Salt Lake Area LDSES will team with the Provo Utah LDSES Chapter at Utah Valley University on September 8, 2023, to staff a table and share our Latter-day Saint Earth Stewardship mission and resources with attendees at this event. If you are interested in volunteering at our table, contact us at SLC@LDSEarthStewardship.org.
The annual International Coastal Cleanup Day at Great Salt Lake State Park is scheduled for Saturday, September 16 from 9:00 AM to 12:00 PM. Volunteers will remove trash from Great Salt Lake’s shores and tributaries to restore critical wildlife habitat and improve water quality. Please wear clothes you can get dirty, shoes appropriate for mud and sand, and pack a rain jacket. Gloves, trash bags, and other cleanup supplies will be provided, but feel free to bring any of your own supplies. Schedule: 9:00 am – 9:30 am: Meet at Great Salt Lake State Park 9:30 am-12:00 pm: Cleanup at designated sites This is a volunteer event where we are teaming with Friends of Great Salt Lake and Great Salt Lake Audubon. Please register for this event Here If you have additional questions or need transportation to this event, contact Shelly Parkin at shellyrn83@gmail.com
Rally to Save Our Great Salt Lake on Saturday, January 20th at 3 pm on the south steps of the Utah State Capitol. Many community service organizations will be supporting this event, sponsored by Save Our Great Salt Lake. @saveourgsl
Come “let your light shine” (Matthew 5:16) for Great Salt Lake during the 2024 Utah State Legislative Session! On Tuesday, January 23rd from 5 to 6 PM, LDSES will be keepers of the Great Salt Lake Vigil at the Capitol 2024, to celebrate and amplify awareness of our love for the Great Salt Lake. We will meet on the east steps of the Utah State Capitol at 5:00 PM and carry brine shrimp puppets (see pictured above), flocks of birds, and other lake species around the Capitol, walking clockwise until 6:00 PM. For those of you who have an LDSES bandana, be sure to wear it. This event is appropriate for adults and children. We encourage adults to bring kids and grandkids. We need many hearts and hands! Sign up here if you can support our group on January 23. Other groups will be hosting vigils daily throughout the legislative session, which ends on March 1st. If you are unable to participate in our January 23 vigil, we encourage you to support other 1-hour vigils that will be happening every morning and evening during January and February. Also, LDSES will be keepers of the February 14 vigil so watch your email for more on that as well. We will be glad to be with you on the steps!
On Wednesday, February 14th LDSES will be keepers of the Great Salt Lake Vigil at the Capitol 2024, to celebrate and amplify awareness of our love for the Great Salt Lake. We will be delivering a “Thank you for your work to save The Great Salt Lake!” valentines (shown above) to every House and Senate member, as well as to Governor Cox’s office. 4:30 PM: We’ll meet on the East steps of the Utah State Capitol and hand-deliver Valentines to Governor Cox’s office 5:00 – 6:00 PM We’ll meet on the east steps of the Utah State Capitol to carry brine shrimp puppets, flocks of birds, and other lake species around the Capitol, walking clockwise until 6:00 PM. For those of you with an LDSES bandana, be sure to wear it! Sign up here. This event is appropriate for adults and children. We encourage adults to bring kids and grandkids. We need many hearts and hands! Be sure to Like and Share our Instagram and Facebook Posts for this event.
The Stegner Center’s 29th annual symposium will focus on the challenge of transitioning to a carbon neutral energy system and related sustainability, environmental, and human health concerns. The symposium will address practical questions, like facility siting, supply chain adequacy, and permitting reform, as well as concerns about environmental justice, public participation and transparency, and implementing meaningful strategies to avoid, reduce and minimize impacts to communities and ecological resources. LDS Earth volunteers will support our table at this event. LDSES table volunteers will get free admission to both days of the event. For information on volunteering, contact us at slc@ldsearchstewardship.org.
Here’s a great Family Night opportunity. The Great Salt Lake Interfaith Action Coalition and Congregation Kol Ami have invited LDSES to attend a free screening of the award-winning 22-minute film “Whales of the High Desert.” If you are not familiar with the film, that started with the director looking to study the myth of whales in the Great Salt Lake, here is a nice story from the KSL News and a RadioWest podcast on the film. Register for this event here. Following the showing, the director of the film will be available for questions and discussion. Join us!!!
LDSES will be promoting this Earth Day learning event, led by the ThinkAgain FaithAgain foundation. Come hear from a veteran steward of Utah water sustainability on his extensive work for the environment. Details on the location and registration for this event here. You can attend in-person or via Zoom. Over history, including more recent local history, some rivers have dried up or been so over-used they no longer reach the ocean. We will explore the consequences not just to the environment but to humans when this happens. When we think of Earth Day, we often think of air and ocean pollution, growing garbage pits, recycling, the damage from mineral extraction, the harm done by our industrial food complex, etc. But we too often forget the lifeblood of most civilizations throughout all time—fresh water from rivers. The last several years Utahans have had a wake-up call with our shrinking Great Salt Lake. But those below Lake Powel and Mead are in peril of losing power as well as having enough water to drink for a growing population. And this our just our species’ concerns. What of all the others being affected? Richard will help us explore ways we can all use water more equitably for the benefit of all. Rich Ingebretsen is the founder of the Glen Canyon Institute and is also the vice chair of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. He founded Wilderness Medicine of Utah to teach back-country medicine and is the owner of River Bound Adventures an education river trip company. Rich graduated from the University of Utah with a master’s in physics and a PhD in Physics Education. He received an MD degree from the University of Utah School of Medicine in 1993. He completed a residency in internal medicine and a fellowship in emergency medicine in Salt Lake City. He is now a clinical instructor of medicine at the University of Utah School of Medicine and a professor in the Department of Physics. He is an attending emergency room physician and practices internal medicine. He is the program director of the wilderness program at the University of Utah School of Medicine and is the medical director of Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Search and Rescue. He was the Associate Dean for Student Affairs for the College of Science in 2014 and 2015.
Join us for an interfaith forum celebrating Earth Day, featuring leaders from Salt Lake area LDS, Jewish, Muslim, and Catholic congregations. More details to come. The Creation Care Coalition is comprised of volunteers from Latter-day Saint Earth Stewardship, Mormon Environmental Stewardship Alliance, Citizens Climate Lobby LDS Action Team, and Mormon Women for Ethical Government.
We will be staffing a table at the 2024 Restore Conference to promote awareness of LDSES. Volunteers are needed! We have a “first-come-first-served” limited number of complimentary passes to those staffing our table at the event. Email us at SLC@ldsearthstewardship.org if you can support our tabling. As an event sponsor, we invite all LDSES members to utilize our 20% off discount code to register for Restore. Go to the Restore Event Registration page and use the discount code LDSES.
LDSES is supporting Friends of Great Salt Lake with volunteers for this activity. If you were rained out of our LDSES Earth Day activity at Great Salt Lake earlier this year, please join us for this one! You can register for this event here.
Join us at Utah Valley University on Friday, October 7 to table at this event! House Member John Curtis (R-UT) leads this event that includes elected officials from across the U.S. Katharine Heyhoe, the Chief Scientist at the Nature Conservancy and professor of climate science at Texas Tech University will be the featured speaker this year. (you may recall that Katharine was the keynote speaker at the LDSES Fall Forum a couple of years ago) If you can volunteer to support our table at this event, please contact Mike Maxwell at mike@ldsearthstewardship.org. You can register for a table shift here. For more details on this event, see our Facebook Events page or website calendar.