>> Hello, and welcome to "In Wisconsin."
I'm Patty Loew.
This week discover how this endangered dragonfly survives
thanks to one of its biggest predators.
>> It seemed like the last most unlikely place to go.
Why would you go into the burrow of a crayfish that's probably
going to kill you?
>> Fire is a destructive force, but find out how these flames
are rejuvenating the land.
We hear a lot about how the candidates for governor raise
money, but do you know how all those dollars are eventually
spent?
We also have a walk through some fall foliage that will bring
you to new heights, "In Wisconsin."
>> Our first report takes us to Door County for a race against
time.
Researcher Dan Soluk is trying to learn enough about the
federally endangered Hine's emerald dragonfly to try to save it
from extinction.
>> Dan Soluk is doing something that for most people would be
against the law.
He's trying to catch a Hine's emerald dragonfly.
>> There we go.
Caught one.
>> The Hine's emerald dragonfly is a federally endangered
species once thought to be ex-tippingt, and then so it's an
endangered species, more of them live near the shore of lake
Michigan in Door County than anywhere else in the world.
>> People who work with dragonflies hold their wings backwards
over their body, but we found that this is a way that puts less
strain on them.
You can see the green eyes.
>> Soluk has a permit to catch a few dragonflies because he's
doing research that may help save them from extinction.
He began his research in the early 1990's.
>> It was quite a challenge, because nothing -- you know, here
you have a species which is very rare which almost nothing is
known about.
>> One thing was clear from the beginning.
When it comes to four-wheeled predators, dragonflies don't
stand a chance.
>> Usually you find at least one or two on a day like this.
This one has just been killed.
Very bad shape.
Sometimes they're in such bad shape that we can't even tell
exactly what species they are.
>> His research shows that the deadliest stretch of road is
county highway Q north of Bailey's harbor.
The highway is currently posted at 35 miles per hour.
Soluk is trying to get the speed limit reduced for two months
out of the summer while dragonflies are on the wing.
He's been working with Cathy Carnes from the U.S. wildlife
service.
>> We have been advocating that speed limits signs be put up.
We feel that going 15 miles per hour or less would prevent
collisions.
>> Adult dragonflies only live for about two months, but they
spend up to five years in the immature stage called larvae.
>> They're looking like a little hairy, dirty, tennis ball is
the Hine's emerald dragonfly.
>> Soluk and his students are trying to figure out what larvae
they need to survive.
But when they first began looking for them, no one knew where
they lived.
>> We looked lots of different places.
We tore apart sedges and roots, and we rooted around in the
dirt and everything else.
>> They finally found them underground in the muddy burrows of
what's commonly called the devil crayfish.
The research team developed a technique to safely collect
dragonfly larvae by pumping out the crayfish burrows with a
bellows and a hose.
>> This technique is a good one, but it does annoy the
crayfish.
They'll often catch their burrows after we do it.
So we have to sometimes open them up again.
If we want to place the Hine's emerald back in the burrow, you
can imagine if you had somebody put a big vacuum cleaner at
your front door and sucked up the contents of your house, you
might do the same.
>> The most amazing part of this discovery is that crayfish
actually eat some of the dragonfly larvae in their burrows, a
fact Soluk learned by videotaping an experiment with infrared
light.
>> It seemed like the last most unlikely place to go.
Why would you go into the burrow of a crayfish that's probably
going to kill you?
But that's where they were.
>> Dragonfly larvae go into crayfish burrows to survive the dry
season above ground.
>> So here we have an endangered species that is somewhat
dependent on one of its predators to survive.
>> Soluk points out how important it is to understand these
complicated relationships between predator and prey in order to
help endangered species survive.
>> The first thing that would have occurred to anybody who
knows that crayfish are predators on an endangered species like
the Hine's emerald, would be we've got a common crayfish,
elimination of them.
I think elimination will eliminate the dragonfly.
>> It depends on the wetland where crayfish set up house.
>> Most of their habtats where they do well, the surface water
actually disappears, and it's drawn down in a natural sort of
cycle every year.
>> Mike Grimm is a biologist with the nature conservancy in
Door County.
For almost five years it was found to be extinct.
It was discovered here on the conservancy mink river preserve
in the late 1980's.
>> What's interesting about the Hine's emerald is that the
water that they need is sort of hidden away in these little
rivulets that run through this sedge meadow.
>> The nature conservancy is working in partnership with Soluk
and others to save this endangered insect because this watery
habitat is critical to its survival, they're trying to find out
where the groundwater that bubbles up to the surface here comes
from.
Grimm says the source could be well beyond the border of
property protected by the nature conservancy.
>> People make the analogy to sort of pipes in the ground.
So you can have one sinkhole, you know, two miles away, and if
there's a direct, you know, fisher coming right to this outlet
here, that could be the way it gets here, through just one
pipe.
>> And if that one pipe is shut off by developers who sink new
wells, the downstream effect could be devastating.
The results of the water flow research will help the government
protect this endangered species by identifying areas off limits
to development.
>> Anyone that may be doing an action that could affect the
habitat or the dragonflies themselves should be consulting with
the U.S. fish and wildlife service on any permits they may
need.
>> Doing research to understand and save an endangered species,
like the Hine's emerald dragonfly, takes time and money.
Although some may question the value, others like Soluk feel
it's well worth it.
>> I think sometimes we struggle to find explanations for, you
know, some economic value, and the only reason it's any good is
it has some economic value to us, and I don't think that's a
really good way of thinking about it.
The adult stage is certainly a very beautiful animal.
It's been around for a long, long time, doing just fine before
we ever came around, and I think we do have a responsibility,
we have a responsibility to be good stewards of the land, and
we shouldn't just sort of offhandedly let these species vanish
through our activities.
>> You can find more information about the Hine's emerald
dragonfly on our website at wpt.org/inwisconsin.
You'll learn about the U.S. fish & wildlife services recovery
plan for the dragonfly as well as a proposal that would mark
more than 9,000 acres in Wisconsin as critical habitat for the
dragonfly.
>> We turn now from the work to save an endangered species to
the heavy lifting of running a political campaign.
Both major party candidates for governor are currently running
ads attacking each other for how they raised money, money that
they mostly used to pay for the ads they used to attack each
other on how they raised money.
Seem confusing?
Well, campaign fundraising and how it's done gets a lot of
attention, but producer art Hackett says it's only half the
story.
>> Running for governor isn't cheap according to the Wisconsin
democracy campaign, democrat Jim Doyle, republican Mark green,
and green party candidate Nelson Eisman.
They've raised a total of $12.5 million.
>> But that's only one side of the ledger.
How the candidates spend all the campaign cash they rake in
gets far less attention.
If you want to find out where the money goes, you have to work
for it.
>> We don't spend nearly as much time looking at how the money
is spent, because our focus is almost purely on where the
donations are coming from, who these interests are.
>> That's true here as well.
We focus on how much a candidate spends, a lot less focus on
where the money actually goes.
>> But we care, and since some people want factual basis
financing of campaigns, maybe you should care, too.
As the saying goes, if you want a job done, you have to do it
yourself.
The spending totals from the first of the year to the end of
August, Jim Doyle had spent $2.3 million, Mark green had spent
about $1.5, and Nelson Eisman less than $5,000.
But, you ask, spent on what?
If you switch to TV public TV for only two minutes, you can
guess the biggest expenditure, TV time.
>> Most candidates will spend 2/3 to 3/4 of their budgets on TV
ads.
We also know about 2/3 of voters say they don't know someone is
running in a race until they see the TV ad.
>> Doyle is outspending green in that category by a 3-1
margin.
Half of Doyle's money has gone to TV.
>> You can repeat messages in TV where it's hard to do with
mail circulars or newspaper ads.
>> But retired campaign advisor Bill Kraus of Madison say
ignoring print might be a mistake.
>> You shut put ads in the weeklies.
They're cheap and they last a week, and you typically get some
coverage in the wake, but consultants absolutely say no print.
What surprises me says how much money they spend on
consultants, and all consultants tell them is spend everything
on TV.
>> As illustrate turns out, green and Doyle spent the same
amount of money on consultants, over $300,000 each.
Even green party candidate, Nelson Eisman, spent half of his
minimal money on a consultant.
One area where green outspent Doyle is on stickers and yard
signs.
Green's printing tab was $125,000.
Doyle's was more than $58,000.
>> That squares with what you see when you travel around the
State of Wisconsin.
You see a lot more green signs than you see Jim Doyle signs.
>> And there has been academic research on that that says it
actually does matter.
It seems like an old antiquated notion.
But there are these neighborhood effects where people see lots
of signs up in particular areas, and it creates a bit of a kind
of social solidarity almost.
>> Green is in a sense running a more of a throw-back campaign
where he's emphasizing the parades and the events a lot more
and is paying for yard signs and signs that they put up in
farmer's fields and that sort of things.
>> Green is also spending more to enter into parades, even
built a campaign web commercial around them.
We call this category events.
Green spent $150,000 on events.
The figure was inflated because it includes tens of thousands
of dollars it costs to bring in national figures like President
Bush and vice president Cheney for fundraisers.
Doyle spent $64,000 in this category.
Eisman $333.
Green also outspent Doyle when it came to office overhead.
We tallied $99,000 in office expenses for the republican, rent,
telephone, combs, supplies, and so forth.
Doyle spent only $63,000.
Some of that money went to fund shared facilities with other
democratic party candidates.
Eisman's office total was $1,500.
But Doyle is ahead when it comes to paid staff.
Doyle is spending nearly $429,000.
>> I don't know what they're doing.
I assume they're doing grassroots organizing and get out the
vote and mobilization which would, once again, be defensive,
because the republicans' reputation is they're better at that
than the democrats are.
>> Mark green's staff totals $666,000.
>> This is because he had a preexisting staff from his
campaign.
A lot of those folks got inherited in, and simply -- I think
this is simply the fact of having more money.
It wouldn't make much sense for Mark green to be trying to
match Doyle on the size of the staff and take that money away
from, say, campaign advertisements.
>> Or spending on travel.
Green led in that category.
Much of the expense went to pay for an R.V. that took him
around the state.
Green's travel tab was $78,000 to Doyle's nearly $45,000.
>> Doyle gets a lot of free rides.
He can mix business with campaigning, and green doesn't have
that opportunity.
>> But green gets to have fundraisers in Washington while he's
there on congressional business.
Much of Doyle's travel total came from fundraising trips to the
coast which takes us back to where the money comes from.
>> Doyle got a third of his money in the last reporting period
from out of state.
So he has mined both coasts.
He has looked far and wide across the country for campaign
money.
>> 5% of green's money is from out of state.
Two-thirds of Eisman's money came from one donor in
California.
>> With the contribution data you can say we're looking for
significant donations by particular groups, and maybe that
raises a red flag for some people.
But with the spending, if somebody spends X. amount of dollars
on postage, do we really know that?
>> Did we say postage?
We know how much they spent on that, too.
>> You can find more information about the candidates for
governor and all of the state's political races by logging on
to Wisconsinvote.org.
Once there, you'll find candidate bios, voter registration
infoe, and other election news results.
Last week we reported that a legislative committee was deciding
whether or not the butler's garter snake should be on the state
threatened species list.
The committee gave the State Department of Natural Resources
until October 1 to comply with management changes drafted by
the legislator or the snake would be suspended from its
protected status.
We also reported that a few weeks before the October 1 deadline
D.N.R. officials met with developers and environmentalists and
came up with a plan to present to legislators.
This Wednesday after four to five hours of debate the committee
voted to pass a motion to create a plan until November 30.
If at that time the committee feels the D.N.R. has not come up
with a conservation strategy that makes the state less
burdensome on property owners, the butler's garter snake will
be delisted.
The prairie habitat of the butler's garter snake depends upon
the destructive forces of fire, but producer Joanne Garrett
found that while most of us are trained to be wary of fire,
it's a force wildlife biologists and ecologists welcome.
>> Schooldays in one of the most unusual schools in Wisconsin.
>> Do you want to light some more fire?
>> Uh-huh.
[Laughter]
>> It looks like an arsonnists convention.
But the official title of the curriculum is fire on the
prairie, prescribed burning in land management.
>> You may want to step into the black if you can.
>> Most people know this two-day class as burn school.
>> No infernos on the first day.
Maybe the second day.
>> Jeb Barzin is the director of field ecology for the
international crane foundation, one of the school's
co-sponsors.
>> I love doing fires, yeah.
>> Jeannine Richards is the coordinator of the Aldo Leopold
foundation's woodland school, the other co-sponsor.
The ininstructors at burn school love doing fires, not just
because it's fun, but because of what fire properly prescribed
can do for landscapes like these.
Prairies require roasting.
They need a good burn.
The term used is fire adapting, and it's important to our
state.
>> Most of that area does not have prescribed fire operating on
it any longer, and that's causing huge changes.
>> The burning helps to keep the habitate open, keep it in
grassland, whereas if we stop having fire on the landscape, it
will tend to get really brushy and sh ruby and turn forested.
>> Which is why ecologists use prescribed burning as a tool in
land management, and why for two days in March of 2006 24
students with varied backgrounds signed up for burn school at
the international crane foundation near Baraboo.
>> It's a requirement of my job.
I'm a soil son servationist with the natural resources
conservation service.
>> If you have a thick layer on, you may want to just take it
off.
It's going to get warm near the fire.
>> I'm the landowner, and you want to use fire as a tool,
management tool.
>> That's a lot better than yesterday.
Good.
Thank you.
>> Yesterday we spent in lectures just sort of talking about
what plants are out here, what response -- responds to
burning.
>> After a day of instruction on the intricacies of fire
behavior and how to plan a burn, they got into their fire
retardant Nomex suits and saddled up with their water-filled
50-pound pump cans.
And they headed off to the hands-on portion of burn school.
They start the fire with the touch of a torch, control it with
water and a tool they call a flapper, and then they burn in a
border, what they call a black line, to contain the fire.
>> Check your line all the way back to the point of origin,
then go fill up with water, and there's a need for a fire break
to go around.
>> Give it a little bit of water to help her out.
There you go.
You've got a much safer line to work with now, right?
When you talk about prescribed burn, everything becomes fuel,
and the thing that directs how hot that fuel is going to burn
is how much moisture is in it.
The thing that directs how much moisture is in it is wind
speed, the wind direction, the amount of humidity that's in the
air, how long it's been since the last rain.
All those things have an influence on moisture content to the
fuel.
>> There are so many different factors that you need to
calculate out.
>> We'll go over there and work back into the wind.
>> It can be kind of like a puzzle to figure out.
>> You work with the wind.
It's just really hard to control.
>> You have to be thinking critically about what you're doing
at all times.
>> Everything matters, even where you place your feet.
>> This is black because it's already burned.
There's no fuel, so it is a lot safer place to be rather than
being out in that stuff that still can burn.
>> It's all part of learning the patterns of fire, patterns
that can be predicted, patterns that must be predicted.
>> You certainly can predict, and that's the whole basis for a
prescribed fire, is that you have to be able to predict.
Or you better have your D.N.R. fire ranger on speed dial.
>> Well, you're always scared to death that somebody will make
a mistake that's serious.
Anytime you're using fire on the land there's a potential that
you could have a wildfire that gets away or somebody could get
hurt.
>> We also do a spot fire training to teach people some
suppression techniques for if a fire gets away from them.
>> It's the nightmare scenario, a spot fire breaks loose.
To fight it, the fire team must stay in constant communication,
to rotate each member in, each taking their turn battling
against the heat of the blaze.
>> They're using a lot of water and they're in a hot place and
they're in a smoky place, and you only can take that for so
long.
>> This is the time when teamwork and training tells.
>> The better that team is working together, the better that
you can accomplish the job.
You can burn an area that's 100 acres in size with six people
quite readily and quite effectively if they're well trained.
>> Well-trained fire teams, that's the goal of burn school.
>> It's not an easy experience.
I mean, there's smoke in your face the whole time.
You have to figure out where you can stand without being really
hot, and these packs are really heavy, so there's that, but
it's also fun.
>> It's also important if these prairies are to survive.
>> These prairies are just gorgeous in the spring, and when you
see them after you've done a prescribed burn, you just fall in
love with them over again.
It's like being married.
You just fall in love with them over and over again, when you
see compass plant blooming in August or that sort of thing,
it's just grand.
>> We want to emphasize a controlled burn is not something you
should undertake on your own.
As you saw in Joanne's report, it takes a lot of education and
training to learn that skill.
And that's our program for this week.
We leave you now with a hike up to the highest point in
Wisconsin, Timm's hill in Price County.
Thanks for joining us, and for "In Wisconsin," I'm Patty Loew.
See you next time.
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