Andy Larsen, retired executive director at Riveredge Nature Center, was committed naturalist

Andy Larsen banded migratory birds, boiled maple sap for syrup, and planted seeds of native prairie plants, as well as the seeds of environmental awareness in tens of thousands of people, at the Riveredge Nature Center over his 32-year career there as a naturalist and its first executive director.

Larsen was the central force in building Riveredge from its founding in 1968 to a 379-acre complex of forest, wetland and prairie communities visited by tens of thousands each year. He died Friday of complications of Parkinson's disease at 78.

He died at his Cedarburg home in hospice care, his wife, Judy, said. A memorial celebration is planned for November.

"It is no stretch to say that Riveredge, as we know it today, would not exist without the immense sacrifice, passion and devotion of Andy and his family," nature center staff said in a statement. "Everything you see at Riveredge today can be traced directly to the work of Andy and the dedicated group of volunteers he inspired and led."

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Larsen was hired in 1969 to work at the fledgling nature center along the Milwaukee River near Newburg in Ozaukee County. He was as anxious to return to the Midwest as the Whitefish Bay Garden Club was anxious to hire staff and get things going, Judy said. The garden club founded the center in 1968.

At the time, the Larsens were living in Spring Valley, N.Y., where he was director of the Lakeside School nature center.

"But his heart was in the Midwest," Judy said.

The path that Larsen took from his boyhood home in Fond du Lac to Riveredge meandered as much as the Milwaukee River does in its twists and turns through the nature center and southeastern Wisconsin.

The couple met at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn., and graduated in 1961. From there, Andy Larsen completed a master's degree in forestry from the Yale School of Environmental Studies.

The couple then joined the Peace Corps and were sent to southern Brazil where they helped establish the equivalent of 4-H clubs in communities there. They returned to the U.S. in 1965, and Andy Larsen was hired by Lakeside School.

Four years later, friends in Wisconsin told him about the proposed nature center in Ozaukee County.

He put down roots as deep as any of the prairie plants at Riveredge, where he put volunteers to work and trained them to teach others.

"From time spent walking along railroad tracks throughout southern Wisconsin in order to collect remnant prairie seed used to establish the prairies at Riveredge, to pioneering the inquiry-based education style that still is used today to engage the curiosity of children and adult learners alike, his legacy will forever continue in every living thing on this land and in every person that comes to be awed, renewed, and inspired by those living things," the Riveredge staff's statement said.

"His favorite saying was 'everything is connected to everything else,' " Judy Larsen said.

That was played out by his routine banding of migratory birds, particularly the warblers that would nest in southeastern Wisconsin in summer before returning to Central America for the winter, she said.

Later, he worked with the Milwaukee Public Museum on establishing environmental education programs at the Tirimbina Rain Forest Center in Costa Rica.

Eric Larsen, a son who has become an arctic explorer, said his father fought Parkinson's disease for 30 years. Andy Larsen could identify birds, plants, rocks, or insects from anywhere on the planet and offer a lengthy description of its role in the ecosystem, his son said.

"He wanted nothing more to inspire others to better understand their connection to our planet," Eric Larsen said.

In addition to wife Judy and son of Boulder, Colo., he is survived by a daughter, Libby, of Germantown; a sister, Mimi Larsen Becker, of Hudson, Ohio; and four grandchildren.