More Top Picks Routers
player ready...An Oak Park Arms resident with an extensive history as a conservationist said she’s not only been able to pursue her passion but made a career out of it as well.
Conservationist Lee Botts was the executive producer of the not-for-profit documentary “Shifting Sands: On the Path to Sustainability,” which was shown April 9 at the Oak Park Arms, 408 S. Oak Park Ave.
“I didn’t know you were a movie star,” Arms resident David Connell told Botts after the screening of the documentary.
An intimate crowd gathered for a screening of “Shifting Sands,” which explores the history of industrialization along the biodiverse dunes of the south shore in northwest Indiana, and the environmental efforts to preserve and clean up the dunes during the 20th century and beyond.
“It was a partnership, and a great deal of help from many sources,” Botts said of working on the documentary with director and producer Pat Wisniewski.
Botts has been a long-time advocate of conservation of the dunes and the Great Lakes. She was a staff member with the Environmental Protection Agency in its early days and worked for Harold Washington’s mayoral administration; she also was involved with the Save the Dunes Council, appointed to the Great Lakes Basin Commission and established the Lake Michigan Federation — now called the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
Additionally, she founded the Dunes Learning Center in Chesterton, Ind., where area children explore and learn about the dunes.
Growing up in Hyde Park, daughter Beth Botts vividly remembers Saturdays from her childhood spent sitting at a card table at a shopping center, helping her mother gather signatures for environmental petitions. Lee Botts was a local newspaper columnist writing about organic gardening “before the words organic gardening came up,” Beth Botts said.
“One of the things about mom is that a lot of people have worked for her and gone on to careers in environmental work,” Beth Botts said.
Lee Botts said educating people was the point of the film, as many aren’t aware of the significance of the dunes.
The region boasts 10 ecosystems along 45 miles of sandy shoreline, with a variety of life and terrain unlike anywhere else in the world, the documentary shares. As industrialization and steel mills left an heavy imprint upon the area, conservationists and others pursued state and national park status to protect the dunes.
“There is a strong feeling for the region, for the Great Lakes,” Botts said.
Botts said the documentary, which is scheduled to be shown on numerous public television channels, was screened at the Oak Park Public Library during March’s One Earth Film Festival, and afterward inspired a spirited discussion.
“We are getting a tremendous response from teachers,” Botts added.
During the brief discussion that followed the screening at the Arms, some mentioned the current presidential administration’s proposed cuts to agencies like the EPA and the effects that may have on areas like the dunes.
“We can’t have any simple answers for it in this room. This is big stuff,” Connell said.
For more information on the documentary , visit www.shiftingsandsmovie.com.
Caitlin Mullen is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press.
More Top Picks Best Weighted Blankets For Sensory Processing Disorder