{"id":39791,"date":"2025-10-15T09:08:20","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T13:08:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=39791"},"modified":"2025-10-16T15:21:27","modified_gmt":"2025-10-16T19:21:27","slug":"furman-alumni-present-at-national-land-conservation-conference","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/furman-alumni-present-at-national-land-conservation-conference\/","title":{"rendered":"Furman alumni share work on water quality at National Land Conservation Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

Two Furman University alumni shared their work extending land conservation work into clean water initiatives at Rally: The National Land Conservation Conference.<\/p>\n

Hosted by the Land Trust Alliance<\/a> from Sept. 3-6 in Cleveland, Ohio this year, Rally brought together land conservationists from around the world to network and learn from one another. The Environmental Protection Agency invited Furman alumni Katie Hottel \u201912 and Rebecca Wade \u201919 from the Greenville conservation nonprofit and land trust Upstate Forever<\/a>, to present their team\u2019s work protecting water quality.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been focusing a lot on restoration of water quality, but we asked the question what if we could also work on the protection of water quality,\u201d said Hottel, Upstate Forever\u2019s Clean Water and GIS Manager.<\/p>\n

\"Two

Staff from Greenville-based nonprofit Upstate Forever attended and presented at Rally 2025: The National Land Conservation Conference. From left: Wade, Hottel, Scott Park and Chris Starker.<\/p><\/div>\n

Rally<\/a> brought together more than 1,000 conservationists, and Hottel and Wade presented their work to a session of about 70 people. They shared how they pool public and private funds to implement land management best practices to protect water sources. These could include preventing cattle contamination of streams, or repairing septic systems to prevent seepage \u2013 and is paid for using a mix of public and private dollars, Wade said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no one way to do conservation here,\u201d she said. \u201cThere are a lot of organizations starting to plan for water protection and they have different strategies for it, but we actually do that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hottel knew she wanted to work in sustainability practices before she came to Furman, but during her time the university didn\u2019t have the sustainability science major<\/a> it does now. Faculty and staff worked with her to tailor an Earth and environmental sciences<\/a> degree to include classes in environmental writing and policy. Prior to working at Upstate Forever, she was an intern with the U.S. Endowment for Forestry and Communities. Furman funds students for summer internship and research<\/a> experiences who would otherwise be doing unpaid work, and Hottel said her internship helped pave the way to her current role.<\/p>\n

A transformative experience during a philosophy class at Furman got then-biology major Wade to add philosophy as a second major. She dedicated herself to seeking memorable experiences and engaging fully with her education. Trips like the Wild Semester<\/a> study away program led Wade to her passion for conservation, and she \u201cwent on every study away<\/a> that I could fit into my schedule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Furman gave them the foundation they needed, and now Hottel and Wade are building on those early experiences. Hottel said after their presentation, she\u2019s received emails from other conservationists asking how to implement the strategies Upstate Forever has been employing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels very rewarding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Katie Hottel \u201912 and Rebecca Wade \u201919 with Upstate Forever found their footing at Furman and their work in clean water conservation has been recognized by the EPA.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":401,"featured_media":39666,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,19,37,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-biology","category-earth-environmental-and-sustainability-sciences","category-philosophy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/401"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39791"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39826,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39791\/revisions\/39826"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}