[Music]
Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Lowe.
This week we introduce you to a trio of people from across
the state with three unique stories.
Join this man as he patrols Milwaukee
streets in search of crimes against the city's leafy
citizens. When we're gone, they're still going to
be here.
They're still going to be growing.
They're still going to be strong.
Take a walk back with one of the former leaders of the
Lactoflambot tribe through some of northern Wisconsin's
most turbulent times.
And at some of those landings, we sort of felt like
some of those war chiefs.
Find out why those days of racial conflict may not be
entirely in the past.
And meet this Stevens Point athlete
who's got his heart set on bringing home a medal from the
ultimate sporting event.
I think we're going to go for
the goad.
I want to goad.
All that plus will take you to a controlled burn
designed to rejuvenate a prairie area in Wisconsin.
Major funding for in Wisconsin is provided by the people of a
Lyon energy who bring safe, reliable and environmentally
friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods, and life
in Wisconsin running smoothly.
A Lyon energy offering energy saving
ideas on the web.
The University of Wisconsin Comprehensive
Cancer Center providing cancer research, education,
and treatment.
UW Comprehensive Cancer Center
Comprehensive has designated by the National Cancer
Institute, information 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.
When we think of Wisconsin forests, it's usually the large
national and state wooded areas up north that come to
mind. Well, what would you say if we told you
that our state's largest city also has a nationally
renowned forestry program?
That's right.
Milwaukee. And the city's innovative program is enforced
by a man they call the tree cop.
Unmonitor the city trees and protect the trees in the state
of Milwaukee from construction damage or other damage it may
occur to them.
That's might be the whole city of Milwaukee,
all of it.
If there's a street or sidewalk construction project
in Milwaukee, Jim Kringer is there.
His beat is trees.
They call him the tree cop.
One minute to get where.
Kringer is a man in motion.
Kringer has been walking this beat for 25 years.
This is the result.
You're looking at Milwaukee's urban forest.
For many, these trees are an essential part
of the city's infrastructure.
Bob McFadden is a former forestry services
manager for Milwaukee.
If you didn't have this year and it was all concrete asphalt,
reflect the heat and light, it would be brutal.
It would be brutal.
Trees can make a city.
It's all you need.
Preston Cole is the environmental services
superintendent for the city of Milwaukee.
I'm convinced that the social dynamics behind
having a well-canopy society, a well-canopy city, goes a long
way to reducing violence, goes a long way to increasing our
property value, and it goes a long way to defining a system
community. This canopy also goes a long
way in cutting city costs.
We've got 284,000 trees in Milwaukee and those trees save
the homeowners and the taxpayers $21 million a year.
According to city officials, the trees of Milwaukee's
urban forest provide $1.5 million a year
in cooling costs, $4.5 million in pollution
abatement, and $15.5 million in groundwater treatment.
$21 million a year saved by the homeowners in the city of
Milwaukee. The more trees we plant, the more
money is being saved.
The more trees they save, the more money they save.
Bigger trees, bigger canopy.
Kringer's title is Urban Forestry Inspector.
It's a job he helped create from scratch.
A job that began on this street.
Back in 1978, August of that year, we had a wind storm come
through here.
As a sidewalk replacement project had just
finished off, and in one evening in August, we had 90 trees
fall over in this community.
They were lying on top of houses,
they were lying on top of cars.
It was an expensive mess and people were mad.
Kringer was hired and armed with the skills
gained from a summer forestry job, an interesting
construction, and a BA in English off he went
in search of an answer, in search of a solution.
And he always wanted to know why, why are these trees falling
over in the city of Milwaukee?
They'll began a 25 year odyssey that is resulted in a nationally
recognized tree inspection program that is produced
spectacular results.
Before Kringer came, tree losses in Milwaukee
numbered in the hundreds.
City Milwaukee averaged a loss of between four to six hundred
trees annually that fell over primarily in construction
sites. From 1981 up until now, 2005, we've had less than
50 fall over in construction sites.
The campaign to save this canopy begins at ground level
or below where the roots meet the street.
If you cut through too many stabilizers, the tree can no
longer support itself during wind storms and then the tree
is going to fall over.
Take a look in here, this is where
I've got my work plate, the tree.
Anytime you cut into this, this is going to rot directly
into the tree.
And everything on this section of the tree would
eventually rot out, meaning all of these roots would rot
out and have no support on this side of the tree whatsoever.
Many communities simply ditch the trees.
They value the straight line.
Milwaukee values its trees.
Consider this old beauty.
This is an American hill, one of the largest ones in the city
of Milwaukee that's still left.
It's an old beauty with bulging roots that raised up the
sidewalk and got in the way.
Most communities get cut it down.
It's cheaper for them to cut the tree down, not to have
an impact on construction.
Milwaukee didn't cut it down.
They went around.
To save a tree, Kringer will insist
that they narrow a walk.
We've already reduced the walk by a foot.
Raise a walk.
So my new walk is actually going to be this high, which is
going to go over the entire root system itself.
It will insist on certain equipment, whatever it takes.
It's all for the trees, all for the trees itself.
Every construction project in the city of Milwaukee includes
specs for the trees.
It's called a special provisions
report and its strict.
It legally sets down what their binding contract
is, what they can and can't do for each specific
construction job in the city of Milwaukee and holds them liable
for damages that they have.
Four trees, four trees.
Damages. That's right.
Contractors are liable for damages to the trees.
So what I've got is our OOTS dollar sign, which tells me if
they get the hit it, it's going to cost the money.
And Milwaukee doesn't mince around.
It's $50 for every two inches and I've got 60 inches of
root face.
So we're looking at $1500.
We had a job that we had over on Hadley.
I had 84 trees on that job.
Every one of those trees got damaged.
It cost the contractor $42,000 in damages.
Ouch. The best way to affect the contractor was to take out
of his back pocket.
He took the green leaves down.
I took the green out of his wallet
and that changes depending on what we had to do on the
job. The tree cop is sometimes forced into detective work.
Consider the time Kringer found a fresh wound similar to this
on a tree in a construction site.
So I walk up, touch the tree.
He's probably about 60 feet down the block.
I says, that truck hit this tree about 30 minutes
ago and you're able to nail him right for the tree for the
damage that he did.
So you've got to be sort of an
investigator when you come out.
How do you know?
I said, come here.
Touch it.
The cambium layer is still moist.
So it didn't have time to dry out.
The tree cop wasn't always well light.
But over time, the crews and the contractors have
responded. And here's the result.
Milwaukee's trees live an average of
62 years.
That's twice the national average.
Milwaukee likes trees, so we like to save the trees here.
It's different.
If they'll go to a scene, they'll go
to Kenosha.
They don't have the same guidelines
that we have.
And they'll come back and say, "Jim,
they need you down there.
They need you here.
They need you in Madison.
We're doing jobs in Green Bay where they don't
care about their trees."
The education, the forging of connections, continues.
"You see the old tree?
The old one?
So that roots in some convenient cop.
It planted it too shallow, didn't go
down. It raised more problems for us that we've got."
"But you do good.
I appreciate it."
"No, I always like that.
I save the trees."
"OK." "Save the trees."
"I'm even going to take everything down.
You've got a neighborhood that has nothing."
This is the tree cop's favorite case, latent avenue.
"The original, the next road would have been here.
It would have gone through the center
of every single tree on this project.
So all 280 trees would have had it come out."
"It didn't happen."
"It's like a cathedral that you have that's going to be here
for a long time yet to come."
"So it's really beautiful.
It really is."
"It adds to the neighborhood."
"Every time you drive down that block, in that area, you
say, look what the city's done.
Look what the city's accomplished.
Because you could have gone in there
and cut everything down."
"Every single tree on that project could have cut down."
"How long does man live?
Maybe 70, maybe 80 years?"
"When we're gone, they're still going to be here.
They're still going to be growing.
They're still going to be strong."
Spring is a busy time for Jim Kringer and the
Transpection Program.
But Kringer tells us he's also going to be making time
in the near future to offer classes on urban forestry.
[Music]
Our next report also involves a man with a strong
love for the environment.
Tom Malson is a lack-of-flambo businessman with plenty
to say about tribal land, politics, and the Indian
nation's economic future.
As leader of the so-called "wally warriors" in the
late 1980s, Malson was a vocal proponent of
Chippewa spearfishing.
He went on to become an even more outspoken tribal president.
I had the opportunity to talk with him a while
back for this report.
Tom Malson looms large in Indian country.
A towering physical presence
matches the high profile he attained in the 1980s,
as leader of the "wally warriors" - an activist,
Native American group that asserted Ojibwe Treaty rights.
They talk about not hating Indians and other author
still violating our civil rights, violating our
movement, fear for our lives.
Malson's activism during spearfishing is just one entry
on his Native Rights resume.
Others include eight years as president of lack-of-flambo.
He's been a police officer, game-wording, grant writer,
and independent businessman.
A lifelong resident of lack-of-flambo, he has
quite literally seen it all.
I remember when they brought to the lack-of-flambo, the
commodity truck where they had cornmeal and we could use
to call cans of monkey meat.
When they did give away, U.S.
government blankets the army blankets that they gave away
and the hobnails shoes from the Korean war or whatever
at that particular time.
Our kids didn't have shoes at that time, lived in
the old paper shacks.
His mother was Ojibwe.
His father was white, a businessman
who inspired young Tom to entrepreneurship at a young age.
In the rain, we'd make sure we were the first
ones early in the morning picking up all the worms.
So we'd take all the worms and we'd sell them
to the stores uptown.
So I guess that's when I started my entrepreneurship.
You were a worm wrangler.
What else have you done?
On the bar?
On the bar, first of all, I worked for my dad
for quite a few years.
Doing what?
Roofing. I run this campground for almost seven years.
We got ourselves into a restaurant, business uptown.
We had that for 12 years.
We got ourselves into the storage facility
business, propane business.
We got some log cabin units that we built here about
five years ago and got out of the food business and
went into a studio apartment right on the lake here.
Mauson's business instincts, his ability to organize
and negotiate, served him well during the spear
fishing controversy.
But he says the experience transformed him.
In 1989, the height of the
violence, the O'Poggan pipe carriers, the Ojibwe holy
people began visiting him.
I was having a Poggan Ninny people, the pipe people coming
sit and smoke at my house and we were talking about stories.
I heard many, many of the stories that they probably
brought me up to way back when those treaties were signed.
That was the education that I was getting.
Some of those landings felt like
some of those war chiefs that had that shirt on it.
You couldn't, you know, bullets couldn't penetrate.
And when I was there, I never really felt scared.
Why should you be in part with more evening
than us under the law?
We would smoke the pipe, we would smudge, we would do
the things that were told by those old people to do.
And that sort of give you sort of just like a cloud around
you and sort of protect you.
Malsen says treaty rights reintroduced him to his culture.
He learned things and began to pass on that knowledge.
That's some of the role that I took as an Indian person because
I really wasn't an Indian person up until that time.
I never really took the initiative to understand,
you know, my Anshnaabe name, my background, what
Flambo was all about.
What is your Anshnaabe name?
But day we are, but day we are, that means,
you know, cloud coming.
Sometimes you bring much needed rain and sometimes you just
scare the life of people.
Scared of living hell out of some people.
In 1991, the lack of Flambo tribal membership voted
Malsen president of the tribe.
But after eight years, just as Malsen was finding
his national voice, tribal members voted him out.
Hat feels and McCoy stuff, you know.
I mean, that happens here on reservations too.
And I guess that's all right.
I didn't want to die in office.
I never wanted to plan that.
But I think, you know, I felt good about the things
that they did do in office.
His most significant accomplishment, he says, is
helping to make the state aware of treaty rights
and native sovereignty.
The right of Indian nations to self-determination.
A right compromise, he believed, in the latest gaming compacts.
And I think that we shouldn't have to pay
a state of Wisconsin.
One, I all had time to do business here because
we were here before them.
What about opening up the books to show state auditors?
Why should we have to show them anything?
That's just like you asking to see my books.
"Twenty-quarter hell."
And tribal leaders should tell them to go to hell.
They're a sovereign nation.
That sovereignty, he says, is the key to a successful future.
We are sovereign people that we are different.
And by saying different, I mean, is that we have to
continue to speak our language that would jibwe mow
in to understand our duty, our Indian names,
to listen to them drums, to bring people more
closer to the earth.
Twenty years from now, along with the scenic beauty,
he'd like to see Indian-owned businesses, Indian managers and
all facets of tribal government, a native-owned radio
station, a tech school.
Number one, I see a whole bunch of young educated people
making efforts to prepare for the next generations.
Because as long as I have a breath, that's
probably the direction that I will continue to talk,
that we need to have that preparation for tomorrow.
When asked to show us his favorite place
on the reservation, he took us here to the
fishing dock he built for his grandson, Gigi,
which appropriately enough means fish in the Ojibwe language.
It's the place he comes to say, "Mikwitch, thank you to the fish
that gave the tribe its name."
Lack de flambeau, French for lake of torches,
referring to early observations of this Ojibwe band,
"Sparing Fish at Night."
In Ojibwe, the name translates to "Waswaganing."
I see, like always, like us as parents,
to have a better life for our kids.
And if we're going to have a better life, then we have
to protect what's here.
We have to say, "Mikwitch," to those birds that are chirping,
those trees that continuously grow, they grow, they
grow, and I guess just a lot of downright respect.
For us taking a good deep breath of fresh air
and hopefully one day that there can be a purifying
system that's going to help, you know, the continuance
of our Gigi's, our fish to live in Waswaganing.
A couple of updates since I spoke with Tom
Malson for that report.
Last October, Malson was re-elected to the Lack de
flambeau tribal council.
And while there's been very little violence
associated with spearfishing over the past 15 years,
the issue has not totally gone away.
On April 15th, a Tomahawk man was arrested on charges
of disorderly conduct with hate crime as an enhancer.
Witnesses say he allegedly threatened Ojibwe spearfishers
with a gun, unlike Nekomus.
The incident happened as tribal members were attempting
to spear walleye on the lake near the Rice River flow edge.
The suspect posted bond and will make an appearance
in the O'Nighta County Circuit Court in mid-May.
We head now to Stevens Point.
That's where athlete Murlconi lives and trains.
Kuni is preparing for the first ever national games
for Special Olympics.
The event will be held this summer in Iowa and Wisconsin has
63 athletes going to the games.
As reporter Fred Rika Freiberg tells us, "Murlconi
already has his sights set on a golden future."
Murlconi is 27 years old.
He's been competing in regional Special Olympics since he was 9.
Now he's taking his athletic skills to the next level.
Kuni is a member of the team Wisconsin men's softball squad.
I think we could take a good look at the team.
We make mistakes.
We're going to make mistakes.
We make mistakes as a team, but can't say, but I think
we're going to go for the gold.
I want to go.
Metals aside, just making this national
softball team is an honor.
Of the more than 100 Special Olympic athletes from across
Wisconsin that applied, 15 were chosen.
Then now to be selected just to name a loan.
You know, I'm part of the national game, first
ever national games team.
So that's a big deal.
89. Kuni and his parents
have 18 years of Special Olympics memories.
My first track uniform at the Youth Member?
Murl enjoys no matter what he does, whether he wins or loses.
He has the attitude that he's having a good time and he's
doing the best he can do.
He makes me feel proud that Murl and all these other athletes
have a place to compete.
It gives me the chance to play because I asked once my
coach who I had in high school if I could go and play Ruggo
Baseball and he said you would have to sit on the
bench because I like to win.
That coach may not have understood Kuni's winning
attitude and his uncommon draw.
When Kuni's not training or playing sports, he works
at a local restaurant.
His bosses say he's a favorite with the customers as the
flame-broiled grill chef.
Kuni's dad says his son has a real mind for money.
His dad says every two years Kuni buys himself a new
car, taking pride in his ride and his self-reliance.
This is my house.
All white as you can tell.
He's even saved enough to buy his own house.
That's where he safely keeps his goal.
These three men I got to offer, they're my weightlifting one.
I first placed in a dead lift, first placed in a bench.
We're very proud of Murl.
He has come a long way.
He's doing a wonderful job.
Paton Richard Kuni adopted Murl as a baby.
His mom says when he came to them, he
was significantly delayed.
His parents marveled that despite his struggles,
he has come so far.
They say being a Special Olympics
athlete helps shape him.
Given him a lot of self-esteem, good self-esteem, pride,
feel good about himself.
A special sport athlete.
They made me miss something.
But they sure got something none of us else's got.
I have never seen a Special Sport athlete say, "I don't feel
like playing today.
They're all there, they're all heartening.
Give it everything they got."
And Kuni gives it everything he's got and everything he
does. His current coach has all the confidence in him.
He knows the stuff.
So never mind that high school coach who said he'd have to
warm the bench if he wanted to play on a winning team.
Because if Murl Kuni has his way, his team Wisconsin
will capture gold in Men's Softball at Nationals.
The Special Olympics, USA National Games, happened
July 2nd through the 7th.
We'll be sure to bring you an update of how Kuni
and the rest of the team Wisconsin delegation perform.
And that's our program for this week.
Join us next time when we'll tell you about the dispute
between a lake shore city and its suburbs over how drinking
water would be supplied.
A situation that had area residents caught in the middle.
I'm not that particularly fussy about the taste.
My contention is you don't know what the long-term
ramifications are.
So... Of the radio.
Right.
That's next week.
For now we leave you with
a look at something called a controlled burn.
That's when fires are deliberately set by ecology
experts in prairie areas.
The goal is to rid the landscape of dead growth and release
nutrients back into the soil.
The process stimulates new native prairie plant growth.
The burn we captured on tape happened near Springgreen.
For in Wisconsin, I'm Patty Low.
Have a great week.
[Piano music]
Betray luck.
[Music]