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Hello and welcome to In Wisconsin.
I'm Patty Low.
Each week we bring you stories about the people
and issues in our state.
This week we celebrate Earth Day.
It was first celebrated 35 years ago
and was created by former Wisconsin governor and
US Senator Gaylord Nelson.
To commemorate the occasion, all of our
stories this week have an environmental theme.
Travel deep into the woods of
Sauc County in search of a natural gem.
Join this man on Lake Superior as he
searches for clues to an ecological mystery and find
out how residents of the Kikapu Valley turned a
failed federal works project into a successful 9,000
acre recreational area.
We'll have all that plus a springtime walk near the
Barra Bo River 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.
Our first story celebrates the concept of Earth Day
through the written word and beautifully composed picture.
It's the next installment in our video poetry
series. This week's poems about places features
poet Judith Strasser and videographer Frank Bowel
as they search for the natural treasure that is Pine
Hollow. We seek a wild place.
A narrow wooded gorge.
Shear cliffs.
Rock outcroppings.
We discover remnant farm.
Silo of Grey Concrete.
Mossy Foundation Stone.
Something that might have been water tank.
Civilization attempted.
No sign of the faint trail that the
guide to natural areas says takes off from the northeast
corner of an abandoned field.
Above the cicada's rasp wind in dry weeds mimics
the brush of a stream.
We're hopeful heading into the
beckoning crook of woods that embraces mone clover
and grass.
We press down hill through black
very bramble and golden rod gone to seed.
But the forest we find is a sham.
Jack pines and orderly corridors.
Barren understory.
Just beyond the plantation
we stumble on weathered chain-sawed logs scattered
like pick-up sticks.
Hardly wild nature.
But we have a mission here.
TV minutes to fill a video poem
to write.
Perhaps we can prod this scene into some
semblance of art.
We take notes, run tape, record what we see
and imagine.
Hope gone awry, disaster, better luck
someplace else.
And then we too move on.
Newtid color, yellows and reds make spectacle
of the trees but it's threatening rain and
every trail we try shrinks to a path from deer.
We find a grapevine thick as an iron.
A snag poked with woodpecker holes.
An old barbed wire fence and whenever
the wind leaves falling like rain.
But no gorge.
This is not what we wanted at all.
Until someone spots the yellow sign nailed to a
distant tree and here's the way down.
Brown moss on the rocks made in hair fur and Solomon
seal in the crease of the dry streambed.
Somewhere below us pine hollow but
we're running out of tape.
The poet sits on a rock.
Imagine spring was burble as snow
melt. A steep moist ravine.
Warblers and thrushes.
cicadas fall silent.
Rain patters the leaf carpet floor.
Be give up.
Pack up the gear.
Climb toward the car, pass an old birch forked and
scarred the clings to the lip of the hill.
Do you have what you need the producer
asks? Do we know what that might be?
Beyond the silo, the city.
Behind bold hope for some other season.
A trunk, live heart of a maple.
Cased in a femoral gold.
Join us next week for the final chapter in our video poetry
series. It takes place in a three generations old
Sicilian family bakery in Milwaukee and features poet
Bianca Spriggs and videographer Wendy Woodard.
In the meantime log on to our website at
wpt.org/inwisconsin to read this week's video poem.
You'll also find more information about
all of the poets who took part in our poems
about places series.
We continue our environmental theme by traveling
to the Kikapoo Valley Reserve north of La
Farge in Vernon County.
The reserve has many things in
common with Wisconsin's other recreational areas.
It has close to 9,000 acres with hiking
trails, bike paths, geological wonders and gorgeous scenery.
But while the Kikapoo Valley Reserve looks like other state
natural areas, Art Hackett reports that the creation of
the reserve is a story unlike any other.
The Kikapoo Valley Reserve north of La Farge has much in
common with Wisconsin's state parks, pretty scenery,
trails to hike or bike and some interesting
geological formations.
But the reserve's directors says don't expect to
park to camper here.
Cell phones don't work here.
You have primitive camping where you're not tent to tent with
other folks.
Horseback riders love it because
of the rough terrain.
The reserve folds a winter festival every
January. The Hochunk which own part of the land
in the reserve, erected traditional shelter
called a Chipot-a-Kate.
Tribal member Bill Greendeer says the land
was a popular wintering area for his ancestors.
You have whole villages down in the valley, near enough water,
near enough where you could do a little bit of hunting
and it was easier to be in on an open marshes.
But the Hochunk were displaced by farmers,
farmers who eventually were displaced themselves.
Some things you see and find in the reserve don't make sense.
Well spout water but there's no house or farm nearby.
There's a concrete obelisk.
It's not a silo.
It's not a grain elevator.
It's just there.
And if you wonder into the darkness of the
woods, you'll find stone structures.
They appear to be steps leading to a
clearing, surrounded by plants which are out of place.
There is some day lullies.
Wouldn't be native species at all.
And some pine trees that are
not native so there would have been a house here.
Brian Bufton knows the story.
The story of how the houses and the people who lived in
them disappeared.
Once it started to happen, it just happened very quickly.
People that I went to grade school with, people that used
to ride the same school buses I did.
Suddenly they were gone and not only were they
gone, but their homes were gone.
The story begins with the Kikapoo River, which
meanders through a valley once filled with
dairy farms and tobacco fields.
But the Kikapoo frequently jumped its banks.
This is a brand new channel.
It guards out the field.
We lost the field.
About two acres of the farm were lost going
down the hill.
It was a sad, sad thing.
See, when you have a flash flood, it gets out of
control. But if we had some dams above, it would have kept
it under control.
So the people in the valley talked to the
U.S. Swale Conservation Service about a program
to build small flood control dams.
That was in 1962.
There were going to be six different small dams in the
area spotted small dams.
Three years later, plants had changed to one really big dam
and a lake.
People thought a lake would spur
economic development.
People like water, they're going up north for a week and
so but it would be right here.
This would be the development here.
I think it was about evenly divided.
The people that were looking at this as
a place to make a living and everything.
I think they saw it was exciting.
Mary Bufton, Brian Bufton's mother, was teaching school at
the time.
She and her husband Rax lived in this house near
where the lake would be.
For some people, this is such a beautiful place to live.
This is where we thought we would
always live.
And now suddenly we can't.
We probably aren't going to have it.
They wouldn't have that place to live because expanding the
dam to create a lake would flood most of the valley.
The Army Corps of Engineers
bought the Bufton's farm and 140 others to make
way for the lake which would form behind the dam.
It was terrible.
It was terrible to sit and
see your husband cry.
It was good as it was going to do everybody.
It just, you know, make a playground.
I mean, it's already a playground.
Even though the Hochunk had been
moved out of the valley in the 1830s, the Indians weren't crazy
about the dam either.
Bill Greendeer was a teenager when
the dam was proposed.
His first concern was for the remains
of tribal members buried in the area.
They talk about different places
where the people would have been moved out of
a flood area and they would they flood out.
It's like they bring up caskets.
What are they going to start doing?
They start bringing up bodies all
over the place.
We have bodies buried everywhere.
But it wasn't just Bill Greendeer's ancestors
who were affected.
There were about 148 different families.
So the population estimates vary, but with 8600
acres and 148 families, it was a significant change to the
local economy.
Even the schools report, you know, losing over
half of their students in some of the grades at the time.
Construction began in 1970.
The tower, which was part of a dam's discharge structure, grew
as did a long, earthen levy.
An environmental battle developed at the same time.
To build a road, to build a dam through this area is like
having a hot dog stand in the cysteine chapel.
I mean, you don't do certain things.
This is Wisconsin's Grand Canyon.
Botanist Hugh Elthus was especially concerned
about the rare plants that grow on the cliffs
along the river.
Environmentalists had a new forum for those
concerns. The Kikapu Valley project had the misfortune
to begin construction.
The same year, Congress passed a law requiring
projects such as this to complete an environmental
impact statement.
But the project eventually was killed by a study
of soil erosion.
The dam project was justified
economically because the lake would provide jobs.
The soil erosion study showed the lake
was, in effect, a mirage.
The silting is going to be horrendous.
If I remember correctly,
at some time, the article in science said it was 40 tons
per acre on the worst farm that they studied.
Now, that's one hell of a lot of soil.
And if that gets dumped into the
Kikapu Valley, that dam will be a marsh within 30 years and a
nice wet prairie within 50 or 60.
So the whole thing doesn't hold any water.
The core of engineers had spent 18 million taxpayer
dollars on the dam.
Nonetheless, the project was stopped in 1975.
The community and all the people that lived
here had sacrificed for something that never
happened. The tower and the partially completed
dam just sat there until 1992.
It was just a difficult thing to watch
it being unmanaged.
It became almost a wasteland.
And people would actually dump trash on it.
The area's citizens started
to put aside differences over the project in the early
90s. They felt they could manage the property better than
the core of engineers.
A group of citizens after 30 plus years
of battling about whether the dam was going to be
finished or not said we've got to do something.
And so they tell the story
of sitting around in somebody's living room with Senator Brian
Rude and saying we're going to protect it, but we're
also going to allow people to enjoy it.
In 1997, the federal government turned the property over to
the Hochunk and a board of local citizens.
The core of engineers offered to
tear down the concrete tower, but the residents
wanted to keep it.
At the winter festival, the residents shoot
half frozen vegetables at it with a sling shot.
One, two, three.
Some people see the tower as a symbol of a federal
boondoggle. It's a reminder of the people in farms the valley
lost. Others are glad the towers still there.
You have people now coming to visit the reserve
and it's hard to explain what happened here.
I've told this story to people and had them
really honestly not hardly believe me that this had
actually taken place there.
The tower is a handy way to prove to visitors that the story
of the Kikapoo Valley Dam isn't just some tall tale.
As Art said, the Kikapoo Reserve is managed by a board from
the community and the community is expected to pitch in and help
with things.
A spring cleanup for the reserve is scheduled
for April 30th.
And if you'd like to help out,
check our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin for details.
We move north now to a stretch of Wisconsin shoreline along
Lake Superior.
Producer Joanne Garrett discovered that
environmental detectives descend every five years
upon the western coast of Lake Superior.
They're searching for clues.
Clues to help solve a challenging ecological
mystery. You guys in a parking lot just
outside of Superior.
You can get fairly close to what we found
at TAS this year.
What are they doing?
We'll just do what we did last time, five years ago.
What did they do last time?
Five years ago.
Nothing on your side, eh?
So far, three?
What they did was come.
Thirds. Put it this way.
Each number is a clue.
325 mile long detective story.
Solved by surveillance, stakeouts,
and good old fashioned legwork.
There's 34 ring bill goals just barely over the
ridge. The team, the National Park Service.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources. The Bad River Indian Reservation.
And the US Fish and Wildlife
Service. A powerful posse that cowboys up
in May every five years.
There's one, two, three, four, then a slash, five, and that's
the way we count it.
Every five years they can read to count,
to shadow, a select group of birds on Lake Superior.
It's a third winter herring goal.
Summner Madison, avianicologist for the Wisconsin
DNR and lead detective describes the job.
This is a survey of water birds along the entire
Wisconsin shore of Lake Superior from the Montreal River up
to the Duluth Superior Harbor.
325 miles of shoreline, including 169 miles
in the islands.
They dog these birds across
the entire lake shore.
A dragnet that takes in the Apostle Islands,
all 22, a dizzying task.
And the timeline?
Here's a two.
Two weeks.
We started in 1974, so this is the 30th anniversary.
And the reason we do it is that we're trying to track changes
in water bird populations.
By water birds, I mean, gals, turns, and herrings, and
quarmerins. Six different species, all colonial
water birds.
Called colonial, because natch,
they nest in colonies.
Colonies that they wing back to.
If you know their haunts, they're easy to find.
The fact that they come back, you're after you're at the same
site that there's, essentially, there's high site fidelity.
It's very easy to monitor their populations as it was all
because they are coming back year after year, the
same area.
And so there are wonderful research
tool because of that.
An easy to find research tool that dines
high on the food chain and can live up to 25 years.
For an environmental detective, these birds sing.
Kind of like the canarygum and coal mine, so to speak,
because they're very sensitive to contaminants such as DDT,
DDE, PCBs.
So we know if there are changes in herringole
numbers, for example.
And if this is something that occurs throughout
the survey, then we know that it's a cause for concern.
Numbers are the clue.
You can't know the word on an individual
species, ultimately, how the environment is doing, unless
you've done the detective work, unless you know the numbers.
Gross. What an excrement.
But getting those numbers?
Well, it's down these mean streets.
A man must go.
That's bird by bird.
Yes it is.
Bird by bird.
Yes, the locations may look ideal.
Madison is on the outer edge
of outer island, the northernmost point in
Wisconsin. But the soundtracks tells a different story.
Oh, my God.
If you pay them by the mile, some nomadison be a millionaire.
It's wet feet and long hours.
Still a little bit of agility left for those old legs.
These gum shoes must go with the birds on it.
Like gall island.
Barren wasteland to some.
Nesting wonderland to water birds.
Julie von Steppen is the parkingologist for
the Apostle Islands and Lakeshore National Park.
If you look at gall and eagle islands, they have 80% of the
nesting galls on Lake Superior Shoreline.
You've got this little three acre
island and generally you have at least about
a thousand nests.
That's it.
Off a lot of birds.
And it's little tiny islands.
Boku birds.
Boku trouble to get there.
Rocky Shoals ring the island.
And cold water survival suits are required in
case of an early exit.
And here is the swiggo and around in there.
And you can just see inside
the ago is very cool.
The Apostle Islands are a terrific resource, a
refuge for birds.
But there is an even larger
block of critical land unlike Superior, the Bad
River Indian Reservation.
Tom Doe Little is the tribe's natural resources manager.
The Bad River Reservation manages almost twice the land
area of the Apostle Islands.
And so there's a lot of remote lands.
In fact, some of the most remote Wisconsin lands
are here in northern Wisconsin and on the
Bad River Reservation.
So remote that Doe Little must fly in to count these heron
nests. That's right, those are heron nests in those dead trees.
It's called Lost Lake Rookery.
Doe Little and the tribe have been a part of the
bird count for decades.
His perspective on Madison.
Sumner is driven and also he has this sense of adventure that's
always entertaining, you know.
Yeah, he just goes.
I'm kind of the turtle.
He leaves them in his wake.
It's a different kind of wilds this
time. The harbor of the city of Superior.
Yeah, it's urban.
Yeah, it's full of birds.
This is at Interstate Island in the, uh, Delus Superior
Harbor. Full of Ringbeel Golls, 10,581 Ringbeel Goll
nests this year.
Another corner of the Superior Harbor and things are not so
well. On the trail, scoping out an old or duck.
Five years ago, this was home for great blue
herons. Pushed out of their home in the woods.
This is the site of a great blue heron
colony, a Rookery, in 1999.
Unfortunately, their love affair where the ordox has ended
and they're not here now will hopefully find them up the St.
Louis River estuary someplace or maybe not, maybe they're
gone from the area.
Finder up the Superior Harbor into the St.
Louis estuary.
It's not good news.
So this is where the great blue heron Rookery used to be.
It's now a 10,000 square foot home.
No, I don't know how big it is, but there it is.
Oh, we had 50 to 60 nesting pairs.
He has to know the numbers.
He has to count to know the changes
in this story that's unfolded over 30 years.
It speaks to the importance of having large blocks
of unfragmented forests and wetland habitats.
Very important to preservation of these
colonial modern bird species.
It means a lot to me to be able to get out here and to do this
survey. That's a very special very special environment.
I enjoy working with the different partners in
the ball.
Especially as I age, it gives me a different sense
of time and what time means.
We think of geologic time.
That's one sense of time and our lifespan is so short to be able
to come up here every five years is a really
remarkable opportunity.
An opportunity to do some detective work, to
shed some light on a fascinating and important
natural mystery.
Here's a two-bob.
Before we leave you this week and update on a story we
brought you last year, producer Joanne Garrett reported
that in 2004 the Mississippi River was placed on the
list of America's most endangered rivers.
Well, we now have some good news.
This year's report has just been released
and the Mississippi is off the list.
It was removed because the Bush administration has
decided not to fund an environmentally controversial
plan by the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers to upgrade
the river's lock and dams.
Instead, the administration is seeking full funding
for river restoration efforts.
That's our program for this week.
Hope you'll join us again next time.
Meanwhile, we leave you with a springtime walk
next to the Barrabo River in Sock County.
For In Wisconsin, I'm Patty Lo.
Have a great week.
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