"How your purchasing decisions can save our most endangered ecosystem"

Marshall Johnson, TEDxFargo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jn_HMRykQmw&feature=youtu.be

It is undeniable that native grasslands and wetlands are the most endangered ecosystem, along with its birds and range of ecosystem services. However, the tangibility of consumer effects on the loss of these lands is sometimes lost on both conservationists and consumers themselves. In his TEDx talk, Marshall Johnson speaks on the power of consumer decisions to save the world’s “most endangered ecosystem.”

Marshall Johnson, the featured speaker in the TEDx talk is the Executive Director of Audubon Dakota and Vice President of the National Audubon Society. Like many other successful conservation experts, Johnson’s team has focused on creating community-based solutions to land loss. His goal is simple: win-win alignment. This alignment requires solutions that conserve animals, plants, and the lands they inhabit, but still work for ranchers and consumers. The program Johnson leads, the Audubon Dakota’s Urban Woods and Prairie Initiative, boasts the title of the largest urban conservation program in the Northern Great Plains.

Five years ago, Johnson and his colleagues hatched the idea of an Audubon seal: a certification found on food products that certifies that the product was grown on Audubon certified “bird-friendly” land. Johnson states that everybody wins: consumers are confident in buying food that helps the environment, ranchers gain added appeal for their products, and grassland/wetland ecosystems remain protected and healthy.

For more information on the Audubon consumer certification seal: https://www.audubon.org/conservation/ranching