(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you reports about the people
and issues in our state.
This week Lakefront homeowners and the DNR
are a wash and conflict over new shoreland development rules.
One of Wisconsin shorelines in the far north
has received a rare environmental distinction
and an internationally renowned spiritual leader
ends a tumultuous journey for freedom in Wisconsin.
We'll tell you more about these stories
and take you to Iowa County for a winter walk through
the largest natural tall grass prairie east
of the Mississippi River.
It's all ahead in Wisconsin.
- Major funding for In Wisconsin is provided
by the people of a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly,
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ideas on the web.
When winter breaks and construction begins again
along northern Wisconsin lake shores,
some of the rules for shoreline development will have changed.
The State Natural Resources Board gave final approval
to a package of regulations last month.
They were enacted as a result of a law
with a name that seems to have no connection
to water and wetlands, the Jobs Creation Act.
This law was supposed to simplify
and expedite building alongside lakes.
Instead, producer Art Hackett says,
the laws rules have become a symbol of the many conflicts,
waterfront landowners and public officials
from northern Wisconsin have with the DNR.
- If you own Lakefront property, 75 is a magic number.
You're not allowed to build the residence
within 75 feet of the water's edge.
And until recently, if you wanted to build a pier
or a flood wall, plant trees or grade the land
in that 75 foot zone, you had to get a permit
from the Department of Natural Resources.
It was the law.
- It gave us the power to look at projects more closely
and the impacts to the public waterway.
And we could evaluate what types of impacts
it would have to the habitat and fisheries
and water quality.
- The DNR has a constitutional responsibility
to protect the waters of the state.
That responsibility to protect the water
extends to water, fall, like the moon.
DNR Wildlife Biologist Mike Myers says there's a connection
between the degree of development
and the well-being of the bird which provides
northern Wisconsin's summer soundtrack.
- There is a relationship between presence,
absence of balloons on lakes and the level of
shoreline development.
We see that, we've documented that.
The more development on a lake, the fewer, less likely to
find a loom pair on the lake.
That we know.
- Enter the Job Creation Act.
Under that law passed in 2003, routine projects,
other than structures were for the most part,
exempted from the DNR's permitting process
as long as the work was done to standards
prescribed in state rules.
But along the way to enacting those new rules,
people in northern Wisconsin claim the standard
of where that 75-foot setback begins has become murky.
- You can tell the edge of the, what they're called,
edge of the lake is basically the edge of this wetland
pocket in here that goes around through here
and goes back all the way back.
Some, I wanna say, four, four, five hundred feet.
- Surveyor Jim Ryan is referring to a property
unlike Tomahawk near Managua.
He was hired to survey the lot prior to construction
of a second home.
Ryan says, "Onida County's wetland map
"should the area next to the lake as a wetland."
The lake edge, known as the ordinary high watermarked,
was thought to be where winter ice sheets
had pushed up a ridge of soil.
But five years ago, when the land owner
wanted to build another house on the property,
the DNR surveyed the site.
It decided the ridge had broken, the wetland was flooded,
and was actually part of the lake.
- Terminate the lake.
- Ryan says this meant the new house had to be moved
further back.
- It is part of the lake.
- But asked for the existing house.
- So I have to point his house that you've got to permit for
15 or 12 years earlier was now non-conforming.
This house only sits 20 feet from what they call lake.
75 feet from the open water out here,
but 20 feet from this wetland.
- Because the house is non-conforming,
the owner faces restrictions on remodeling in the future.
This dispute began before the Job Creation Act was passed.
But Vialis County Supervisor J.
Verholtz says as the new rules
have taken effect, the department has become
stricter about deciding where the ordinary
high watermark is.
- What has happened is now the DNR has reinterpreted that
under the chapter 30 rules, which is what the Job
Creation Act is for, and said no, we make the
determination, the DNR, make the determination on
the ordinary high watermark.
- The DNR's position is that the definition
of the high watermark dates back to 1980.
The new rules will be consistent with that older definition,
and it's those rules and not the county wetland maps,
which are the final authority.
And DNR Water Management Specialist, Jane Wade,
says because the Job Creation Act eliminates most reviews
for work on land along the shoreline,
the official definition of where the lake begins
is even more important.
- We'd still have jurisdiction, but we wouldn't have the
ability to look at it as closely as we did
before in the past.
So there might be more impacts to the waterway
and the habitat and the water quality.
- As department officials in Madison debated the rules
with lobbyists for developers, researchers like Heather O'Brien
continued studying the life of the moon
on damn lake near Saint Germain.
O'Brien, who's a graduate student at UW-Milwaukee,
said she had to look for the birds in unexpected places.
- It's kind of strange this whole chain of lakes
that we're on right now.
There's four very suitable lakes for nesting,
but three of the four pairs on the lakes
went and nested way back in these channels
where you normally wouldn't expect to see birds.
They don't like being shut in.
- O'Brien wonders whether the new houses going
up along the shore or altering the birds'
nesting patterns loons normally avoid
narrow shallow waters.
- They usually feel really uncomfortable in
a situation like that, but three of the
four nests out here are back in these channels
where there's no human development at all.
- DNR, wildlife biologist Mike Meier,
says the effects of development are already evident
on the chain of large lakes near Managua.
- Whereas that two lakes you saw only two
and they're rarely successful at hatching chicks
unlike Managua, pretty successful on Caligasaga.
So we're seeing the shift of birds
away from these highly developed lakes.
- DNR biologist Meier says the problem isn't just houses,
it's the manicured lawns which generate fertilizer runoff.
It's the rock placed along the shore to reduce erosion
from waves and wakes, but also impedes the
movement of wildlife.
The rules and the Job Creation Act
encourage a different type of erosion control.
- This is typically a thoroughfare for all the boats
and so this is where we had the worst problem.
- The work was done by landscape architect Dunn Benjamin.
He showed us this example on an island in Lake Managua.
Benjamin has replaced rock ripwrap and stone walls
with products like Biolog, a barrier made of coconut holes.
- You can see that it gives you a very natural look
and then the plants, as you can see,
are starting to adapt into growing into that log.
There's about 350 feet of the log there
and also plants will actually be planted into that
and so it'll break that wave action
so that we can actually get the plants established
and growing and once that happens and the Biolog
will decompose, then we're going to have plants
in their place and so the plants then will make a very,
very natural shoreline.
- The problem says Benjamin is that most of his
customers went along that looks like a golf course
and local officials argue they've already been working
to keep the lakes clean.
- The town of Managua was the first town
in northern Wisconsin that worked in conjunction
with the Department of Natural Resources
on the Priority Lakes project for Lake Managua,
Pagasaga and parts of Lake Tomahawk.
- The DNR counters that protecting the lakes
is harder than it used to be.
What we're seeing now is that lakes that were in
private ownership, perhaps one, two, three landowners
controlled the entire shoreline through ownership,
they're subdividing these lakes now.
- The Job Creation Act was supposed to be an accommodation
between people who think the more and bigger the houses
the better and regulators as he lawns, pears and rock walls
as threats to a water resource, the state is constitutionally
obligated to protect.
- How the properties managed is going to have an implication
on what kind of wildlife features, fish features
will retain on these lakes.
- The way it was intended, fine, but the intent has changed.
- At this point, do you almost wish they had never
passed the Job Creation Bill?
- The way it is now, yes.
- As we told you, the Natural Resources Board
approved a package of rules last month
for the type of shoreland permits, the DNR issues,
such as grading.
Those rules are now awaiting final approval
by the state legislature.
The DNR is still working on finalizing changes
for county shoreland zoning rules,
things like setbacks and buffers.
These rules affect property owners
like the one Art Hackett told us about on Tomahawk Lake.
The DNR expects to get final comments
from an independent advisory committee on the revised
county rules by the end of this month.
The next step will be for the DNR to prepare
and send a final draft of those rules
to the Natural Resources Board.
That's expected to happen by April,
followed by public hearings on the proposed rule changes
beginning in May.
We'll bring you an update at that time.
In the meantime, you can find out more
about the shoreland development issue
by going to our website at www.wrg/inwisconsin.
We move now to the northernmost shoreline of our state,
the Apostle Island's National Lakeshore.
The Lake Superior Coastal Area includes 21 islands
and has visited each year by more than 170,000 people.
Last month, Congress approved a bill
designating 80% of the lake shore,
a national wilderness area.
The wilderness designation means things
like mining, timber cutting, and mechanized vehicles
are restricted.
The area is also protected and valued
for its ecological, historical, and scientific resources.
Less than 5% of the US is protected as wilderness.
And as producer Joanne Garrett shows us,
we're lucky to have one of those areas at our doorstep.
Water and light.
It's the signature of the Apostle Islands.
Some call them are jewels.
The Apostles, the 21 islands and 12 miles of lake shore
that make up the Apostle Islands National Lakeshore.
Even from the air, it's hard to grasp the scope of it
to take in the wealth of what we own.
Here's a way.
Take a sunset over Sand Island, where every minute
brings a different picture, vained with gold.
Sky paintings.
Free and fleeting.
Just a little reminder of what we own.
The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore
is the newest designated wilderness area in
the United States.
It's been officially named the Gaylord A.
Nelson National Wilderness, after one of
Wisconsin's biggest champions of the environment.
The former governor and US senator
was the one who championed the bill
to make the Apostle Islands a national park back in the 1970s.
(upbeat music)
We changed gears now to bring you a story of inspiration.
The story of Gase Sopa, an internationally revered
Buddhist monk and scholar.
Gase Sopa was forced to flee his Tibetan homeland
during the Chinese invasion in 1959.
His life journey eventually brought him to a new home
here in Wisconsin.
Producer Liz Kurner talks with Gase Sopa
about that incredible journey.
(chanting)
Madison's Tibetan community gathers every summer to
celebrate the birthday of their spiritual leader,
his holiness, the Dalai Lama.
They gather at Deer Park, a Tibetan Buddhist center
near Oregon, Wisconsin.
There is a very large Tibetan community here.
There are over 400 Tibetans now.
Deer Park serves as a very important place for them
because Buddhism is just an integral part of their culture.
The temple at Deer Park was built in 1981
for the Dalai Lama's visit to Wisconsin.
He came in part to visit a famous scholar.
He first met in Tibet.
Gase Sopa is the founder and abbot of Deer
Park Buddhist Center.
At the age of 82, Gase Sopa has earned an
international reputation.
He's really very, very famous in many parts of the world,
but in Asia, I think he's just known for his
superior scholarship and teaching abilities.
Gase Sopa became a Buddhist monk when he was a young child.
His inspiration came when visiting the monastery
near his family's farm in Tibet.
There are young childs who go there
and in the morning, every day they have some
kind of assembly hall.
I go to balcony and then looking down there
and little young children monks also down there
sitting there looking all the time and chanting
and etc.
I always wanted to be like that.
So I tell my father and mother and they
always I want to be monk.
He entered the monastery at the age of nine.
At first the discipline was very hard.
No, I don't want to stay there.
I want to go home and that kind of thing.
Gase Sopa became a teacher himself when he
was still quite young.
So when I first saw him, I was surprised to
see how young he was.
Kamloon Trugu was one of his students in Tibet.
He was very famous and he had a lot of students.
And especially he was really good with
debating and philosophy.
In addition to his fame as a scholar,
Gase Sopa had a reputation among his students for kindness.
He also looked after all these students especially
when they get sick.
He was very kind.
He would go around to try to help them out.
Because in the monastery, it would be very simple.
So he would go and make sure they have enough food.
One of the scholastic honors awarded Gase Sopa
was that of debate examiner of the Dalai Lama.
Gase Sopa was one of only 30 examiners selected
from thousands of monks from the three largest
monasteries in central Tibet.
Big Allah, yes, Allah, yes.
The examiners debated complex philosophical
points with the Dalai Lama, somewhat like oral exams
at a Western university.
During the debates, Gase Sopa saw great potential
in the young Dalai Lama.
He was very, very intelligent.
He had his own two teachers in background there.
And then a lot of efforts at the Sala of Sitinga.
But among them, he has to ask for each of them.
Whoever question made, he has to ask for every of them.
So he was very, very good.
The piece of monastic life was shattered during the 1950s
when Communist China invaded Tibet.
I have a memory.
Chinese first came to Tibet.
Time was more or less, that time invaded.
And they are saying we are coming to help to Tibet.
Under the guise of helping Tibet,
the Chinese military began to exert control,
detaining, torturing and killing people,
especially outspoken monks.
The Dalai Lama decided to escape over the mountains to India.
He hoped that by leaving, he could prevent more violence.
Within 48 hours of his secret flight,
the Chinese began their attack on his home and other
targets in the capital.
That was terrible in our days there, in the
latter for the night.
Shooting a lot of people been killed.
And we had run out of the monastery.
A few days after the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet,
Kei Shesopa, along with a group of his students and villagers,
escaped over the mountains to India.
Come Lung was 15.
It's very scary because you know,
Chinese can come with airplanes.
That happened a lot of times.
And also, Chinese army, they came from different
directions all over.
They tried to block the passage to India.
So, none of us will make it out from Tibet.
And so, a lot of the bad news, whatever they have done,
won't be heard outside.
It's estimated that almost one-sixth of
the Tibetan population over one million people
have died as a result of the Chinese invasion.
Kei Shesopa's initial feelings about the Chinese atrocities
have been tempered by his Buddhist beliefs.
Fear and...
Of course, envy, yes, same time.
But envy has no meaning at that time.
We are some kind of religious attitude.
And he's only using himself, also teaching a lot of people.
And people want to still get rid of something.
There's no that kind of attitude.
There's no good.
So, there were more to be peaceful, gentle,
or something like that.
After living as refugees in India for two years,
the Dalai Lama asked Kei Shesopa to take some of
his students to America to continue their studies
while learning English.
They spent five years at a monastery in New Jersey.
Then Kei Shesopa received a very different type
of teaching offer.
In the mid-1960s, he took a job at the University
of Wisconsin in Madison in the first multinational
Buddhist studies PhD program in the nation.
They needed someone who knew the Tibetan language.
He was invited here as a teaching assistant in Tibetan.
And the analog, I would say, would be if the
Classics Department invited the pope to come and be
and a teaching assistant in the Latin course for his year Latin.
Kei Shesopa's scholarly skills were soon put into
practice in the classroom.
He added Tibetan Buddhist theory and philosophy
to his curriculum.
His real skill would be to take a passage from a text
and then zero in on the key words and then zero in on
the meanings of the words.
And this essentially was the nature of his scholarship.
But to watch him take this and focus and focus and
focus was something that is a long-standing Tibetan
tradition and just very different from the way most
of us do our scholarship.
Analyzing Tibetan texts may seem like hard work, but
Kei Shesopa often shows his students a softer side.
Kei Shesopa is very funny and that's part of his
wonderful teaching method is his great sense of humor.
You don't examine just to put there out of the way.
And so he loves to say to his students,
"Now we're chewing on the hard bones.
Now you know what it's like to chew on the hard bones and
students will have and laugh."
It's just a wonderful technique to help us along on the path.
Annie Jampa was one of his graduate students.
During his lunch hour he would have the graduate students
coming by and he would share his lunch with them.
I remember the brown paper towel he'd give us each, you know,
little napkin and divide his sandwich up to share with us.
And he just with that twinkle and warmth of his
expression was just so kind to all of his students.
Student interest soon overwhelmed the confines
of Gishe Sopa's classes at the university.
He founded Dear Park Buddhist Center in part
to answer their needs.
Today's students travel from many nations to
sit in on his teachings.
He's a spiritual master and I think anybody from any
religious background could learn something that would help
them in their own practice.
So I've come here because he's a great scholar, one thing.
Secondly because he is a person with great experience.
Gishe Sopa never intended to leave Tibet.
It was only due to the tragedy of war and exile that his
spiritual gifts have spread beyond the borders of his home.
He is said to be a very realized Buddhist, which
means he lives his beliefs, believes centered, on compassion
for the suffering of others.
His ultimate wish is for all living beings, well
sentient beings, to obtain freedom and, you know,
permanent cessation to suffering and liberation
and emancipation.
And that's his whole purpose for being is for
him to try to bring about that in other people.
That is the only way he sees that's all.
That is only me or we see.
[Music]
The Tibetan Buddhist population in southern Wisconsin has
outgrown the temple at Deer Park Buddhist Center.
A new larger temple is on the drawing boards
with groundbreaking slated for this April.
It's expected to be completed in 2006.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to be here for the
temple's opening ceremony.
That's our program for this week.
Thanks for joining us.
We leave you with a trip to Avoka Prairie in Iowa County.
The state natural area looks much as it did during the
original land survey of 1833.
It's home to several rare animals and birds
like the Red Shouldered Hawk and Short Eard Owl.
Enjoy and for in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
See you next time.
[Music]
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of
a lion's energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods,
and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A lion's energy offering
energy-saving ideas on the web.
through the Lakes Bay