DANCING CAT PRODUCTIONS PRESENTS
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7LTTEDQ
Back To Nature
Jonathan Schechter wants to keep
West Bloomfield parks green
and undisturbed.
A SOLO
PIANO CONCERT
white, male department, Schechter
encountered "ethnic problems and
harassment."
He left Bloomfield on Dec. 4,
hen you drive north on
Orchard Lake Road,
1996, and sued the township and
individual firefighters. The case was
chances are you don't
notice the green grass,
settled last December. Terms were not
trees and brush off the sides of the
disclosed.
While working for the fire depart-
road. And you probably won't see,
ment, Schechter spent his time off
hidden behind some houses further
doing "naturalist stuff," including con-
back in West Bloomfield, the parks
tract work for West Bloomfield
and marshes that make up part of this
Township.
affluent suburb.
Growing up as the son of a biology
Jonathan Schechter wants to keep it
professor at the City College of New
that way.
York, Schechter says the influence of
"A non-developed land is a
nature started at home. From the age
resource," says the new naturalist/park
of 5, his father would take
ranger who started work
It him from the family
ing in early August for
2 home in rural
the West Bloomfield
74 Connecticut to places like
Parks and Recreation
Woods Hole, Mass., to
Department. "Most peo-
look at starfish and
ple don't see beyond
octopi.
what's there."
High school provided
The over-40 Schechter
"no practical channel" for
(who, with a smile, won't
his love of nature, but
be specific about his age)
college was another story.
says "Judaism plays a
In the progressive under-
role" in his love of nature.
graduate program at
His membership in the
Goddard College in
Society for Protection of
Plainfield, Vt., Schechter
Nature in Israel, the
found
"opportunities to
Jewish state's version of
Jonathan Schechter really
pursue
something not tra-
the Audubon Society,
gets into his job as a nat-
ditional
— Jewish boys
"probably made Judaism
uralist.
don't want to be park
more important to me,"
rangers," he explains.
he says.
Schechter came to Michigan in
After that, it was on to the
University of Washington's College of
1976, fresh out of forestry school at
Forest Resources, where he took "more
the University of Washington in
traditional management-type classes"
Seattle. "In debt and looking for
work," he started helping at a friend's
like forest fire ecology.
horse farm in Buffalo, N.Y., until he
For his master's thesis, Schechter
landed a job as assistant naturalist at
spent six months at a wildlife refuge
Cranbrook in Bloomfield Hills. By the
with a skeleton staff in Burns, Ore.,
end of his tenure, Schechter had
designing an "auto tour plan" for visi-
become in charge of the program.
tors who want to drive through parks.
But it's been a while since he had a
That plan included ways for visitors to
see what they wanted to see without
full-time hand in parks management.
After the Cranbrook stint, Schechter
disturbing the natural setting.
"Usually doing something naturally
spent 13 years as a paramedic in the
Bloomfield Township Fire
is better than saying, 'Don't go,"'
Department. The only Jew in an all
explains Schechter, who re-routed dri-
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN
Staff Writer
Vir
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