Senior Environmental Engineer at Wetlands InitiativeDr. Kostel is the Wetlands Initiative’s senior environmental engineer and manages TWI’s scientific and research projects. Dr. Kostel serves as project manager on TWI’s farm-based constructed wetland projects. She has co-authored two peer-reviewed articles on precision conservation and farm-based wetlands’ nutrient removal potential. Dr. Kostel is also a member of the NRCS State Technical Committee and co-chair of the steering committee of the Mississippi River Network. Dr. Kostel earned her Ph.D. degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Northwestern University, an M.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Northwestern, and a B.S. degree in Civil Engineering from Ohio Northern University.

Applied Ecological Services, Inc., Brodhead, WI
Mr. Larson is a principal ecologist at Applied Ecological Services (AES) and a certified senior ecologist with the Ecological Society of America. During his 28-year tenure at AES, he has focused on wetland restoration and design, wetland construction and construction oversight, and vegetation/hydrology monitoring of mitigation sites. His experience at AES includes acting as project ecologist for The Nature Conservancy’s 7,200-acre Kankakee Sands wetland and prairie restoration in Indiana and a 575-acre wetland restoration project in Seneca Falls, New York. He has also been involved in over two dozen wetland mitigation banks in the Midwest, has recently permitted a wetland mitigation bank in Iowa and is currently preparing a mitigation banking instrument for a site in Wisconsin. Dr. Larson has been a lead scientist at AES in the ecological monitoring of hundreds of wetland restoration and mitigation projects. Additional areas of expertise include ecological restoration and management planning and design, environmental review documents, floristic analysis, land cover-type mapping, threatened and endangered species investigations, and stormwater management design for flood control and water quality. He has also completed over 300 wetland delineations throughout the Midwest. 

Partner with Hinshaw & Culbertson LLPMr. Sheldon has been engaged in the private practice of law, concentrating in environmental law, for more than 40 years, primarily on behalf of business clients.  He is a graduate of Harvard Law Schooland Amherst College.  He is a partner at Hinshaw & Culbertson LLP, based in Chicago, where he concentrates on environmental law issues.  He has been designated by peer vote as a “Leading Lawyer,” “Leading Attorney,” and “Super Lawyer,” and he has held an “AV” rating from Martindale-Hubbell for over 30 years.  He was the regional counself or the United States EPA, Region 5, and the Chief of the Illinois Attorney General’s Environmental Bureau before that.  He has taught environmental law at both Loyola University and John Marshall law schools.  Mr. Sheldon is a frequent contributor to ABA and other legal periodicals.  He also serves as a mediator in environmental and land use disputes.  Respecting wetlands and water law, Mr. Sheldon has advised clients on regulatory program requirements, development options, and use of wetlands law in the pursuit and opposition of developments of real estate throughout Illinois and elsewhere in the USA.