SPARTANBURG, S.C. – The Heritage Preserve manager for the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources’ Heritage Trust Program will be the guest speaker Thursday, March 6, at Wofford College.

Johnny Stowe will speak on “Fire in the Southland: The Natural and Cultural Heritage of Woods-Fire in Southeastern North America” in the 7 p.m. lecture in the Olin Teaching Theater in the Franklin W. Olin Building on Wofford’s campus. The program is free and open to the public.

The is a Tyson Family Lecture on the Preservation and Restoration of Southern Ecosystems.

Stowe, a native of the ridge and valley physiographic region of northwest Georgia and northeast Alabama, has been the Heritage Preserve manager since 1996, restoring and managing longleaf pine sandhills and wet savannas, switchcane and other grassland species, and wetlands ecosystems, such as bottomland hardwood forests, Atlantic white cedar bogs and pocosins.

Stowe lived in a tent in Alabama for eight months after leaving high school in 1978 and later lived in a cabin in Georgia for 10 years. He attended what is now known as Georgia Highlands College, and earned his B.S. and master’s degrees at the University of Georgia.

The Tyson Family Lecture on the Preservation and Restoration of Southern Ecosystems, established in 2012 by Dr. George Tyson, a 1972 Wofford graduate, within the purview of Wofford’s environmental studies program, is an annual lectureship devoted to issues related to the preservation, restoration, and sustainability of Southern ecosystems. The speakers reflect the entire range of the multi-disciplinary approach of environmental studies and may include individuals from academia, business, industry, government, the arts or the non-profit sector.