Eagle watching in Wisconsin was once impossible. In the winter of 1987-1988, 1000 Islands Environmental Center in Kaukuana, Wisconsin, was the location of the first bald eagle sighting in decades. Slowly and steadily, thanks to many legal protections and regulations (including those offered by the Endangered Species Act and the Environmental Protection Agency), those wintering […]
Read More
Rattlesnakes, like Wisconsin’s native eastern massasauga (Endangered in Wisconsin and recently added as a federally Threatened species) and timber rattlesnakes, usually get a bad rap in society, and are often portrayed as creepy, deadly pests. But these animals play a critical role in maintaining Wisconsin’s diverse ecosystems. The Human-Snake Dilemma In Wisconsin’s early history, expansion […]
Read More
It is a late night in June in Wisconsin’s beautiful Kickapoo Valley and I am straining to hear the calls of frogs around me. It’s not that they’re faint, it’s that there are too many of them, coming from the woods in all directions. I try to remember what a seasoned birder once told me—that […]
Read More
Seven years after staff at the Mequon Nature Preserve (MNP) in southeastern Wisconsin began a project to re-establish the hardwood forests that once dominated the landscape, they noticed wildlife returning. But while snakes, frogs, and birds had returned in abundance, one important resident family of species was still missing: salamanders. Farmland development, parking lot construction […]
Read More