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 Valley Stewardship Network grew from the local steering committee of the Trout Unlimited Home Rivers Initiative in cooperation with Community Conservation, Inc. of Gays Mills. This group met from 1997 to 1999 and they provided GIS computers, software, local data layers and teacher training to eight local Kickapoo watershed schools and also drafted a final Kickapoo Management Plan. The group envisioned a citizen driven, non-regulatory organization, operating neighbor to neighbor, as the path to grassroots success in preserving the quality of life in the Kickapoo Watershed. VSN is that group and was incorporated in October of 2000.
VSN is continuing the ethic and work of this founding group by developing an information and mapping distribution system for citizens of the rural townships within the four watershed counties—Crawford, Monroe, Richland and Vernon. VSN is actively involved in land use planning community outreach and education.
The Kickapoo Citizen Water Monitors sample sites along the Kickapoo and its feeder streams, working with local labs and water chemistry specialists, to establish baseline water quality data and to better identify possible threats to continued water quality.
Biological diversity inventories are planned to augment the general data layers in our GIS systems and to assist landowners in managing biodiversity.
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