Events

This showing of Hometown Habitat: Stories of Bringing Nature Home is part of the Michigan Tech Sustainability Film Series and funded by the Keweenaw Wild Ones.

For the last several decades, global bird and insect populations have been plummeting. Unlike many looming environmental catastrophes, however, these can be addressed in part by individuals willing to make a difference in their yards and communities. The solution: change the way we approach landscaping. In Hometown Habitat, renowned entomologist and best-selling author Douglas Tallamy invites us to incorporate native plants into our yards and cityscapes, where they provide life-saving "hometown habitat" for pollinators, birds and other wildlife. Filmmaker Catherine Zimmerman traveled around the U.S. to visit hometown habitat heroes and film their stories of community commitment to conservation landscaping. Zimmerman shares these stories to re-awaken and re-define our relationship with nature—and perhaps inspire us to create our own hometown habitats.

The showing is free. A donation of $5 is requested to help defray costs of the Sustainability Film Series.

About the filmmaker
Catherine Zimmerman, an award-winning director of photography, is a documentary filmmaker working primarily on education and environmental issues. Her environmental videos include global warming documentaries for CNN Presents and New York Times Television; Save Rainforests/Save Lives, Freshfarm Markets, Wildlife Without Borders: Connecting People and Nature in the Americas, and America’s Sustainable Garden: United States Botanic Garden.

Catherine is a certified horticulturist and landscape designer-based SW Ohio. She is accredited in organic land care through the Northeast Organic Farmers Association and has designed and taught a course in organic landscaping for the USDA Graduate School Horticulture program. Catherine hopes her projects will help fire up the movement toward making natural landscapes the new landscaping norm.

The Sustainability Film Series is cosponsored by Friends of the Land of Keweenaw, Lake Superior Stewardship Initiative, College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, Keweenaw Unitarian Universalist Fellowship, MTU Sustainability Demonstration House, Keweenaw Land Trust, and the Department of Social Sciences Sustainability Sciences Program.