[Music]
Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided by the
people of a lion to energy who brings safe, reliable
and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods, and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliant Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]
Coming up in Wisconsin, a Milwaukee doctor, Aimsport
creating a national gun injury registry.
Drafted as a child to fight a secret war in
Vietnam, this man is now a civic leader in O'Clair.
And biologists at the Horacan Marsh try to solve a real
life, wildlife mystery.
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
[Music]
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lowe.
We bring you stories each week about the people,
places, and issues that make up life in our state.
This week, the right to carry concealed weapons
moved closer to becoming law.
Some people worry this legislation may lead to
increased gun violence, while others say there's
simply no connection.
It's tough to come to a conclusion one way or the
other because there isn't a central clearinghouse for
reporting gun related injuries.
As In Wisconsin reporter Jerry Huffman explains, it's a
situation one Milwaukee doctor has set his sights on changing.
Pulling a trigger sets off a collision force between
technology and physics.
In a split second, the gunpowder explodes and a
bullet slams into the target.
A slow motion blink of an eye that doesn't do justice to a
single shot's devastating power.
It has velocity, it has a mass, and that translates into force.
Dr. Steve Hargarten has fought hundreds of times as the
chief of emergency medicine at a Milwaukee hospital.
They just held a helicopter to crash the pilot only.
Hargarten's also on the front line of a fundamental
change in American medicine.
He wants a national reporting system for gun injuries.
So the natural question is, what kind of a gun?
Where did the gun come from?
How is it distributed?
Is that helpful to know that
could conceivably help us address this problem?
The problem is the estimated 30,000 gun deaths according
to the medical college of Wisconsin that occur
in the US every year.
Currently, many agencies track gun injuries but
from a narrow perspective.
The police investigate crimes that involve a shooting, but
if you get shot in a hunting accident, it's a DNR issue.
The end result?
A patchwork of reports that are
difficult to piece together.
All these are operating in occurring in these
segments. It's fragmented.
We want to pull it together.
And public health tools help you pull it together
so that we can learn by comparisons and contrasts.
We can learn by combining and looking at high risk groups.
Great, why don't you sit up?
And once the information is collected, hard-garden
argues it can be translated into smarter public policy.
The better our understanding of firearm-related deaths and
intentional injuries, the better the multitude of agencies
and community groups are able to think through strategies
to reduce these events.
Why don't you lie down now?
Listen to your heart.
Collecting information is not particularly controversial, but
what does lead to controversy is how the information is used.
Some pro-gun supporters argue hard-garden is really on a
campaign to get rid of guns.
I'm anti-death.
I'm anti-injury.
To say I'm anti-gun.
I'm against car crashes.
I want to see fewer car crashes.
I mean, I'm anti-car.
That doesn't make any sense.
Your heart's pretty good?
Yeah. I'm all heart.
But there are few more politically explosive
issues than gun control.
Representative Dwayne John's Rudavistman is an avid
sportsman and worries the line between research and
politics is getting blurry.
I just think that the knowledge is there.
The dad is there.
If somebody wants to put it in a useful
fashion, they can do that.
But I know the reach out there is to just practically
get rid of handguns because let's face that.
Most of the injuries are with handguns.
John's Rudavistman is right.
Our Gartons research at the Fire Arm Injury Center
at the Medical College of Wisconsin points to a dangerous
trend in handgun injuries.
Handguns are the most common weapon in all
Wisconsin homicides.
94% of all juvenile homicides are with a handgun and Fire
Arm injuries are expensive.
$22,000 on average per shooting.
If you drop the gun, it's loaded.
You don't want it to go off.
Our Garton works with a small team of lawyers and analysts
and is already tracking what information they can obtain.
One conclusion, you can cut the number of gun injuries
by making a smarter gun.
If you don't have this grip safety down, you
can't pull the trigger.
Grip safeties aren't new, but our Garton argues they could
be added to every weapon.
Same for gun locks, without the combination, this
rifle can't be fired.
When you talk about high tech, you're talking about
relatively low tech high-tech.
This is very, very simple mechanical safety features that
has been around for decades.
Around, but not always used, and that frustrates Garton.
It's predictable that criminals will steal firearms.
If we can affect the design of that product to reduce
the criminals' usage of that product for a bad thing,
that would be in a step in the right direction that
everyone would agree is a good thing to have happen.
Well, not everyone.
For target shooting, they'd like to have all of the bullets
in this ten ring at 25 yards.
Jim Fendryt is the head of a pro-gun lobbying group.
He says smart guns are little more than an illusion of safety.
But the one thing to remember is that this firearm, after
they finally developed some type of smart gun technology,
will first be this firearm.
The technology will then be added on, which means
that it could be removed.
A kid with a few small tools would be able to take the
technology out of the gun, and then you'd still have the
basic firearm, which would work.
Fendry fears what he calls the inevitable
politicizing of Garton's data.
Instead of drafting another gun control law, Fendry
says, try a new approach.
Maybe it has to start with the families.
Maybe it has to start with society saying
we've had enough of this, and we're not going to
allow this to happen in our community anymore,
and we're going to take care of it right locally.
Hargarten would probably agree gun injuries are a family issue,
since most shootings involve people who know each other,
and the ultimate tab, society, not families, will pay.
We're talking of thousands and thousands of dollars
for the medical care.
You talk about the time and effort that the law
enforcement agency makes to investigate this event.
Thousands of dollars to bring that case to
some reasonable closure, then you're talking about
the criminal justice system affecting the prosecution,
and you've got tens of thousands of dollars invested in that.
Then you prosecute the perpetrator in the
case of a homicide, and they're sent to prison,
and we know the costs of that are rising considerably.
Costs that would be lower, Hargarten argues with a
national gun injury database.
Information that could be used to develop better gun policies,
and that policy eventually could mean fewer injuries.
A theory that will be tested this year as part of
a national pilot program.
A program started in part by one ER doctor at one
hospital in Wisconsin.
The work of Dr.
Steve Hargarten and the firearm injury center
has led in part to the CDC creating a national violent
death reporting system.
The system is still in the pilot stage,
but already Wisconsin officials are collaborating with Dr.
Hargarten and his colleagues on a state model of that system.
You can find more information about the violent injury
reporting system of Wisconsin on our website.
[music]
The man in our next story is all too familiar with firearms.
Jo B.
Zhang was still a child living in the mountains of Laos
when he joined the military and was thrust into war.
He would go on to take an incredible journey through life,
a journey that brought him to O'Claire, where he became
one of the first mong elected to public office in America.
[music]
On the cusp of adolescence, when American boys are armed with
attitude and sinking fastballs, 12-year-old Jo B.
Zhang was armed with an M-16 rifle.
[music]
In the 1960s and 70s, the CIA recruited mong farmers
in the mountains of Laos for a secret war in Vietnam.
Jo B.
Zhang's father was one of them.
Jo B reflects back on his decision to take
his father's place so that he could come back to
Jo B's mother and nine siblings.
I'm the oldest one and I feel that I old enough to
be there to replace him so he can be with my mom and
with the rest of the family.
It's only child, but back then, 12-year-old you have
a lot of responsibility.
And to be the oldest child of the family, you have
a lot of responsibility.
You act like a dog and parents already for the
brother and the sister.
His childhood behind him, Jo B became a soldier.
[inaudible]
In 1978, when the CIA pulled out of Laos, they evacuated
high-ranking military officials to Thailand.
Soldiers like Jo B.
Zhang, they simply abandoned.
So we used the hand grenade that we got left, the
ammunition that we got left.
In 1978, we had a very big casualty that the North Vietnam
and the communist troops fight were heavy against us.
And then until our village all wiped out.
And then I decided to took off from my village.
And then I took about 3,000 people.
I leaked them from the village and walked from
my village to Thailand.
That walk from Jo B's village to the safety of Thailand
was more than 150 miles over mountains, across rivers,
and into enemy ambushes.
We got many people die on the way.
At the Meikong River, Jo B, now 15, told the refugees to wait
while he and several others crossed into Thailand to clear
the way for the group's arrival.
And when I got crossed to the Meikong River
and the Thai authority would not let me go back.
And the waiting there about a week, and they
cannot wait any longer.
So they all separate and find their own way to Thailand.
And that's why many people got killed.
Many people went back and many people surrendered
to the communist.
Somehow, Jo B's mother and father, along with his sister
and brothers, made their way to safety and joined him.
After spending about 8 months in a refugee camp, Jo B'song
arrived in America and eventually settled in a Claire.
When it first came to the United States, it was the first
experiments on the electric store, the hot water, the cold
waters, the drinking fountains.
All those, anything is new experiment for you.
And then the skills that you have, that you farmings
or you use to the machine guns or the guns are not
able to find a job here.
So it's like your life, it's totally reborn again.
Like many of the mong who settled here, Jo B spoke no
English, but learned and then graduated from high school
and earned a bachelor's degree from Mount Scenario College.
But even as he embraced his new American community,
he clung to the music and culture of his homeland.
The gang, or bamboo pipes, is one of a dozen mong instruments,
Jo B plays.
The jaw is another.
Well, pretty much on this as-brechtia
feeling to other people.
And pretty much this kind of instrument we use to
communicate for culture and all the types of things.
I may give the whole thing to her and I said, "Well, I give
you these instruments and then I come back to visit you again."
But if you don't want to go back there, then she asks
you to see the instrument.
You give her the instrument, but you hold by the hand.
And after they don't, they don't blame that you can pull
it back.
You see, I did a fact.
I mean, he played a very important role as-in one
sense, as a role model for the other mong people.
Eric Linquist, a reporter for the O'Claire leader
telegram, has followed Jo B's journey from immigrant to
citizen to community leader.
He's involved in everything.
I mean, he's for years, he's been a landlord, I believe,
and for a lot of mong families, he's rented to people
that maybe had troubles with other landlords, had
communication issues, so he gave them comfort in that way.
Could you have to know how association?
He has been the president of the board of directors at
the mong association here in O'Claire, and Ali's serving
as the stepped in and a gap and been the acting director.
He owns property that he rents to mong gardeners so
that they can supply food for the farmer's market
and have an extra income.
In 1996, residents elected Jo B.
Jean to the first of two terms on the O'Claire
city council, making him the first mong and Wisconsin
elected to public office.
I feel great and honored, but it's not as much as the
second time.
In my second time, I feel much better, and
I feel proud and more honored because I believe that I
can do the jobs, and that's why they re-elact me again.
For Jo B.
Jean, who became a citizen in 1986,
being an American means serving the public good.
I do what I can do to help myself, my family, my community,
and my country.
That means to be the Vietnam War, and when
I came here, I still feel like if any war out there that it's
neat me, I still willing to serve and to protect my country.
He says the events of 9/11 made a powerful impression
on him and brought back memories he'd rather forget.
That's what we've been through, and not just one time, but
many, many times.
You have many good friends, and
suddenly just one minute or a few seconds you lost all.
Interestingly, in the mong language, the word mong
means being free.
Each year at festivals like this one,
the mong celebrate their survival and their freedom.
I'm glad that we came here at the right time, and then
we have the opportunity to go to school.
We have the opportunity to do business
that you're capable of, or you're able to do it.
I see that we're jumping 150 years ahead when we
live in love, from the people living in love.
And I feel confident that if we continue the way we do it
now, then we probably will be successful in the future.
Our next story takes us from the city of Oclair to
the wetlands of the Huracan National Wildlife Refuge.
The refuge is home to many species of plant and animal,
but it's one type of waterfall in particular that has wildlife
biologists playing detective.
In Wisconsin reporter Art Hackett has the story of
this marshland mystery.
To understand this story, you have to understand your ducks.
Go to the Huracan National Wildlife Refuge and you'll
find all kinds of ducks, mallards, wood ducks,
and redheads among others.
What's important to understand is you will find lots of ducks.
Overall the state's duck population is
looking pretty good.
Numbers are on the way up, except for one type of
duck, the blue wing teal.
The blue wing teal is showing a somewhat mysterious decline.
DNR Wildlife Biologist Ron Gotti says the decline is a
mystery because if a rainy day is a good day for ducks,
the past 10 years have been a good decade for ducks.
We've had very wet years in the 90s, so our wetland habitat
has probably improved somewhat.
Some of the key predators of these birds on their nest,
red fox and skunk populations have gone down recently
with the increase in coyotes.
And also hunting regulations have gotten more restrictive,
so we're probably taking some of the hunting
pressure off of these birds.
Mallards responded by the late 80s, increasing their
populations and they maintain high populations.
Blue wing teal, it hasn't worked that way for them
and that's a big question why, what's going on?
They're beautiful birds.
You get sometimes an iridescent
kind of a reddish in there.
The numbers are startling.
According to the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the
number of blue winged teal in the nation is more than
doubled in the past 30 years.
During that same period of time, Wisconsin's population
of blue winged teal has been cut almost in half.
They're concerned to us because blue wings in Wisconsin,
blue winged teal used to be our number one most
abundant duck in the 70s.
And they aren't now, their number two or three.
So this trap was just said
yesterday. That's usually the best chance of success.
Because nationally, the teal population is increasing, Gotti
suspects the problem isn't in the duck's wintering grounds
in Central and South America.
It's likely something that's happening here in Wisconsin
where the teal come to breed.
To find out what's happening, Gotti has been trying to
perfect a system of using radio tracking devices to
monitor the bird's activity.
She's got feed and a platform there she can
be out of the world.
Gotti uses teal hens from state game farms as a lure.
Migrating females will try and drive the game farm hens
out of the migrants territory.
But in what will seem painfully familiar to women, sometimes
all the attracts are unattached males looking for a good time.
What happens is these drakes are looking for mates
because there's a surplus of drakes, a shortage of hens,
whatever you want to say.
And they see a hen here and this is an opportunity for
them to get into the gene pool.
So they often what you'll have is a drake forming a pair of
a hand with a game farm hen and they'll just come and just
get trapped day after day.
This drake had already been banded once.
Gotti jots down the number and
then with the help of the landowner releases the bird.
No power lines just throw them up in the air but this
is what we're after the hens.
The hen goes into a burlap bag and is taken to a nearby
farm where Gotti is set up an operating room in the control
house of a grain elevator.
The DNR has been tracking mallards by radio for some
time. With the teal, Gotti says it's not so simple for
one thing teal tend to move around more and tend to
move beyond tracking range.
Last year we put 20 radios out and we only got a nest
from five birds actually.
And the teal are so small it's
hard to plant a radio in one.
Going teal we can't get a radio powerful enough to fit
inside their little abdominal cavity to attach them
different ways on the back.
Gotti hopes this year's pilot study will show which way
of mounting the radio is most successful in planting the
radio means putting the bird under general anesthesia.
It'll take some a while to get under completely and
while they're under they don't blink so we've been told
to put a sav in their eyes.
The radio will be positioned right here under the skin.
What we'll do is we'll make an incision on the lower end of
the neck just in front of it.
We'll then separate the skin from underneath the skin from
the back and we'll make an exit hole for the antenna which then
we'll feed it in antenna first like that and suture it up.
Sometimes a hen is trapped with two drakes.
The researchers let them go all at once since
they don't know which of the drakes is bonded to that hen.
So we'll give the hen first and then the drake.
Using radio direction finders crews will locate where a
particular bird is nesting.
This crew is already in the field following mowards
which were tagged with radios earlier in the spring.
She's been using that pond.
Her and the drake that she's paired with have been sitting on
that pond pretty consistently.
So we'll track the birds each day, get a location
each day until we get to a point where we think that
there might be nesting.
When that happens then we'll try to go out with a handheld
antenna and find the nest.
And once we find the nest then we'll just subsequently
monitor the nest, see how successful it is.
The crews will check each nest daily to determine if a
predator is killing the hens, destroying the nests, or of the
eggs simply aren't hatching.
It's probably that it's something going on in our
breeding grounds whether it's the mortality of the adult
hens, killed by predators or hay mowers or other egg
operations, or if they're just having their nests
destroyed by various factors.
Guttie hopes to be able to put radios in 50 blue-winged teal
next year, although he doesn't have the funding lined up yet.
But he wants to solve the mystery.
We want to know why this little duck is going down.
Why is the teal an important duck?
Well, I guess I'd like to see a diversity in wildlife out there.
And when one species like this that was one so common
goes downhill, it really makes you wonder if something
isn't out of balance.
It's important to me because it's an important element,
a component of the marsh community, the birds.
And I like them.
They're nice little birds.
[Music]
That's our show for tonight.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you to enjoy the final days of the fall
season with a walk through CREX Meadows Wildlife
Refuge in Burnett County.
For InWisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
[Music]