(upbeat music)
- Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lo.
Each week we bring you stories about the people, places,
and issues in our state.
This week catch a rare glimpse of the Martin,
a shy, forced loving mammal almost lost
to Wisconsin forever.
Find out what scientists are doing
to try to bring back this elusive and endangered animal.
- This was a-- - Heft, a hunk of heavy
metal from nuclear asses Albion armors.
It's a serious weapon and a work of art.
And Tagalongas producer, Art Hackett, goes
to the grocery store.
It's not just any store, it's Linus Market in Milwaukee
and a story about how local people can make
a real difference.
We have these stories, and a welcome respite
from the great days of winter in Wisconsin.
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UW Comprehensive Cancer Center, Comprehensive as designated by
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Available on the Web.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, providing local education
for the crucial occupations essential to our communities.
Wisconsin's Technical Colleges, Communities First.
- Our first story tonight takes a look
at a very illusive subject, the Martin.
The Martin is a little mammal that once thrived
in our northern forests, but today is an endangered species
in Wisconsin.
Efforts to reintroduce the Martin haven't worked
as well as researchers hoped, and they're struggling
to find out why.
Producer Joanne Garrett brings us this report.
- You're looking at something quite remarkable.
- Very rare, you know, you're only talking about
a few hundred in the whole state.
- You're looking at something very few people have seen,
a Martin in the wild.
That's Martin, the mammal.
- M-A-R-T-E-N, the E-N is the mammal, the I-N is the bird.
- Jonathan Gilbert is a wildlife biologist
for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission.
- I think they're both on a central.
- And for the past 15 years, Gilbert has followed this animal
by track down trails, deep into the heart of
the Shwamagan Forest, leading fellow researchers
on a quest to learn more about this little known native.
- Martin's are big weasels.
They're in the Mastellade family.
Animals that belong to the Mastellade are fishers,
weasels, minks.
- Martin's are rare in this state and meaningful.
- They're a state and tribal endangered species.
It's also a, you know, jibwe clan animal.
Martin clan members are the defenders of the village,
the warriors in their society.
And we can see that from a Martin's behavior sometimes,
when we get them in a trap and they're very feisty
and really aggressive.
You know, that's kind of like, I think the
tribes took that energy and that kind of
feistyness and used that when deciding what clan to
choose for the warriors.
The ferocity comes in a very small package.
- They're little animals, they're 18, 20 inches long,
about like that.
Okay, move it out, just figure out.
- This pint-sized predator disappeared from Wisconsin
by 1925, pushed out by the twin pressures
of too much trapping and the clear cutting
of the northern forests.
Our forests rebounded and in the 1950s, this animal,
the Fisher, which is related to the Martin,
was reintroduced in the state to great success.
- Now we have 10,000 in the state
and it supports a nice trapping season
and so fishers are doing really well.
And kind of the thought was, well,
the same thing should happen with Martin's
'cause they're very related animals.
Well, it has not.
- Some 200 Martin's were reintroduced
in the Nikolay National Forest in the 1970s.
Over 150 were reintroduced in the Schwammagan,
the site of Gilbert's current research in the early 90s.
- We put 150 out 10 years ago, now we have maybe
40 or 50 around.
You know, so we're on a downward trajectory.
So why is this?
Why is it that Martin's are not doing as well
as we thought they should?
And certainly not as well as fishers.
So that's what this research is about.
- That kind of animal we call yesterday?
Quite over here?
- Now she's off over this way.
To study an animal, first, you must find it.
There are 1.5 million acres in the Schwammagan National Forest
and an estimated 40 to 50 Martins.
- And that's why snow is so wonderful.
You know, and that's why winter is the best time.
- Snow, the scientist's best friend.
Watch what Gilbert can do with good old fashioned tracks.
- One, two, three, oh.
One, two, three, four, five toes.
Five toes helps a lot when it's five toes.
See all canids, dogs, wolves, foxes, coyotes,
all those have four toes.
Okay. These have five toes.
So that tells me right away it's none of them.
It's not a canad.
The only other thing it could be really,
this size and moving like this is a fisher.
One, two, three, four, five toes again.
Much smaller track.
Okay, than the fisher track.
The foot has a lot of fur on it.
Okay, so it acts like I know like a snow shoe
to keep them up on top of the snow.
So Martins can travel through much deeper snow
than fishers can.
So because of the fur on their feet,
you don't see the pads as well.
So it's more of a poof in the snow.
- The tracks are two by two by two.
They look like this.
- Okay, see that pattern?
- That's very characteristic of macellids.
Fishers and Martins and minks.
Hardly any other animal has a gate like that.
We got a mastellid gate.
We got a small track.
We got five toes.
You know, there we go, Martins.
- They follow tracks.
They troll for DNA.
- When this is up on a tree, small animals can come
in from the bottom or from the top to
get to the bait.
And as they go by, they brush these sticky pads
and pull out a little bit of their hair.
- This is a hair snare.
Like a big city cop sifting for evidence,
Gilbert will collect these tiny hairs
and send them out for DNA analysis.
- It's the right color.
It's the right length.
It's very fine hair.
I would call this Martins hair and I would send it
off to Michigan State for them to confirm it or deny.
It's the case maybe.
- The hair snare helps the crew count the Martins
population numbers.
- You got satellites now, Joe?
- We've got satellites.
- Shall we take off and go back tracking?
- But where does that Martins population go?
What do they do?
Joe Duman, a wildlife technician with the National
Forest Service, combines the old and
the new to find out.
He follows a Martins tracks, backwards,
and then plots the path via GPS.
All to get a sense of how Martins move
through the forest and what they might need to thrive.
- They'll go in and out of the log.
They'll go underneath it and they'll go around
and they're searching for small mammals.
Now he puts his paws down, and he's probably scanning
the area looking around and then he decides he
doesn't want to go that way and changes direction.
Did they climb a tree?
Did they jump off a tree?
If they're going from an upland hardwood
to a lowland conifer.
- Where do the Martins go in a day?
And most importantly, what do they need to survive?
- You're going home, Duman.
- Yeah.
- What can we do to save them?
To track the Martins every year, the crew traps up
to 10 of the animals and outfits them
with radio collars.
Could jolling this widely weasel into a trap isn't easy.
- The trap is science, it's an art.
And we're either artists who knows what they're
doing to make good traps at.
- It's got a little skunk in there.
- Ron Parisiun, a wildlife technician
for the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission,
is a Picasso of Martin traps.
- But that grass in there then it's got something
for them to say warm.
They want to curl up this, the warmener.
- To hide the trap, he creates a little home.
It's an elaborate job, a kind of Martha
Stewart for Martins.
- They're very curious, you know,
and it'll be a dark spot, and all I want to investigate
and there's a good smell coming from in there.
- They cradle the structure with pine bows.
- Yeah, I keep them growing.
- Wolf it, with layers of bark.
- Objective is to keep them protected in there
as best we can.
- The last touch.
- A little eye appeal, like Dave Wolf,
whether it's hanging in the burn of the set here.
(water running)
- Success.
Martins are also known as pine Martins.
They need forests, and they need a particular part.
- This kind of stuff is really important for them.
- They need what's called structure,
downed logs, woody underbrush, places for their prey to hide,
places for them to hide.
- You know, Martins aren't able to,
they don't store a lot of body fats
that are not able to withstand these colds very well,
so they have to find shelter like this.
- There's a Martin there, hidden in a winter resting site,
an old white pine stump.
- It's a structure.
It may be that some simple changes
in logging practices might be enough to save the Martin.
Simple changes, like leaving some stuff
on the forest floor.
- Let's cut some trees down and leave them,
so we have big logs on the forest floor.
Let's push some trees over, so they pull up the roots
that we create tip ups.
Maybe we can cut some trees with,
so we have big stumps.
It could be as simple as that, and I'm quite sure that
there can be compatibility between harvesting
forest products and managing for Martins.
(plastic rustling)
- We have an endangered species, and so we have to figure out
how to make it not endangered.
- Yeah, they're beautiful.
They're great animals.
Very much a privilege to work with them.
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- Since Martins are so rare, it's even more rare
to have pictures of the animal, the Ojibwe
call Wabazashi, in the wild.
Wisconsin Public Television videographer Frank Boll,
in cooperation with Martin researchers,
left a special camera set up in the woods
for nearly a month to bring you those images.
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- We move now from the natural world into one of fantasy.
From the time we're little, we hear the stories of
knights in shining armor, slaying dragons and winning
victory for the king.
It's part fantasy and part history,
but today it's definitely not real.
Or is it?
Producer Andy Suth went in search of people
who make the tools needed to take a trip through time.
New Glarris, America's little Switzerland,
has long kept European traditions alive.
(soft music)
It's a good place then for these medieval enthusiasts
to practice an ancient craft.
- We're not just making any swords,
but we're making medieval swords in a modern context.
- The modern context is provided by Albion Armorers,
a specialist in the manufacturer and sale
of historic replica swords.
- Who buy swords?
- They're one of the most unnecessary things
you could purchase.
- Albion CEO Amy Wadell admits that people
have an unusual first reaction to her business.
- Then they see them and they hold them and they buy them,
because they really are their just fantastic
pieces of history.
- The pieces come together in a former meat processing plant.
It starts with a blank, the basic shape of a sword
cut from a steel plate by a computerized
milling machine.
(gunshot)
- We do have a benefit of modern equipment.
They wouldn't have used that back then,
but if they could have, they would have.
- A heat-treated blank is sharpened to make a blade.
The challenge is to make a weapon that is sharp but strong.
The test for this blade puts the old Gensu knife to shame.
This steel drum is the same gauge as a suit of armor.
(gunshot)
- If this was used against an armored opponent,
I mean, Jason could just take a hone and remove that damage
and put it back into service back in the
time of medieval times.
- This test demonstrates the blade's flexibility.
- So that you get a really strong edge
that has the ability to stay sharp,
but a blade that will be able to be flexed
and take the shock of back.
There it goes.
- Finally.
- Well, that's one of the inner part of the blade.
- So we would call this the very successful blade.
- The sharpened blade gets a cross guard
and a pommel that counters the weight of the blade
in the user's hand.
- Both the guards and the pommels were design elements
and the medieval, the Renaissance, the dark ages.
They were a way for the swordsmith or the cutler
to express themselves and in the sword-making process.
- If you just look at it, it's just such a remarkable
piece of engineering and it's frightening,
it's deadly, and it's beautiful at the same time.
And that's a rare occurrence.
- It would be a rare occurrence for anyone
to actually need a sword made to such exacting standards.
Given that today people are rarely called upon
to slay dragons or join the crusades,
why put so much effort into making what for
all practical purposes may only be an
oversized letter opener.
- We want to do the best possible job that we can do
to get the best possible performance out of the sword,
even though most 99% of the people who purchase our swords
just buy them and look at them and then put them on
a display on their wall.
- That authenticity is essential because the customer is
not just buying a sword, they're buying a tool to help
them travel back in time.
- In today's extremely stressful times, people need an escape
and fantasy and history are an escape.
And they want to feel chivalrous, they
want to feel lightly, they want to experience what a
knight would have experienced.
- That experience can be as powerful as
one of these weapons.
- We've actually had customers write to us and say that
when they opened up the box and saw their sword,
they broke into tears.
And they named them, they sleep with them,
they hang them on their walls, it's fascinating
and it's very inspiring for all of us.
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- As long as we're using our imaginations,
let's keep doing so.
Imagine this, it's modern day and you live in the
center of a large city.
You like where you live, except there's no grocery store.
They've all moved out of the area.
Now the nearest one is miles away and you don't have a car.
That was the real world for many people living in the
inner city of Milwaukee.
Then, Linus Market entered the neighborhood.
There was a grand opening last summer and producer
Art Hackett was there.
[laughter]
- Grocery store ribbon cuttings don't often
make the television news.
But the opening of the new Linus Food Market did.
Store openings don't often rate an appearance by the
Lieutenant Governor either.
- Fourth store in 40 years.
Two generations with vision and hard work
with the best fresh food.
I just walked down through the produce style.
But this is Linus.
If you live outside of Milwaukee,
you've probably never heard of Linus Market.
But on Milwaukee's north side, Linus is a big deal.
- I like the brand.
Linus is a little bit more than that.
- Linus is a little bit more than that.
- The opening of the store is a big deal because
the Milwaukee neighborhood around 21st and capital
has been without a supermarket for over two years.
- Cold store clothes.
There weren't any grocery outlets in a significant
mile radius at this particular location.
So it was a tremendous ad and convenience and ad versus impact
on the residents in terms of being able to get their
grocery needs met.
- When the first Linus grocery store opened at 4th
in North Streets in 1965, this was supermarket central.
There was a crogr store there, an A&P store across the street.
Today, there are no supermarkets anywhere
near this intersection.
- It really came down to the supermarkets, the major chains,
not wanting to locate stores in inner city neighborhoods.
- Wellford Sanders heads the Martin Luther King Economic
Development Corporation.
The organization is working to redevelop the business
corridor along King Drive.
- The thinking was that if folks living in the inner city,
I wouldn't be on a bus, getting their car, and drive
miles out to the suburban supermarkets, so be it.
- Sanders says the exit of the food stores from Milwaukee's
inner city began around 1970.
- The excuses used were ran from anything from well.
There's no money in the central city to support supermarkets.
There's too much crime in the inner city.
- But Sanders, who also teaches in the School of
Architecture and Urban Planning at UW-Milwaukee,
says the inner city is actually a very profitable
market for selling groceries.
- It's more purchasing power because there's greater density.
So there's no reason demand-wise, with
demand standpoint, from a need standpoint,
for not having these supermarkets in the
central core of the city.
- Lena and Bezley Martin realized that a long time ago.
- When I drifted off into the wholesale of grocery to
small independent stores, I settled into the basic food
item like canned vegetables, corn, peas, green beans,
potato, things of that nature.
Then I drifted from there into the retail.
- The Martin's first store could hardly be called a supermarket.
- It wasn't an original gas station at first.
He came out with the most produce, so he started
selling produce on the front of the grocery store
and I did a little remollin' and went from
that to the grocery store.
- We dealt with more of the basic, like, dry beans.
That was one of our big product.
And we found a source to purchase dry beans,
much less price, and what we could sell
them for less than what our competitor were.
- As the major chains moved to the suburbs, the
Martin started taking over their abandoned locations.
All of the current Lena's used to be coal stores, including
the new one on Capitol Drive.
- We recognized right away that this was a store that we would
fit our mold, fits our criteria in the area that we need to be.
- Derek Martin gave up a career selling insurance in Atlanta
to join two of his brothers in taking over management
of the family food chain.
- Well, I've been around in all my life.
I always said I wanted to get back and get involved
and help the business grow.
- The newest Lena's market is the most upscale
store in the chain.
It has a bakery, a longer meat section, and more freezer space.
Two of the shoppers we found drove from the far
northwest corner of Milwaukee.
- Yeah, we were coming from seein' Norma.
- Yes.
- And we passed by and we said, "Oh,
we've got to go in there."
So we didn't set up a date where we set up a day in
which we could come back.
- And so here we are.
- Appointment shopping.
- Oh yeah.
- Well, it's...
- Verma Keckley and her friend Marjorie Nicholson say they
like the idea of patronizing a black-owned business.
And they appreciate Lena's stock of hard-defined items.
And when people come from the south, we got
to custom certain foods.
The greens, you can find fresh greens, ham hots, and...
Most stores, the greens are chopped up into little
bitty pieces and in bags.
I'm more accustomed to getting them in leaves.
Huge leaves like these.
You notice what she's prepared.
And she has her leg bones.
And her turkey legs.
And she's what she's wanting me.
The season, my greens.
- The man you could hop in.
- Okay.
The selection of makings for soul food isn't the only
thing that sets Lena's apart.
Most stores bag your groceries.
Some load them into your car.
Lena's will drive you home if you buy 40 bucks
worth of merchandise.
The one that would buy the most groceries, they
were the one that had the least revenue for a car.
You'd rather take their money than have him
give to the cab company.
Right. That's what it brought down to.
And with the gas prices nowadays, average people who
would drive to do their shopping are commuting on the bus
and taking advantage of being taken home by Lena's.
Customers like Charles Dixon walked to the
store and ride back home.
The problem would have to go like to pick and save, which
is like 50 or 60 bucks away.
And this is more about a more convenient for me.
Other chains are starting to realize there's money
to be made in urban areas.
At Midtown, built where a failed shopping mall once stood,
there are now two supermarkets, a pick and save and a jewel.
National chains began to really look at inner city
markets and understand that, given the density and giving
the buying and purchasing power of inner city populations,
that there is a lot of money in the inner city
that can support retailing.
And there is also a Walmart.
Are you worried about Walmart opening a super center
somewhere around here?
No. No.
That's something you see.
That's like a waste of time.
When you start to worry about your competitor, you spend
your time worried about how you can serve people better.
We're doing things that Walmart's a pick and save,
the centuries won't do.
If Walmart does try and put a super center in
Milwaukee's central city, they'll have to remember that
Lena's has a 40 year head start.
Lena's, Lena's through the market.
We're always driving to meet your needs.
Art spoke with the owners of Lena's just this week
and business is good.
That's our show for tonight, but before we sign off,
take a deep breath of the warm, tropical air
at Ulbrich Botanical Gardens, Bowls Conservatory, and Madison.
A welcome reminder of the scent of a steamy summer day.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
See you next week.
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