The Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation has selected Zakory Dean Ward, a graduate of Moravia High School, as a land stewardship intern for the summer of 2009. Ward is an architecture student at Iowa State, and hopes to purse a career in implementing green designs in architecture.

Ward and nine other land stewardship interns will spend the summer traveling and working together, removing invasive plant species and planting native Iowa species in INHF’s prairie preserves and other habitats. These preserves are owned by INHF or by private landowners who have committed to permanent preservation of natural environments.

Ward said the experience gained this summer will help him throughout his career.

“I plan to implement green design in my different buildings that I help work on, so this is kind of all about that too, just a different side,” he said. “I think this stuff is important, what we’re doing.”

Ward was selected from a field of 38 applicants from across the Midwest. Joe McGovern, INHF’s land stewardship program director, said the interns are vital to the organization’s mission.

“It would be nearly impossible to meet our objectives without the land management intern crew that we have,” McGovern said. “We’re constantly trying to get a lot of work done, but it’s more than that. Through their hard work, we get to take time to educate them about how to do things, introducing them to new methods and private landowners that they may not have experienced before.”

INHF is a natural conservation organization, dedicated to the preservation and restoration of the state’s environmental treasures. Its past projects in Appanoose County include Sedan Bottoms and the Faust Property.

Ward’s internship is sponsored by Richard “Sandy” Rhodes.  Through a gift in his estate, Rhodes funded INHF stewardship and conservation projects to save the object of his lifelong passion: the prairie.

For more information about INHF, visit www.inhf.org or call (515) 288-1846. Information on INHF’s internship program can be found at http://www.inhf.org/aboutinternships.htm.