LEAP is Underway!

By Kate Zurlo-Cuva

In January we kicked off the Land Trust Excellence and Advancement Program and are pleasantly surprised by the tremendous positive momentum we have garnered in the land trust community.  Our two years of preparation and development are coming to fruition this summer – we’ve kicked off our first round of customized services grants and have made new trainings universally available to Wisconsin land trusts.

MaryKay O’Donnell from the Land Trust Alliance (our program partner) and I have been furiously aligning our resources for services with the six land trusts receiving an assessment, implementation plan, and a grant to reach a major goal.  Just this past week alone we had the pleasure of beginning an implementation plan on a gorgeous sunny day for the Green Lake Conservancy with a porch-side view of Green Lake itself, began the guided organizational assessment process for the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, and initiated a path to accrediting the Ice Age Trail Alliance.

Green Lake Conservancy board members, Kate, & MaryKay celebrate planning success over lunch

Each of these organizations is the recipient of a multi-year commitment from GWC and the Land Trust Alliance for mentoring, coaching, and improvement activities – these services total nearly $20,000!  The land trust community has collectively pledged a commitment to perpetual land protection and we take this very seriously.  We feel striving for excellence is the key to our future success.

We’ll continue to develop new opportunities to learn from experts in the field as well as our peers in the Wisconsin land trust community.  And, we’ll open up a new period for applications to the customized suite of services for land trust excellence at the end of the year.

Later this year, we’ll head to Lac du Flambeau to tackle a few goals with the Northwoods Land Trust. We’ll also carry out guided organizational assessments with Natural Heritage Land Trust and the Prairie Enthusiasts.

Please support our efforts to strive for excellence in the land trust community.  Your contribution can make the difference in a land trust becoming nationally accredited, contribute to vital trainings to bring land trusts up to industry standards, and assist us with meeting our mission of protecting the places that make Wisconsin special.

Deer Lake Conservancy Awarded for Work as Environmental Stewards

Guest Columnist: Julie Hildebrandt, St. Croix River Association

Buck Malick awarding Jim Miller of Deer Lake Conservancy

At the St. Croix River Association’s annual dinner on April 5^th our Bob Burns Stewardship Award was presented to Gathering Waters Conservancy member Deer Lake Conservancy. This is the 11^th year that this award has been presented to a group or individual that has demonstrated good stewardship of the natural resources of the St. Croix River and/or its tributaries.

Deer Lake Conservancy was organized in 1995 with the purpose of preserving the lake and the surrounding land that contributes to the natural, scenic, recreational and productive value of the lake. A principal goal of the Conservancy has been to work for improved water quality of the lake, and particularly the reduction of phosphorous. The Conservancy is managed and operated by volunteers, apart from, but often in cooperation with, a much older Deer Lake Improvement Association of lakeshore owners.

Deer Lake is located about 5 miles east of St. Croix Falls in Polk County. It drains into the Balsam Branch River, then into the Apple River, a tributary of the St. Croix River.

During its relatively short existence the Conservancy has made dramatic strides in improving the water quality of Deer Lake based on recommendations by professional consultants, primarily by acquiring nearly 162 acres of land in four areas through which agricultural runoff flows to the lake; and by constructing holding ponds and planting prairie grasses and flowers in those areas. The conservancy has now installed water control structures in the nine largest watersheds draining into the lake. The prairie plantings have been unique, having been done with local ecotype seeds collected within 50 miles from the lake, and including as many as 100 varieties.

The resulting improvement in lake water quality has been dramatic. Runoff of phosphorous into the lake was reduced by over half in the decade from 1997 through 2006. The lake has transitioned from eutrophic (nutrient rich with profuse and unsightly algae bloom and aquatic weeds) to mesotrophic. Deer Lake is one of only two lakes in Wisconsin where this has occurred, the other being Mirror Lake, surrounded by park land.

The Bob Burns Stewardship Award was named for Bob Burns, a dedicated volunteer working to protect the St. Croix. Mr. Burns was an enthusiastic member, and past chair, of the St. Croix River Association; served on the Minnesota-Wisconsin Boundary Area Commission for nine years; was instrumental in ensuring adequate federal funding for implementation of the first long-range management plan for the Lower St. Croix, and led the establishment of land use plans for subdivisions in the valley. He passed away in June of 1997.

Explore New Places this Weekend

The warm weather is here and it’s time to get outdoors!  We’ve compiled a collection of events happening all summer and fall on land trust-protected properties and you’re invited to attend.  We call it our Parade of Preserves and we hope you’ll join us!

Land trusts work hard to protect our state’s special places.  They also host field trips, tours, work days, and educational events for everyone who loves Wisconsin. There’s something afoot almost every day in the coming months.  Next weekend alone you can help the Ice Age Trail Alliance build trail, take a Door County lighthouse walk with the Ridges Sanctuary, or picnic on the prairie with Caledonia Conservancy.

Join us in celebrating the places that make Wisconsin special.  And, check back in.  We’re constantly updating our list of land trust excursions and events, just for you.

The Kinni Has Heart

Gathering Waters’ Executive Director, Mike Strigel, and Government Relations Director, Mike Carlson, braved the snow on I-94 last night to attend the Heart of the Kinni Fall 2010 Reception in River Falls.  More than 50 people came together for the Kinnickinnic River Land Trust (KRLT) event to celebrate the past year’s conservation successes.  Nelson French, Executive Director of KRLT, spoke about the importance of the $7 million Protect the Kinni Campaign.  The project will protect eleven properties on the river and KRLT is working closely with State agencies and private donors to complete the effort.

Natural Resources Board Member Gary Rohde looks on as Senator Sheila Harsdorf addresses the reception.

Senator Sheila Harsdorf, once a KRLT board member, was on hand to discuss the great work KRLT does.  The Republican Caucus Vice Chairwoman also expressed support for the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund and the Working Lands Initiative.

Mike Strigel had the opportunity to address the reception.  He celebrated the KRLT’s conservation efforts and those of Wisconsin’s 50 land trusts.  This year’s Heart of the Kinni reception was an excellent opportunity to see friends, share stories about the Kinni, and discuss conservation opportunities in the year ahead.

They saved paradise and demo-ed a parking lot

An update to our Beerline Bash post on 11/2…

Good news for all of you urban land conservation enthusiasts.  The Wheelhouse, an abandoned restaurant on prime riverfront property in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood, was purchased by the River Revitalization Foundation (RRF) in 2009.  Yesterday, the demolition of the building got underway.  They’re one step closer to future butler’s garter habitat and a waterfront park!  For information on how to help RRF with site restoration, visit www.riverrevitalizationfoundation.org.

Beerline Bash: Celebrating urban Wisconsin conservation

Ramsey Radakovich, Kevin Haley, Gloria McCutcheon, Dan Kaemmerer, Steve Mech, Sue Black, Guy Smith, Angie Tornes & Jeff Baudry cut the chain opening Milwaukee's Beerline Trail.

What do you get when you cross an abandoned dinner theater, an abandoned railroad line, and some savvy conservationists? A trifecta of conservation opportunity in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood!
On the evening of October 13, GWC had the privilege of co-hosting an event with the River Revitalization Foundation (RRF) – Milwaukee’s urban rivers land trust – to celebrate the demolition of the Wheelhouse and the completion of the Beerline Trail; two dovetailing projects several years in the making.
In late 2009, RRF purchased the 2.8 acre Wheelhouse property – a developed site along the Milwaukee River on the east side of the city that includes the abandoned, former Wheelhouse restaurant. The project will restore blighted urban riverfront land to preserved green space and increase shoreline stabilization and floodplain protection. In addition, the site will connect to the recently-completed Beerline Trail, a segment of Milwaukee County Parks’ Oak Leaf Trail System. The Trail (also a project of RRF), located on an abandoned railroad line formerly known as the “Beerline,” preserves invaluable natural areas along the Milwaukee River, provides public open space and recreational opportunities, and offers commuters access to downtown.
Event attendees enjoyed a leisurely hike along the Trail, a Wheelhouse site tour, and a reception overlooking the Milwaukee River.  (Oh, and pedicab rides back to our cars!) All in all, it was an inspiring and unique opportunity to experience the greening of Milwaukee’s urban landscape and to learn about how GWC and Wisconsin land trusts work together to protect Wisconsin’s special rural and urban places.

From the Road: Land Trusts & America’s Great Outdoors

by Kate Zurlo-Cuva, Land Trust Programs Director

Last week, Mike Carlson and I drove to Minneapolis because the President asked us too.

The Obama administration has launched an expansive effort to collect citizen input about the future of federal policy affecting America’s Great Outdoors.

The America’s Great Outdoors Initiative is, in part, a public online forum to collect people’s ideas about natural resource policy priorities.  As you might expect, an open invitation for all internet-using Americans to chime in on what the government should do about nature has collected an expansive and eclectic array of comments.

“Make EPA do their job!”

“Allow hangliders in National Parks!”

“A coast to coast off road jeep trail!”

“More naturalist [yep, nudist] recreational opportunities!”

Besides the online “idea jam,” the Great Outdoor Initiative is on tour with a series of public meetings.  That’s what we went to Minnesota to attend, and there, I am happy to share, one could discern above the din a clear strain of smart comments about the value of land trusts and how practical improvements to federal programs will allow land trusts to increase the pace of land protection.

Among the plenary speakers was a respected gray beard of the land trust movement, Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation’s Mark Ackelson.  Lisa Jackson, the EPA Administrator was also there, along with representatives from the White House Council on Environmental Quality, and Senior staff from USDA and Department of Interior.

They asked us what conservation strategies are working in the upper Midwest? Where we see obstacles to conservation and getting people outdoors?  They asked how we think federal agencies can be better partners and what new conservation tools are needed.

Before two busy stenographers recording the whole session, Mike and I shared our feedback that land trusts are valuable, even essential partners to several federal programs, and that some bureaucratic habits and procedural barriers could be changed to connect those dollars with the organizations that can leverage them to great conservation ends.

From a small but articulate and united core of land trust representatives at this session came a clear call to make the enhanced tax incentive for conservation easement donations permanent.  We land trust voices mentioned the importance of increased funding for Farm Bill conservation programs like FRPP and WRP, with some tweaks to those programs to allow land trusts to be more efficient easement-purchasing partners.

We advocated for full funding of the Land and Water Conservation Fund and Forest Legacy Program, again, with some changes to allow land trusts direct access to funds for their conservation priorities.

We don’t envy the job of staffers charged with sifting through thousands of comments about what the government should do with America’s Great Outdoors.  But we do commend the efforts to listen to the experience of the partners doing the work on the ground, and we felt reassured that the land trust movement is, as we should be, at the table.

Since squeaky wheels get greased, we encourage you to squeak on behalf of land trusts, too!

What do YOU see as the biggest obstacles to conservation and getting people to the outdoors?

How can land trusts harness federal resources to meet these challenges?

The Department of Interior is still collecting ideas.  There’s another listening session on August 30 in Chicago.  You can submit your comments through the America’s Great Outdoors Web site or share your thoughts in the comments section below and we’ll be sure they’re passed along.

Land Trust Alliance is tracking the ways the land trust community is tapping into this Initiative, and has suggestions about what land trust supporters can share.  Visit the Alliance’s website here.

Touring the Town of Dunn

Our Government Relations Director Mike Carlson escaped his desk for a few hours recently to tour the beautiful Town of Dunn, which boasts a land protection success story—one of a township, practically within view of Madison, that has figured out how to maintain its rural character.

Mike joined some great folks from the Tall Pines Conservancy and Towns of Ashippun and Oconomowoc. The group met with Town of Dunn Board Chair, Ed Minihan, and Land Use Manager, Erica Schmitz, who told them about the town’s highly successful Purchase of Development Rights (PDR) program, which has enabled their conservation success.

A PDR program is a voluntary land protection program, whereby farmers can sell their rights to develop their land to either their local government or a land trust.  Doing so ensures that their property will be protected forever.

The group toured several farms that have been protected through the PDR program.  A tour highlight was Bob Uphoff’s hog farm—the closest hog farm to the State Capitol.  Several years ago, Bob protected a large portion of his working farmland with an agricultural conservation easement through the PDR program, and he has since become an excellent spokesman for this farmland protection tool. He is, without a doubt, an extremely passionate guy, and he may have even convinced a few skeptics in the group about the merits of PDR programs.

Hopefully, PDR programs like the Town of Dunn’s will soon become the rule, instead of the exception.  Interest around the state is certainly growing.  Now we just have to turn this interest into action!

Read about another innovative farmland protection effort in Waupaca County

Nine Years in the Making

On the shore of the Sturgeon Bay Ship Canal Preserve, recently protected by the Door County Land Trust.

A few of us at Gathering Waters have small children at home, for whom a week is a terribly long time, a year an eternity and 9 years unfathomable.  We come to the office each day to work to strengthen organizations that have signed on to perpetual conservation projects.  It’s a good perspective shift:  when you work on a timeline including “forever,” nine years doesn’t seem like a very long time.

Last week, a few GWC staff toured a property once destined to be a coal-burning power plant, purchased last December by the Door County Land Trust.  The land is valuable by any measure – there are over 300 acres bordered by the lake and the ship canal; the woods are lush and serene; it is home to rare ecological systems found only in Door County; it hosts a thriving population of the federally listed endangered Pitcher’s Thistle; it’s open to the public.  It was expensive real estate, and it took a long time and a lot of effort to buy.

A Pitcher's Thistle thriving at the Ship Canal Preserve. Photo courtesy of Philip Hinkle.

We owe a big debt of gratitude to the land trust for their perseverance. Closing this deal took almost 9 years. That’s 108 months’ work to piece together a mosaic of funding (including a grant from the Knowles Nelson Stewardship Fund), align and realign grant applications and deadlines, and position community leadership to back the project.  Furthermore, the land trust has taken on an infinite number of years of future stewardship of the natural treasures there.

So send Door County Land Trust a thank you note because they did all that for our benefit.   Thanks to the Land Trust there will always be a public nature preserve within the city limits of Sturgeon Bay.

Thank all our land trusts! Almost every land trust in the state can recount their own story of a multi-year deal. Years of perseverance are worth the payoff of land permanently protected. Kudos to land trusts for their long, long term vision.

“Forever” is a humbling perspective to work from.  Land trusts have signed up for forever-long projects. So have we, for as long as there are land trusts protecting Wisconsin’s special places, Gathering Waters will be there to make land trusts stronger.

Here’s video shot from their air above the Ship Canal Preserve:

Sturgeon Bay, Wisconsin. Land Trust just established. from Philip Hinkle on Vimeo.

In the Company of Future Conservation Hall of Fame Inductees

I had a meeting “in the field” scheduled the day of Bud Jordahl’s memorial service.  I contemplated cancelling it, since I would have liked to sit among Bud’s admirers and be reminded of him. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought Bud would approve of my previous engagement and encourage me not to change my plans.

My “meeting” was with a high school environmental science class touring the Lulu Lake Preserve.  Anyone concerned about Nature Deficit Disorder among Wisconsin youth can be reassured that at least a few teenagers in Wales, WI are outside and loving it.

This is Cathy Chybowski

These are some of her students

The first portion of the Lulu Lake Preserve was purchased by the Nature Conservancy in 1986.  Thanks to the Conservancy, the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Fund and several surrounding private landowners, the preserve today includes the lake and surrounding 1,450 acres.

Students from Kettle Moraine High School AP Environmental Science (aka APES) visit Lulu Lake every fall to sample water quality near the headwaters of the Mukwonago River, collect prairie seed and study the ecology of bogs, fens and oak savannahs. Many of them return as volunteer invasives warriors during winter months.  Then, in the spring, after the AP test is over, they come back to Lulu Lake for a sort of victory lap field day.

That’s when we (myself and Gathering Waters’ intern Val Klessig) joined them.  In four hours, here’s some of what Mrs. Chybowski and APES students taught us:

• That during the last glaciation, a block of ice broke off a main glacier, melted and formed a kettle that is now Lulu Lake.
• Because of the geology and hydrology, there is an unusual combination of plant communities thriving here, including nearly 70 acres of oak savanna, one of the most endangered native plant communities on the continent.
• A fen is a wetland fed from groundwater and the surrounding watershed, while a bog receives its water from the top-down, mostly as rainwater.  Fens are alkaline, bogs acidic, so the plant communities in each are pretty different.
• A turtle with a bright yellow throat is a Blanding’s turtle, not a painted turtle.
• At the time of our visit, robins had already fledged one brood and were laying the next set of eggs of the spring.
• If you pick it early enough, garlic mustard makes a reasonably tasty pesto.

And even though these kids DID all just study for the AP Environmental Science exam, they weren’t just parroting test-prep facts.  They know this stuff.  And they like it.

We stopped often as excited kids announced bird sightings (I’m a birding novice, and this group of teenagers showed me: a bluebird, rose-breasted grosbeak, an oriel and a migrating warbler).

Garret, a hunter and avid outdoorsman ,was the first to spot a deer across the bog before it bolted.  He told me,  “this class is so cool…It makes you aware of all the things going on, good and bad, …and it’s up to you if want to take action or not.”

We met Tori, who said she’s not planning on any sort of science major in college, but that she wants to continue promoting good stewardship, maybe by joining an environmental club.  She was candid about what she doesn’t like about Lulu Lake:  “ticks, I really don’t like ticks. … but everything else is amazing, … and Mrs. Chybowski is so informed about everything, it makes it ten times more incredible.”

From just a few hours watching her interact with her students (admittedly, a scientifically small sample size), we’re ready to confirm that Cathy Chybowski is an extraordinary teacher.

Lulu Lake, she pointed out, is only 30 minutes from their school and a gem—almost unique in the world.  Even so, without a little encouragement  (like a required field trip), her students might never know it was there.  “… They would never choose to go out on their own, and if they have not had experiences as a family to expose them to the outdoors and the really neat things out here, by the time they get to high school they don’t have sensitivity for those things, it’s a challenge to show them and help them appreciate what’s here. Because it’s the appreciation that leads to environmental sensitivity, and sensitivity, of course, is what we need.”

I believe her that fostering environmental interest among busy teenagers is a challenge, but it’s one Mrs. Chybowski seems to have overcome handily.  She’s exceeded it, really.  In addition to current APES students, a handful of alum come back to the Lulu trip each year, on what’s become a kind of annual pilgrimage.

Mrs. Chybowski and Evan, an APES alum

Current and former students were unanimous:  Mrs. Chybowski makes APES one of the best classes of their lives.  Jenna, now a UW-Madison freshman, laughed and told me, “Oh, Mrs. Chybowski will never admit it but she’s the most amazing woman in the entire world, and she is so modest but she inspires so many people I know.  I’ve always had an interest in the environment but taking APES has just made me want to continue with that, and Mrs. Chybowski is a huge, huge reason why.”

Jenna’s got her sights on environmental law, but she’s going to spend the summer restoring wetlands in New Orleans where damage from Katrina caused saltwater infiltration into freshwater systems.

Evan, another alum and avid birder, interned at Lulu Lake last year and this year is working on a grassland bird research project through UW.  He’s a Conservation Biology and Botany major at and is certain that he’s headed for a conservation career somehow.

Megan, also an alum, said she is still deciding between Microbiology and Zoology.  If it weren’t for this class, she said, she probably would not have chosen a science field at all.

When I commended her on her fledged alum, Mrs. Chybowski was humble.  “Our future land stewards have to come from some place, and whether these people go on in some environmental or natural resource career really doesn’t matter to me, what matters is that I know they will have some sensitivity for the environment through these experiences at Lulu.”

Students paddling up the Mukwonago

Not every one of Cathy Chybowski’s APES graduates will become conservation biologists, environmental advocates or champion green lawmakers, but it’s easy to be optimistic that they’ll all carry with them a sense of stewardship that their teacher and Lulu Lake helped define.   Maybe one of them will someday fill Bud Jordahl’s shoes, and we’ll all have people like Mrs. Chybowski, great land trusts like The Nature Conservancy, and the extraordinary places they protect, like Lulu Lake, to thank.

– posted by Pam Foster Felt