The Eagle Bluff Environmental Leaning Center, near Lanesboro, Minnesota, recently hosted a conference sponsored by the Minnesota Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology that promoted the use of landscape level partnerships in watershed conservation.

The 5^th annual conference of the Minnesota Chapter of the Society for Conservation Biology (SCB) met March 8-9 at the Eagle Bluff Environmental Learning Center near historic Lanesboro.  This popular, year-round, “bluff country” destination is perched in a hardwood forest that is bisected by the scenic Root River in Fillmore County.  The quiet winter solitude of this isolated but comfortable educational campus provided a relaxed atmosphere where conference attendees from academia, business, and government could contemplate and discuss roles they could play to help attain common watershed conservation goals through landscape level partnerships.  Operating upon a premise that “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts”, participants at this retreat-like gathering were challenged to creatively think of how to combine the interests and expertise of the organizations they represent with those of others, over various spatial scales, to attain greater watershed protection than any single entity could achieve individually.

This meeting provided an appropriate forum for Mark Steingraeber, a fishery biologist at the La Crosse NFWCO, to introduce this pro-active, conservation-minded audience to the development and achievements of a recent partnership formed between the Service, Franciscan-Skemp Healthcare, and La Crosse County (WI).  These three seemingly disparate partners have worked together during the past year to help create a permanent program that can legitimately collect unwanted medications and disposes of them in an environmentally sound manner.  To date, this county administered program has collected and prevented more than three tons of unwanted medications from entering regional surface waters.  This effort has likewise prevented the possible misuse or abuse of these pharmaceutical products.  The multiple benefits of this partnership program to society (e.g., environmental safety, human health, crime prevention) drew interest from the SCB audience that included residents of Nebraska and Iowa, as well as Minnesota.  Considering recent news accounts of the widespread and persistent occurrence of a variety of medications at low concentrations in surface waters that supply drinking water for millions of Americans daily, the La Crosse Medication Disposal Program could serve as model for the development of other landscape level partnerships to help communities around the country conserve and protect the integrity of local watersheds.