There will be two two-week camp sessions, weekdays 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The first session runs from July 6-17, and the second from July 20-31. The cost for each session will be $216. Sliding scale tuition and scholarship funding are available for qualified campers.

Children attending the Auburn Land Lab Summer Camp will explore the natural world, work in the community gardens and enjoy a variety of games and activities. Four ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, including sophomore Bridget Huber of Wells, junior Matt Schlobohm of West Springfield, Mass., sophomore Ethan Miller of Allentown, Pa., and sophomore Laurie McKenzie of Portland, Ore., will work with the children. The program also will present community members, including master gardeners and storytellers.

“We’re interested in sparking a sense of wonder about the natural world in children,” Huber said. “We also want to encourage them to feel a sense of empowerment, that it’s up to them to protect the environment.”

Grants to ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College from the Howard Hughes Foundation will fund part of the camp operations and student salaries. Additional funding for ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ student salaries is provided by the ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ College Center for Service Learning.

The fair features workshops and presentations by representatives from several environmental groups throughout the state and guided nature walks of the Auburn Land Lab grounds. On Friday, students from the Auburn school system will share work they have been doing at the lab with the Community Sustainable Garden Program, GLOBE, Trailbuilding and Adopt-A-Salmon. Local organically grown food will be available, and a silent auction of goods from local craftspeople will be held Saturday.

Several ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ students, faculty and staff will read from age-appropriate books that celebrate the environment and raise environmental awareness. ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ will donate several children’s books with environmental themes to each public library at the “read-ins,” including The Lorax by Dr. Seuss, One Less Fish by Kim Toft, Meeting Trees by Scott Russell Sanders, There’s Still Time by Mark Galan, North American Endangered Species by Colleayn Mastin, A Log’s Life by Wendy Pfeffer, Can We Save Them? by David Dobson and Will We Miss Them? by Alexandra Wright.

The Ouje-Bougoumou Cree First Nation in the James Bay Cree Territory of northern Quebec was selected by the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements as one of the 100 Best Practices in Improving Living Environments. A single boiler that burns wood waste products from nearby sawmills provides hot water to all the village’s homes and buildings, which feature energy efficient design. The village also was recognized with a U.N. 50 Communities Award for exemplifying the principles of the United Nations and sustainable development.

The conference begins at 8:30 a.m. with introductory remarks from John Smedley, associate professor of physics and director of the environmental studies program at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½, and Pamela Prodan, director of the Renewable Energy Assistance Project.

At 8:45 a.m. there will be a panel discussion on Northern Forest Energy Issues with John Banks of the Penobscot Nation; Ron Huber, director of the Coastal Waters Project; Jo Josephson, president of the Western Maine Chapter of the National Audubon Society; Bill Namagoose, executive director of the Grand Council of the Crees of Quebec; Susan Sargent, vice chair of the Maine Chapter of the Sierra Club; and Conrad Schneider of the Northeast Clean Power Campaign.

Following Chief Abel Bosum’s keynote address, there will be a panel discussion at 10:45 a.m. on Challenges in Energy Deregulation with David Foley and Sarah Holland of Holland and Foley Building Design; Conrad Heeschen, former state legislator and member of the Utilities and Energy Committee; John Joseph, professor of economics at Thomas College and former director of the State Energy Office; and Jane Livingston, communications consultant for the Cooperative Development Institute.

From 1 to 2:15 p.m. participants will meet in small groups to discuss energy avoidance and reduction, local and regional energy initiatives, the role of government in alternative energy projects and “green-power” issues. The forum concludes with a discussion on overcoming obstacles and organizing activist efforts.

Registration, including lunch, is $15 and $30 for industry and government employees. A limited number of scholarships for low-income activists and students are available by calling Pamela Prodan, director of the Renewable Energy Assistance Project, at 207-645-9330.

“Current logging practices on public national forests are destroying our natural heritage while costing the taxpayer millions from below-cost timber sales when there are alternatives,” said Stephan, currently a graduate student at Boise State University. “The ‘Big Wild’ of the Northern Rockies contains the most unprotected wilderness in the U.S. outside of Alaska, and it’s being sold off and destroyed by federally subsidized logging.”

Burnim and Stephan moved to the Northern Rockies and became involved in the Cove/Mallard forest protection campaign in central Idaho after seeing a similar presentation on illegal forest practices in 1996.

“I came out to Cove/Mallard base camp to learn the issues for myself,” said Burnim, a recent graduate of Colgate University. “Here in the last intact ecosystem in the lower 48 states, I saw the results of the U.S. Forest Service’s policy of ‘getting the cut out.’ This taxpayer subsidized clear cutting is devastating the public’s wilderness.”

Second Nature, a nonprofit organization whose mission is to advance human and environmental well-being through learning, works with faculty, administrators and student leaders at institutions of higher learning to promote and increase action that is environmentally just and sustainable across curriculum, research and all campus operations.

Cortese is corporate executive officer of Second Nature. Director of the Center for Environmental Management at Tufts University from 1984-93, he became the first dean of environmental programs at Tufts in 1989.  There he developed and coordinated 13 university-wide environmental programs, including the award-winning Tufts Environmental Literacy Institute.

The commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection from 1979-84, Cortese worked for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Public Health Service from 1969-76.

Cortese’s board and committee memberships include the EPA Science Advisory Board and the President’s Council on Sustainable Development. He received a bachelor’s degree and a master’s of science in environmental engineering from Tufts University  as well as a doctorate of science in environmental health from the Harvard School of Public Health.

In 1978, Billings represented Senator Muskie at the Law of the Sea negotiations in Geneva where, over a 12-day period and after extensive meetings with the U.S. and other delegations, treaty modifications were made which resulted in the protection of U.S. environmental laws.

In 1978, Billings staffed the “Muskie Mission” to the People’s Republic of China, a 17-day, nine-member Congressional trip of meetings and briefings in Shanghai, Peking, Hunan Province and Canton. Billings drafted the report to the President on the mission.

In 1979, Billings accompanied Senator Muskie on a special Presidential mission to Lisbon, Madrid, NATO, Warsaw, Kracow and Bonn. He participated in Muskie’s meetings with heads of state of the countries visited and also drafted reports to President Jimmy Carter on that mission.

As executive assistant to the Secretary of State, Billings traveled throughout the world with Secretary Muskie. In eight months, he participated in official visits to Brussels, Vienna, Ankara, Kuala Lampur, Mexico City and London, and was a part of the official party with President Carter in the state visit to Rome, the Economic Summit in Venice and the Ohira funeral in Tokyo.

Billings also participated in meetings with 55 foreign ministers and chiefs of state during the Secretary’s two-week participation in the United Nation’s deliberations in October 1980.

A 1959 graduate of the University of Montana at Missoula, Billings also did graduate work there. Subsequently, he worked as a reporter and organizer for farm groups in Montana and California, and for three years as a lobbyist for American Public Power Association in Washington, D.C.

He served on the Democratic Party Platform COmmittee Staff in 1968 and co chaired a Democratic National Committee task force on energy and the environment.

Billings received the 1990 Association of Metropolitan Sewerage Agencies’ Environment Award for outstanding environmental service. In 1981, he received the Philip A. Hart award from the Urban Environment Conference for his contributions to improvement in the quality of the urban environment.

A founding member of the Montgomery County Green Democrats, he is a member of the Montgomery County Democratic Forum.

Sheldon Krimsky, professor of urban and environmental policy at Tufts University, has received more than 15 grants including awards from the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. His research has focused on the linkages between science/technology, ethics/values and public policy. The author of five books including Genetic Alchemy: The Social History of the Recombinant DNA Controversy (MIT Press, 1982) and the forthcoming co-author of Agricultural Biotechnology and the Environment (University of Illinois Press), Krimsky has written more than 100 essays and reviews.

A consultant to the Presidential Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical and Behavioral Research and to the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, Krimsky served on the National Institutes of Health’s Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee from 1978-81. He also served on a special study panel for the American Civil Liberties Union that formulated a policy on civil liberties and scientific research. From 1988-92 he served as chairperson of the Committee on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility for the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Currently, Krimsky serves on the board of directors for the Council for Responsible Genetics and as a fellow of the Hastings Center.

Krimsky received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Brooklyn College, CUNY and Purdue University respectively, and a master’s degree and doctorate in philosophy from Boston University.

The lecture, “Are Environmental Chemicals Damaging Human Reproduction?: The Social and Scientific Origins of the Environmental Endocrine Hypothesis,” is sponsored jointly by the philosophy and biology departments and the Environmental Studies program at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½.

McKibben’s talk, Hope, Fear and the History of the Next 50 Years: An Environmentalist’s Perspective, is open to the public at no charge.

Formerly a staff writer for The New Yorker, McKibben also is the author of the books Hope, Human and Wild and The Age of Missing Information. He edited or co-authored the volumes Birch Browsings: A John Burroughs Reader and Twenty-Five Bike Tours in the Adirondacks.

His articles have appeared in such magazines as the Atlantic Monthly, Rolling Stone, Esquire and Outside. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993.

The annual Muskie Lecture at ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ is a tribute to Edmund S. Muskie, a 1936 ÀÖ²¥´«Ã½ graduate who in his 22 years in the U.S. Senate sponsored landmark environmental legislation.