Join Us for Our Next Coffee & Connect:

Wednesday, September 7, 2022 @ 1pm: Wolf Eradication and Management Policy as Critical Pedagogy with Karen Winter

Wolf eradication and management policy (WEMP) as critical pedagogy provides a unique, academically rigorous, transdisciplinary educational opportunity for high school and college students. Participants will explore the depth and complexity of the systems of WEMP in the context of a humane education model that calls for devising solutions of most benefit and least harm to all stakeholders, including nonhuman animals and the environment. The enmeshment of historical, cultural, political and ecological underpinnings of the issue will be deconstructed to reveal a values-based struggle central to the controversy, rooted in divergence about concepts such as fairness and justice. Understanding of these underpinnings will provide a basis for a critical analysis of wolf management policy including stakeholder influence in the political sphere and the ultimate manifestations in the field of wildlife management. Participants will discover that WEMP provides opportunities within multiple disciplines to devise units of instruction for engaging inquiry with great potential to inspire civic action.

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About the Presenter: Karen Winter found her life’s calling in humane education through a series of fortunate events. As a born animal lover, she longed to learn more about wildlife which led her to earn her bachelor’s in wildlife management. This presented possibilities in Africa where she served in two countries as a US Peace Corps Volunteer. In Burundi, she worked in conjunction with the Jane Goodall Institute to survey the chimpanzee population and then in Uganda where she assisted with the development of a mountain gorilla tourism program. It was through her work in Africa that she realized that education is the crucial link that inspires action. She created environmental education programs for villagers to encourage participation in agroforestry to preserve dwindling habitat, and for park guides to emphasize the need to protect the mountain gorillas from potential harm from tourism. Her passion for education was born. Eager to make it a career, Karen earned her master’s in education upon returning to the US in order to teach elementary school. She is currently pursuing an EdD with a specialization in “solutionary” humane education, and feels so fortunate to be a part of a collaborative program between Antioch University New England and the Institute for Humane Education. The “solutionary” model seeks to find solutions to problems that do the most good and least harm to people, nonhumans and the environment. Karen is also currently supporting student activists in Idaho in opposition to the recent wolf eradication legislation in that state.