| Increasingly, conservation scientists and practitioners have recognized that the inclusion of human communities into biodiversity and landscape preservation efforts is necessary. This requires an understanding of the culture, worldviews, and ethics of a community, as well as how to integrate the human community into the landscape.;In order to understand this integration, the Town of Dunn, Wisconsin, was chosen as a model for study. Since the early 1970s, the Town of Dunn has reformed its local government, engaged citizens in cultural and ecological inventories, engaged in practices specifically designed to foster human community, written and adopted a land use plan and ordinances that preserve natural and agricultural systems, and acted to preserve those systems in perpetuity through a purchase of development rights program.;A case study methodology was used to research and understand the social processes that have occurred in the Town of Dunn. Thirteen residents intimately involved in the reforms were interviewed. Land use reforms in the Town of Dunn were the result of a grassroots effort to oust an unresponsive government and put in officials who would listen to and engage the people of the town. New commissions and committees were formed from among the citizens most interested in achieving the desired results, and these commissions did not include any persons with vested interests or unusual expertise. This was a bottom up, locally controlled process that reflected and reinforced a land ethic that can be said to have been published in the lives and landscape of the town. It appears that the land use reforms were dependent on a sense of community having been reestablished in the town during the early part of the reform efforts. |
