[Music]
Major funding for InWisconsin is provided by the people
of Alliance Energy who bring safe, reliable and
environmentally friendly energy to keep homes,
neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin running smoothly.
Alliance Energy, offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]
You're looking out over quartz site bluffs down to
Devil's Lake.
Hello, everyone and welcome to a special
summer edition of InWisconsin.
I'm Patty Low and we're here at Devil's Lake State
Park. Throughout the summer we'll be traveling to
state parks and natural areas to bring you some of
our favorite stories from the past year.
We begin tonight in the snow-covered
landscape of the Shawamagan National Forest
where a determined group of individuals is working
hard to preserve a piece of the state's past.
[Music]
It's a frigid January morning in a place called
the North Woods.
Here in the Shawamagan National Forest
near Clam Lake a group of DNR staff and volunteers
gather round for what sounds like a secret strategy
session. What we're going to do we're going to move all
the animals in the transfer tub and close the sliding door
on them.
The animals inside this mysterious enclosure
are a site still rare in Wisconsin.
They're elk.
Easy girl.
The last known native elk here were killed by
commercial hunters more than a century ago.
And that illustrates what happened to
our elk.
Those elk were being shipped to the cities
to the market.
Easy girl.
Easy. Nine years ago a group of private citizens
decided to try to bring elk back to Wisconsin.
The late professor Ray Anderson from
UW Stevens Point led the effort.
The group got permission from the DNR and
the U.S.
Forest Service to release 25 elk in the
Shawamagan National Forest near Clam Lake.
Most of the funding for the reintroduction
came from private sources like the Rocky Mountain
Elk Foundation.
The bottom line when we knew we could
have elk in our state for our kids to enjoy that was
the reason I wanted this to happen.
The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation is a national
organization with almost 7,000 members in Wisconsin.
Bernie Lemmon was one of the first to join back in 1987.
Lemmon was instrumental in organizing a series of
annual prints to fund the reintroduction.
To date the foundation has raised
$650,000 for Wisconsin's elk.
Lemmon is clearly wild about these animals.
And even if you go and you only get to
see a hoof print in the sand or as I've commented
on it was precious Shawamagan rubies knowing
that they have been here.
I mean that's a gift.
Show time.
There's two cats without cars.
The DNR assumed management of the herd in the year
2000. At that time Ojibwe Elder Eugene Bege welcomed
the return of the elk with a sacred pipe ceremony.
They asked me to come and do
a spiritually significant ceremony of our people that
would bring harmony and good will to the arrival once
again of the Odick when I went out to the grounds.
I held up my pipe and my tobacco and I thanked
the great spirit for the life of our people.
The coming back again to this area of the first
four-legged that was created.
Today the largest source of funding for the elk project
is Indian gaming.
This revenue funneled through
the state helps pay for the cost of trapping and
coloring the animals.
The elk are lured into traps
using the sweet scent of apples and alfalfa.
Then they're fitted with radio
collars. These are calf collars VHF radio collars
that we use for our telemetry work.
This particular one being a calf
collar you know that's the most vulnerable cohort of
this population.
So it's important to get as many
calves with collars on as possible.
Coloring these large frightened animals
is no easy task.
Helpers start by collapsing the
walls of the enclosure moving the elk toward a small
holding pen.
Then one by one they coax the animals
into a covered shoot.
Here they attempt to comb the elk while slipping
on a collar.
After the elk are quiet DNR wildlife
health specialist Carrie Beeller injects them
with vitamins and antibiotics.
She also takes a blood sample.
We're doing a health survey on the
elk herd and so we test them for as a variety of
bacterial and viral diseases.
Just living in this environment they're exposed
to a variety of these diseases.
One of them is Eastern equine and cephalitis.
Two years ago there was an
outbreak of that in this particular area of Wisconsin.
It's fatal to horses.
Another disease in their environment that they have to
live with is West Nile virus and that again can
also be fatal to horses.
After the elk have been collared they're set free.
A few of the collars contain a global positioning chip.
The data from the chip is analyzed by a team at the
University of Wisconsin Madison.
This is the actual GPS unit itself here that
collects the data from the satellites and stores the
data and then we download it at the end of the year.
The UW Madison team is part of a consortium of
universities in the US and Canada that are studying how
elk use the landscape.
What's interesting is that in 1995 when the elk were
introduced they had essentially an open landscape
and where they have set up their home ranges is largely
driven by predation risk.
The presence of wolves.
The red areas show areas of
relative high density of wolves and they have selected to
set up their home ranges away from the wolves.
The DNR also collects data on
the herd using VHF signals from the collars.
They get a fix on the signal with a
truck modified with a large antenna.
Then they tune in each animal's frequency
with a portable receiver.
Okay this is cow 63 and she's over here.
This is one of the cows that we just let go.
We not only get locations but once a week we'll
also go out and just run through all the frequencies
check to see where the all the animals are.
When an animal is healthy and
moving around we get a beep once every second.
If the animal should be should
die or is killed once that collar is still it changes
signal from one beep per second to two beats per second.
If the signal changes to two beats per second the
DNR investigates the cause of death.
So far wolves and bears have taken about eight
elk most of them calves.
Wincher has also taken a toll but the most serious
threat to date has been from humans.
We've investigated 33 mortalities with the elk
and nine of those have been due to vehicle collisions
and they aren't vehicle collisions with people's
personal vehicles.
They're vehicle collisions with
large vehicles, large trucks.
There are currently 120 elk in the herd.
The DNR plans to cap the herd's
growth at about 1400 animals.
The population will be controlled by hunting.
All of the alternatives are less
attractive than the hunting activity.
If we wait until they starve it's the
worst thing you can imagine.
If we let them go till they're out in the middle of
the road and people are complaining it's even
worse yet.
Elk hunting will generate funds for the state
in the future but groups in the shawamagan area
are already seeing an economic benefit from the
herd. Growing numbers of outdoor enthusiasts are
drawn to the area each fall hoping to see an elusive
elk. Research has found that when bulls bugle a lot it
synchronizes estrus with the cows so you have a much
more efficient shorter breeding season.
Autumn is mating season when bull
elk bugle out their unusual call.
DNR biologist Lane Stoel led a group from
the Cable Natural History Museum into the forest
trying to call out the territorial male elk
with a call of his own.
[Music]
On that day the group was too large and too noisy
to successfully fall an elk an important lesson
in elk etiquette.
We've learned another lesson about
elk in our state the hard way the lesson of loss but
with the help of private citizens the government
and the tribes elk have returned to Wisconsin a return
welcomed by everyone who values these wild majestic creatures.
[Music]
From the call of the wild to the call of the open road
in Richland Center a group of bikers you might call them
a gang of sorts has made the area roadways their
own.
[Music]
The term Harley Davidson is the definition of the
term road bike meant for lone wolf-like travel on
the open highway but for whatever reason are the
owners clump together so when you pass a bar in a
little Wisconsin town like Blue River and you see a
bunch of guys in matching outfits strapping on helmets
you figure it's just another bunch of bikers until
you realize these aren't Harley's instead of the
rolling thunder of a gang of Harley's you hear the
sound of a swarm of mosquitoes you've got to check it out.
This is what could happen if a bunch of swiners went
a little nuts and busted out of the parade route.
When a bar owner sees you guys coming do they think
oh oh here comes travel.
I don't think so.
We have red jackets instead of black.
Norm the color of the jackets may be the least
of the differences.
First the bikes aren't legally considered motorcycles
their moped they fall into the gray area between
motorcycles and bicycles.
Moped engines are limited to 50 cc's that's about one
thirty fifth the size of a Harley engine and moped
have a top speed of around thirty five miles an hour.
It's great cruising around a college campus but
also fast enough for a few Richland County residents.
They bought moped heads in the early eighties.
It was cheap transportation you know the people in the cities
bought them they rode them back and forth to work and they
get a hundred miles to the gallon out of them you know.
And over time the Richland Center folks started riding in
small groups and then in bigger groups everyone had the
same kind of moped a Honda urban express.
They called them urban expressives and pardon me but
Richland Center is not urban.
The group formally organized in 1997 as the back road
express riders about seventy two express riders have monthly
meetings and weekly rides during Wisconsin's warmer months.
We ride every Tuesday the rains on Tuesday we ride Thursdays.
But probably never occurred to anyone at Honda that some folks
would take them out on weekly trips of one hundred
forty miles or so.
They found out how durable they were they started taking
fifty mile rides with them and maybe all day rides.
Fans of Harley-Bikers have a motto ride to live live to ride.
The express riders motto should probably be something
like ride to eat to ride.
Most of the destinations seem to be restaurants.
Do they ever go to live at Routing?
Oh no.
They have a good time but as far as being Rode I know.
We're going to get a little gas here.
A little gas.
Very little gas.
Probably fifty cents worth.
Putting a credit card.
Some of the gas stations kind of thrown upon us coming in
and each paying fifty cents and sixty cents for gas.
You owe me seven cents.
You brought fifty seven cents for the gas.
I paid a dollar forty four.
I gave you fifty cents back.
I gave you a quarter.
And you gave me a quarter.
You know I can't handle that.
One woman told us it's just when we didn't come back.
We were going to make her figure out thirty and forty
and fifty cents sales.
I'm hoping to turn over ten thousand this year.
I have nine thousand five hundred about sixty right now.
Brasila Williams is a retired school teacher who heard about
the club and decided she wanted to ride even before
she bought an express.
I wanted to play.
I've worked really hard.
I was a teacher for thirty six years.
I retired early so that I could ride more.
Getting into the group may be harder than you realize.
Honda Express' haven't been built for twenty years.
The odds are if you really wanted to ride someone in the
group would probably be willing to sell you one.
We tend to be collectors.
Once somebody finds one they want another
one and another one.
In our garage we have a red one, a brown one and a black one.
Now I need a blue one and a gray one.
To accessorize?
No just because I'm greedy I guess.
Our next story takes us from the open road.
To some of the more remote, cramped and dank
spaces in Wisconsin.
Researcher Dave Radell works by night.
His goal to learn more about a creature that many of us
would run screaming from.
They are one of the world's most common mammals.
They are the only ones that can sell them.
That's a live life that is largely hidden from us.
Their home is the territory of night.
You might see them at dawn circling the sky or as they
exit an old barn or swarm their houses at sunrise.
But bats are not usually in our sight-rots.
They like corners, crevices, but with the
right equipment, infrared cameras, they are revealed
in their time, in their landscape, as magnificent
hunters racing through the sky.
It's unfortunate, but most of our experiences with bats
are of the unpleasant kind.
The man doing this particular bat extraction is Dave Radell.
We can take him for later and record his calls.
Radell has spent years collecting bats
and data about bats.
He's a batty collegeist.
He's been working for a lot of time.
This is what we use to monitor the bats as they
fly around the landscape.
It's a bat detector or ultrasound detector.
There's three pieces to the echolocation.
Search phase and then a pursuit and then a capture
or an attempt to capture.
There's two bats at the foot of the eye.
The first one number brings it down to a
level that we can here.
You can see we're getting into a different shape and frequency.
This is likely the big brown bat.
More research is coming out and attempts are being made
to identify the species.
Which is what Redel is attempting to do here to ID
species by their specific cause.
It's blue one here.
Not to worry, the tags are very light and fall
off in a day or two.
You can actually play it in half speed.
A sophisticated software program translates those bat
sounds above the range of human hearing into sonograms,
pictures of bat calls.
This you can spread it out a little bit, get an
idea of what the shape is.
After a while you can start to see what the different
bats are doing and it changes in the different habitats.
A picture of their invisible calls hidden from our hearing.
Miles away in the central part of the state is another
part of Wisconsin's bat world hidden from view.
Redel is walking on it.
Redel is on his way to the mother of all bat houses.
He slips through a grate and hikes up a highway culvert
and arrives at the entrance of an abandoned nile,
the old ironbridge mine.
This is the farthest we can go.
Just because this is where the culvert ends and it's
not stable after here.
Back in that darkness are 15 acres of mine, twined with
over 4 miles of tunnels.
This is where they get out iron ore, one of the largest
producers of iron ore in the country back in its time.
Right now it's a bat hibernation site.
It's been abandoned as a mine and it's become a really great
place for bats to hibernate at.
It's 100% humidity.
The miners moved out and the bats moved in.
A lot of bats moved in.
I would say 150 to 200,000.
It may look sparsely populated now, but in wintertime back in
that mine there's a slumbering bat city just slightly smaller
than the city of Madison.
In terms of hibernation sites it's one of the
largest in North America.
And in terms of research it's a precious sanctuary.
The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee now owns the
mine and uses it as a closed scientific research area.
See what this is measuring and it's measuring the
air flow through the mine.
This muck filled mine is Dave's lab.
It's an infrared beam that shoots across and on the
other side is a detector.
A place to ask some basic questions about bats.
For example, exactly how many bats hibernate here?
To answer that, Redel has set up a monitoring system that
utilizes beam break technology.
You see the green one?
There's a red, it's the different corrections.
There's bat went out, there went in, that's just my own moving.
Let's test it.
So let's show you that that beam is working.
You can see it comes with bats going in and out.
Data from these devices is sent to a receiving station
and can be downloaded from anywhere in the world.
It's a world that is not without peril for
these fragile creatures.
Just outside one of the entrances to the mine, two
bats are trapped in the burrs of a bird-up plant,
a non-native species.
This one, it's a female little brown.
See it's got its teeth right on the plant.
Got stuck here and tried to chew its way off.
Fellow mammals, that fuel our fears, fears
that may be unfounded.
Redel corrects a common myth about bats and rabies.
I think the percentage they usually quote is less than
one half of one percent bats.
When they get rabies, they're not similar to like cat dogs,
raccoons and skunks where they get the furious form
that they form at the mouth and will actually attack you.
Typically when a bat gets rabies, it gets sick, falls
to the ground, flops around and we eventually die.
So that's where they say if you see a bat, sick on the
ground, don't pick it up.
Those are the ones you try and avoid.
Other than that, if they're flying around buzzing you in the
middle of the night, as you're out walking, there's typically
nothing to worry about there.
It's the middle of the night.
Redel's work day.
As he explores this unseen world, the
territory of the bats.
Debra Dell continues his research on bats.
His next project is to study the effect that wind farms may have
on these nocturnal creatures.
We'll bring you more on his story later this year.
[Music]
We're in Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Good night.
[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.
Alliant energy offering energy saving ideas on the web.
[Music]