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Friends of Brooklyn State Wildlife Area Newsletter
Dear Friends of the Brooklyn State Wildlife Area,
We appreciate your interest in the Brooklyn SWA and hope you find this information useful and interesting. It would be nice to share these ideas in an official newsletter, but we are busy on previously initiated projects. If anyone would like to help/lead/contribute to an annual newsletter, please let us know your interests.
The Friends of the Brooklyn State Wildlife Area are very grateful for the volunteer and financial support received over the past year and would like to share our joys and some pretty pictures from our projects.
Some newsletters have a Volunteer Portrait, so Dan will introduce himself to provide some background:
I am Dan Wallace, the Chairperson of the Friends of the Brooklyn State Wildlife Area (FoB). In 2008 I, along with Jon Bishop and Anne Helsley, founded the Friends of the Brooklyn State Wildlife Area, Inc. (501(c)(3) Non-Profit). Anne Helsley and John Rosenberg are our two other current Directors and officers. Our Mission is to "assist the Wisconsin DNR in stewardship of the Brooklyn State Wildlife Area and surrounding areas". This new organization was necessary to ensure that the wildlife area received the volunteer attention that it deserved and that grant monies directed for improvement of the wildlife area were not diverted to other activities. Before founding the FoB I was a dedicated volunteer with the Ice Age Trail (IAT) for about 16 years and the trail steward at the Lodi SWA and later at the Brooklyn SWA during that time. I brought in several new volunteers and assisted in sorting out some IAT organizational challenges. I supported the chapter in many roles, including: chapter officer, farmers market PR staffer, and schedule editor. I also assisted the DNR by writing grants specifically for the Brooklyn SWA. A benefit from one grant is the hand pump installed with the assistance of Mike Foy, the previous DNR property manager. This is the only public potable water source for many miles along the IAT, serving hikers and their four-footed companions.
To pay my bills and attempt to keep my mind evolving, I worked at the University of Wisconsin Synchrotron Radiation Center for 32 years as an engineer, researcher, and educator until retiring in 2011. At this world-class science lab, I assisted researchers from this and many other countries in studying everything from Ozone depletion, to Chronic Wasting Disease, to Carbon nanotubes. Through this work I traveled to Japan, England and Taiwan where I enjoyed educational and cultural experiences with wonderful people.
While employed, I enjoyed whitewater and wilderness canoeing, backpacking, singing, gardening, sailing and my family. Seeing a need to "give something back" to nature, I began learning restoration skills such as prescribed burning and safe chain-sawing. Unfortunately, some of my previous avocations became lost in time but have been replaced by the joys of working with good friends to promote native landscapes.
Some of my personal priorities are to restore native woodlands, oak savannas and prairie remnants, to attempt to recreate native prairies, and to educate present and future practitioners of these arts. My preferred tools are the natural processes of fire and grazing, with a minimal but necessary reliance on chemicals. My favorite local outdoor experiences are working with cooperative youth and magically predicting where to see a Pileated woodpecker for a surprised visitor(and a surprised "magician").
I am also a Director and Secretary for the Friends of Sylvania (see http://friendsofsylvania.org/). In the Sylvania Wilderness the friends clear hiking and portage trails with hand tools and we managed a successful major invasive weed removal project for 6 years. If you have not seen the threatened old-growth Hemlock forest in the Sylvania Wilderness it is worth the trip. I have also been a Director and Treasurer with the Wisconsin Prescribed Fire Council for several years. I have led and participated in hundreds of prescribed fires that benefitted the native landscapes and assisted at three wildfire suppression incidents. My late spring 2018 suppression team is below.
Restoration
Together with the WI DNR and under their direction, FoB attempts to maintain the hiking trails and restore native habitats on the western half of the roughly 3,000-acre wildlife area. FoB also maintains the trails and restores habitat northwest of the formal wildlife area on land which is managed by WI DNR Parks in the Town of Montrose (including about 200 acres of land we assisted the DNR in transferring to public access). This area also hosts about 7 miles of the IAT.
In 2018 we began the year by planting a 3.5-acre prairie along the Montrose section of the IAT. This prairie was planted as a buffer for the Blue-eyed-grass Prairie remnant and for pollinators. With a little help from nature and three completed mowings this summer, we should have flowers in the summer of 2021. The planting crew is shown below.
In April 2018 we assisted DNR Wildlife with ignition operations for a successful 208-acre prescribed fire immediately southeast of Story Creek. We really appreciate DNR Wildlife's leadership and use of natural processes to help heal the land. Hopefully we can continue this productive partnership. In the photo below, Story Creek is to the left and the fire is supposed to stay to the right (and it did).
This year we approached our invasive weed work a little differently. With two of our main volunteers traveling and providing assistance to family members and later dealing with flooding issues, we contracted with 4 interns ( Sam, Ilsa, Tony and Mark ) to keep Dan from going crazy and from losing ground on our previous invasives work. This provided valuable education and "hands-on" experience for their careers in natural resources.
Together our volunteers and interns removed invasives from trail corridors, two of the three main native remnants (the third is inaccessible due to lack of prescribed fire), several planted prairies, and areas we hope to plant. In most of the places we have worked, we have seen a significant reduction in invasive weeds. The Blue-eyed-grass Prairie was particularly beautiful thanks to dedicated work by John and Dan. The burn pile below shows approximately half of our 2018 "harvest".
Thank You
We realize that sometimes life is very busy, and many supporters of Brooklyn SWA have other important personal and volunteer commitments. We all have different responsibilities and volunteer interests. Some folks prefer trail activities, some habitat restoration, and others just want a relaxing walk. Whatever contributions and time investments you can make to our work at Brooklyn and Montrose are greatly appreciated (even home-made cookies).
We are very thankful for the help of our past and current volunteers, our new volunteers and our summer interns who have assisted in the past year. We hope you enjoyed all the fine work we accomplished as a team.
We also had the fine assistance of IAT volunteers, the Verona High School Bio 2 class and Girl Scout Troop 2030 from Oregon, whose specialty is building and installing bluebird birdhouses. It was great to see the young scouts safely using tools and getting the job done. The native Brooklyn landscapes and monarch butterflies will also benefit from a generous donation of milkweed seed from Max. We thank you all.
Our work would not be possible without the generous contributions from our benefactors: Esther and Wes, Rob and Mary, Mike and Nancy, Dan S, Max, Rosalie, and a very generous Anonymous. These donations will support our future projects and will be well used. FoB also has benefited greatly from a 34-inch HD DR trail-and-brush mower, purchased in 2017, with funds from a Dane County Environmental Council matching grant and funds from generous benefactors. This past year FoS was the recipient of a donated Bobcat UTV that has allowed us much easier access to our projects and is light on the land. We sincerely thank all our benefactors and volunteers.
A special thanks to Mike Foy, the previous DNR Wildlife property manager of the Brooklyn SWA, who assisted us when possible and listened to our ideas. We look forward to working with Julie Widholm, the current Brooklyn SWA property manager, and with John Arthur, who manages the DNR Parks properties in the Town of Montrose.
We have also benefitted from discounts and donations from Fiskars outdoor tools, Middleton Power Center, Clasen's European Bakery and the Hubbard Avenue Diner. We thank these contributors for functional tools and the calories to sustain our volunteers.
Future Visions
With our volunteers on the ground we hope to continue our invasive weed reduction work. If possible, we will use some of the donated funds to educate, inspire, empower and support young restorationists through their assistance with this work. The new 3.5-acre prairie and our prairie remnants will need continued attention. We also hope to revisit and "release" a wet remnant prairie near the South end of the wildlife area.
If we can coordinate the administrative details, we will work with the DNR to get more prescribed fires on the landscapes where we have invested a large amount of time and resources over many years. Finally, we will continue to support the recreational trails by clearing trail obstacles and hazards.
With gratitude, the Friends of Brooklyn Directors:
Dan Wallace - Chairperson
Anne Helsley - Treasurer
JohnRosenberg - Secretary