“I’ve met a ton of cool people who probably wouldn’t have come here otherwise.”

Chris Steincamp is branch director for the Riverside Urban Ecology Center. He has been working to strengthen the relationship between the community and nature for nearly 10 years now.

Holly Garber: Can you give me a little bit of a brief overview of the Urban Ecology Center?

Chris Steincamp: Here at the Urban Ecology Center, our mission is to connect people in cities to nature and each other. We’ve got three locations here in Milwaukee. Right now we’re in the Riverside Park location, which was our first location. We run school programs with about 60 Milwaukee Public Schools. We run a few after school programs, adult adventure programs, and biking, kayaking and rock climbing events. We have a very committed community of volunteers who help us with our stewardship efforts in the park. We also do wildlife research as well and the parks that we manage. And then additionally, we operate free public community centers. So that’s where we’re sitting right now. We’re always open to the public whenever we’re here, and people can come in and enjoy the space. And we have a number of community groups that meet here to work on various projects related to nature and sustainability.

Holly Garber: How did the Urban Ecology Center get its start?

Chris Steincamp: About 20 to 25 years ago, from what I understand, there was a group of community members that were concerned about the trajectory of Riverside Park to the natural space itself. And from what I understand, there was a history of some criminal activity happening in the park. There was proposed development to actually sell off part of the park to a private developer and develop housing units there. The community group banded together to block that development and keep this space in the public domain, but also natural space. And they realized one of the best ways to do that was actually to use it for environmental community education because they started bringing students from Riverside High School and other local schools into the space learning about it. And not only did that help prevent that development from happening, but it also sparked this idea of a community learning space.

Holly Garber:  How does Doors Open Milwaukee affect this space? How many years have you been participating in Doors Open Milwaukee?

Chris Steincamp: I think we’ve done it ever since it started, which I don’t actually know how long doors open has been going, but we’ve participated every year. I’ve met a ton of cool people who probably wouldn’t have come here otherwise. We’re always free and open, so people can always come here, but the promotion that Doors Open Milwaukee does actually brings some new folks through our doors, asking, you know, who we are and what we do. So it’s just been a really nice day to see some new faces.

Holly Garber: What does a typical day here look like?

Chris Steincamp: I’ll tell you what many days look like, I don’t know if it’s very typical, but many days start probably around 8:30 a.m. We have buses full of students from schools in the area who are arriving. We provide transportation for these field trips, we’ve got these great little buses, we go to the school, pick up the kids and bring them back here. They’ll have a field trip related to natural sciences, geology. natural spaces in the park. So that’s usually happening pretty much all morning. We’ve got two or three of those each morning. At noon, we open to the public. And once we’re open to the public, it’s just kind of this general vibe, a bunch of people hanging out, meeting each other working on various projects. In the afternoon, we have another group of field trips. And then when the school day is over, if it’s a Tuesday we have an after-school program called Nature Explorers. If it’s a Wednesday we’ve got a group meeting here. They call themselves Mindful Mending. It’s just a community mending group. And then those groups are usually pretty active in the center until we close around six.

Holly Garber: Does the Urban Ecology Center have any big plans coming up?

Chris Steincamp: We have a few big events coming up soon. October 7 we’re launching a new series called take it outside days, which is when we’re making all of our canoes available for the public to come and just paddle the river. So we’re going to lead these little workshops on, you know, canoe safety, j-strokes and c-strokes, and then put people on canoes in the river, free  and open to everybody. So that’ll be October 7, and then the next day, October 8, is one of our annual events called Hike Milwaukee, just to try to get people to come back to the Milwaukee River Valley, both on this side of the river, but then also on the other side of the river.