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Welcome to he
Healthy Ecosystems / Healthy Communities Website!
 The
The Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities project is designed to help citizens appraise their local natural resources. The knowledge gained is then used to develop short- and long-term plans and activities to protect, sustain, or restore their resources for the future. A measurement or appraisal of your community’s natural resources is a way to “balance” your environmental checkbook. Loss of resources or reduced quality or quantity of those resources, affects every aspect of your community's health.
The HEHC Vision. . .
Our vision for the Healthy Ecosystems-Healthy Communities Project is citizen-lead planning and actions to sustain environmental quality and community health. |
A measurement or appraisal of your community’s natural resources is a way to “balance” your checkbook of resources or supplies. For example, if a community had poor quality drinking water or no water supplies for new businesses or farms to irrigate with, how would that affect economic growth and community expansion?
The PRIDE program is currently working with three pilot communities in a public engagement process of appraising the health of their local resources and identifying local solutions that are right for
their community’s environment, health, economy, quality of life, culture, and history. This
website will share the tools and resources developed for this work for any community to use. So please, take a look around and check back often. We will be adding new information regularly. |
| What is
the relationship between your community and its ecosystem?
The health of
a community and its local ecosystem is dependent on the intricate
relationship between the people that live there and how they
interact with their surroundings–the land, water, plants, animals,
and natural resources. By definition, the word “resource” means
reserve, supply, or store; so the health of a community is
dependent on the health of these natural “supplies.”
Water,
incredibly rich soils, lush grasslands and a wealth of wildlife
enticed settlers to Kansas over 150 years ago and supported our
state’s agricultural economy and heritage. However, as with any
limited store of supplies, using them in a way that sustains the
quantity and the quality is necessary to ensure that these
resources will be there for us and for our children in the future.
But how do we know what’s left of the “reserves, supplies, or
stores” that our community was built upon? How do we measure the
health of our community’s natural resources?
The Healthy
Communities / Healthy Ecosystems Project is here to help!
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