick on that knowledge, and it gives you so much appreciation for your own property or what you walk through when you. When you're able to be enriched that way so that. That sense of sharing with people and with the volunteers is really powerful because each one of those people become sort of a disciple of what you want to do, right? So when their neighbor decides to spray all this stuff, true green stuff, on their lawn, they can nicely say, hey, you know, do you like having butterflies around? Do you like having lightning bugs? You know, and so the knowledge you have from working with these like minded people, that that really spreads as much the organization. And I think if you'll look at a lot of people who've been with Swimlik and they are in a lot of other parallel environmental groups around the community. And that's what made kalamazoo have such environmental legacy. It does is because these groups that sort of educate people to go out and go forth and prosper.

[34:16] RENEE KIVIKKO: Now, you just brought back a memory and all of these people with such great knowledge, whether it was a professional field or their hobby, but going out with a group of people and people looking up and doing the birds by collar, by sight, we had people looking down, doing all the, you had to make sure they were not walking in the same groups most of the time, somebody else listening for the herps, you know, the frogs and finding the salamanders. And it was just a really great team effort. And everybody appreciated what everybody else was doing. And hopefully the birders weren't stepping on the Columbine somebody else was trying to identify.

[34:52] THOMAS SPRINGER: Because when you're really into this stuff, it could be kind of lonely. People get tired of hearing after the first five minutes how enthralled you are about their latest wildflowers. So, you know, these could be niche interests. So you get a bunch of people, you can geek out with them, and that's great, you know.

[35:08] RENEE KIVIKKO: So I have to say that I was a little worried that I'd, you know, be a little flat footed since it's been over 20 years since I've been directly involved in the organization, although I've been watching it. But, you know, just being here, so many memories are coming back and it's been really fun spending some time with you guys, just remembering all of these things. And I could go on for another hour, but they're not going to let us do that.

[35:39] THOMAS SPRINGER: Looking I think, of the growth that I've had as a writer, as a person. There's Amelia who wrote three guide illustrated, three wonderful guidebooks on the natural world with John Eastman. Beautiful books, real seminal, important to me, you know, and it just wouldn't have been here without this. My part of this life would not have been filled. I wouldn't have written the books I had that I've written, I wouldn't know the stories. None of this stuff would have happened without this vehicle of a land trust and the community it created to bring people around that.

[36:11] RENEE KIVIKKO: I'm just really thankful that you guys both came in, and hearing you talk about the beginnings of the organization is just, I feel, a renewed inspiration. You know, we're organizations been together for a long time, over 30 years, and we're currently in one of those bumpy, bumpy times. And hearing you guys talk about all the passionate people who were there at the beginning, it re inspires me again. I feel reinvigorated about it. So thanks so much for coming in.

[36:42] THOMAS SPRINGER: My pleasure.

[36:43] RENEE KIVIKKO: Keep going. You can do it.