Kratzsch Conservancy in Washington County is a treat

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Scheduling a tour outdoors in early December can be risky. Cold rain had been in the forecast. But our recent string of unseasonably warm days held through the weekend and on Saturday morning, bright sun lit the colorless landscape like a torch. It turned out to be a perfect day to tour Kratzsch Conservancy, a 73-acre preserve located near Newburg in Washington County.

Our guide was wildlife biologist Ryan Wallin, Stewardship Director for the Ozaukee Washington Land Trust (OWLT), which owns and manages the site.  Wallin considers himself fortunate. Not only did he recently land his current position, which enabled him to move back home to Wisconsin from a stint in distant Washington state, but he also gets to live in this beautiful place. The historic Kratzsch family farmstead has been turned into a private, live-in headquarters for the OWLT stewardship program.

We hiked the circuitous 2-mile trail system that looped through a surprising variety of undulating glacial terrains. The property contains 14 acres of wetlands, 24 acres of forests and 37 acres of grasslands. Wallin explained that the trails are being managed in a way that tries to balance the needs of wildlife with the expectations of human visitors. For example, trails are designed to circumscribe open areas because cutting a trail through the middle of a prairie would degrade it as a habitat for certain species, particularly ground-nesting birds. Trails, it turns out, also are used by carnivores as well as humans!

As recently as 2012 much of the property was still being farmed. Those sections that are currently forested were mostly wooded pastures for grazing livestock. A few mature oaks are all that remains of the historic forest. OWLT has planted hundreds of new trees, including paper birch, white oak, red oak, burr oak, sugar maple, white ash and black cherry.

The grasslands are likewise newly planted with prairie grasses, along with some trees. Wallin explained that the whole area once was forested and most will be allowed to follow a natural succession process that will gradually replace the grasses with woodlands.

We passed by a very solidly built hunting blind that overlooks one of the prairies. It is raised high enough for visibility but not so high that it can’t be accessed via a ramp. Not being a hunter myself—or disabled—it had never before occurred to me that there might be a need for an accessible blind. The ADA compliant blind was built in 2014, Wallin said, and sees moderate use.

Kratzsch Conservancy has 2,500 feet of frontage along the east/west branch of Milwaukee River and can be accessed from the water by kayak and canoe. It is strategically situated along an environmental corridor among other protected properties in order to increase connectivity and enhance wildlife habitats. 

Goldenrod gone to seed

Underwood Creek in Wauwatosa is getting a makeover

Restoration is underway and the bulldozers and power shovels in the creek are a welcome sight.

For now you can still see some of the concrete that until recently has lined much of Underwood Creek like a straightjacket for over forty years. The channel, once so smooth and straight I’ve seen skateboarders on it in dry weather, is pocked with holes and severely cracked. Jackhammers have been working their way downstream towards the confluence with the Menomonee River near North Avenue.

View from Hansen Golf Course of the east end of the existing channel.

Upstream the work is further along. West of 102^nd Street, where the creek is sandwiched between Fisher Parkway and a very active railroad line, all of the concrete has been removed and trucked away to be recycled. Bulldozers, excavators and earthmovers have reshaped the streambed, reintroducing meandering curves. Tons of rock have been laboriously deposited to stabilize the new channel and prevent erosion.

Work in progress on the newly restored and meandering creek bed.

Oddly enough the incongruous sight of huge power shovels squatting in the streambed is a welcome one—a long overdue remediation of the outdated and discredited policy of “channelizing” rivers and streams. The idea behind pouring concrete into waterways, popular in the Milwaukee region in the 1960s, was to move stormwater quickly through neighborhoods in an attempt to minimize flooding.

Houses along Fisher Parkway back onto the creek channel.

Unfortunately for everyone, the solution became increasingly obsolete as the problem of flooding was exacerbated by unrelenting new development upstream from the channels. Until recent implementation of more effective stormwater management techniques and policies, new development has led to increased stormwater entering—and more frequently breaching—the channels.

Pumps at the upstream end of the project divert creek water into pipes.

Of course, pouring concrete into rivers has always been devastating to the rivers themselves—along with the fish, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and other wildlife that depend on healthy waterways and riparian habitats for their survival. The suffering of plants and animals in degraded river systems is accompanied by a diminished quality of life for the human communities that surround them. And so it has come to this, that we need—and desire—bulldozers in the creek to correct our past mistakes.

View of Underwood Creek channel looking west from 115^th Street.

This project, which began in November 2016, will remove 4,400 linear feet of concrete between Mayfair Road and North Avenue. The work is being overseen by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in partnership with Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District (MMSD) and could be complete as early as this fall.

Previously restored section of Underwood Creek along Mayfair Road.

The current Underwood Creek project is part of a longer-term effort to address up-to-date stormwater issues, improve water quality, restore and naturalize the creek, increase fish passage and rehabilitate wildlife habitats. Another section of Underwood Creek just upstream from the new project was previously restored. There also are plans to undertake feasibility studies for channel removal on additional sections west and south of Mayfair Road.

MMSD has undertaken similar channel restoration projects on all three of Milwaukee’s major watersheds. These have included completed projects on Lincoln Creek and the Menomonee River as well as its huge on-going Kinnickinnic River Project.

View of the pipe from the underground passage at Hansen Golf Course.

One of the more fascinating aspects of this work, at least for me, is how the normal flow of water in the stream is handled during demolition and restoration. If you peek through the passage beneath the railroad at Hansen Golf Course you may be startled to see a large black pipe suspended in the air across your field of vision. Although rain and snowmelt still fill the channel on occasion, this pipe, which snakes all the way alongside the creek, carries the normal dry weather flow.

The pipe that holds creek flow running along the project site.

The best news I’ve heard yet about this project was from one of the construction workers at the site. “It’s already working,” he told me. “We’ve had to rescue half a dozen salmon that swam up and got stuck in here.”

A restored section of the creek within the project site.

A slightly edited version of this story was published by Milwaukee Magazine on March 27, 2017. 

Chicago Wilderness celebrates 20 years at Congress 2016

It was a stormy day in the Windy City yesterday. A good day to be indoors at the annual congress of the Chicago Wilderness. Not being from Chicago myself, I had never attended a congress (i.e., conference) before. However, I've known about and admired Chicago Wilderness for years. It is an alliance of over 200 member organizations and businesses. Its mission is to "preserve, improve, and expand nature and quality of life" within the Chicago region.

The Chicago Wilderness region includes parts of 4 states, including Southeastern Wisconsin (but just short of Milwaukee.) This year marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Chicago Wilderness and that was the theme of Congress 2016: "Celebrating 20 Years: One Home. One Future."

As an outside observer, it was a revelation to me to see so many people and organizations coming together to network, learn from each other, and plan how to make their communities more natural. This in the third largest metropolitan area in the country! There were approximately 600 attendees at the Congress, which was held at the University of Illinois Chicago.

I learned a lot about the organization, about current preservation and restoration efforts, and about the priorities for future improvements to the natural landscapes and wildlife that exist in the region. 

I also got to participate. There was a "story slam" component and I volunteered to read a story relating to a personal experience I've had with urban wildlife. I chose to adapt one of my favorite blog posts from Urban Wilderness, entitled "Seiche: Symbolism and reality in an unlikely urban wilderness." You can read the original version here. 

One of the takeaways from the experience for me was a desire to see a version of Chicago Wilderness formed for Milwaukee. We have a lot going for us already. In fact, several times when I mentioned to people that I was from Milwaukee they told me with respect verging on awe, "You have the Urban Ecology Center!"

Monarchs return in force to the Monarch Trail

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I stand chest deep in flaming goldenrod and brilliant white boneset—riveted by the sight of a dozen or so monarch butterflies on a single clump of boneset. When a breeze tosses the flowers the butterflies all rise, swirl around my head. But even more marvelous, as the breeze plays over the field of wildflowers, dozens—maybe hundreds—more monarchs suddenly appear, dipping, twirling and swerving all about.

Then, just beyond this amazing and beautiful dance of delicate wildlife, a stream of rush hour traffic rumbles down Swan Boulevard.

I continue my walk along the Monarch Trail, which circles around the recently completed Echelon Apartment complex at the north end of Innovation Park on the Milwaukee County Grounds in Wauwatosa. On the west side the trail runs along the top of a long, narrow berm crowned by dying poplars. Here, next to Interstate 41, the growl of traffic is incessant. But butterflies all over the hillside are oblivious to that.

It is monarch migration season. These fluttering, fragile and remarkably resilient insects are pausing here on their incredible journey from summer habitats in Canada to their winter retreat on a mountain in central Mexico. The Monarch Trail and a friends group to maintain it were established in 2005 when it was feared that construction of Innovation Park might destroy the rare and sensitive monarch roosting sites.

That fear appeared to be justified. As expected, construction during the past several years created enough disturbance that the numbers of monarchs stopping here during the annual migration dropped precipitously. Despite this, the trail was diligently maintained and the disturbed habitat reseeded with hundreds of native, wildlife-friendly plants. The biggest concern remained: Would the dislodged monarchs ever return?

Seeing the numbers rebound is what makes this year’s migration so exciting!

The migration occurs over several days and is not completely predictable. I missed a big night on Thursday. Barb, the director of the Friends, counted around 400 roosting that day alone. While not quite as many as were seen prior to 2005, when as many as a thousand could be counted on a single night on a single sycamore, she says there haven’t been this many since 2010. The full moon rising as they settled in for the night was a bonus.

I canceled my Friday evening plans so as not to miss them all. I delight in watching them forage on the flowers and fly about, frustrated only by the impossibility of conveying the magic of it all in a single still photo. (I did try to capture a sense of what I was seeing in a short video, which you can see on YouTube.)

The “urban wilderness” to which I so frequently refer has always been a metaphor. In my urban explorations am drawn most often to places where the urban is at least somewhat backgrounded by nature, where my imagination can restore the sense of a wilderness if not the substance. It is a worthwhile endeavor, I think, to love nature in this way, in a city. But here on the Monarch Trail a stark truth is revealed. Wildlife doesn’t need to imagine a wilderness. It just needs the right conditions on the ground.

Here, sandwiched between three-story apartment blocks and a busy freeway, is nature sufficient to nourish these monarchs. Today’s enchanting dance of the butterflies was far from inevitable, though. It took substantial commitments of time and resources to save this place. Developers were convinced to sacrifice a portion of their territory, scientists engineered a restoration plan and volunteers put in thousands of hours. A few of them have come to witness the fruit of their labor.

The work remains unfinished. The habitat, revitalized as it has been, remains vulnerable. The many partners who have helped make this day possible must continue their vigilance and commitment. And, sadly, new threats continue to dog unprotected vestiges of the County Grounds that if lost will adversely affect not only the monarchs, but many other species that might find this place wild enough to flourish.

The celebrities of this story are the monarchs, of course. But this story isn’t about butterflies as much as it is about us.

In fact, whether we accept it or not, the fate of butterflies is inextricably tied to our own. It is about the kind of world we want to live in, the kind of experiences we want our children and grandchildren to have.

A few lines from a poem by Rumi comes to mind:

What will our children do in the morning
if they do not see us
fly?*

The Monarch Trail has proven that there are many people who want butterflies to be part of their world. Three weeks ago hundreds of people from all over the Milwaukee area attended an annual celebration hosted by the Friends of the Trail to mark the beginning of the migration season (see previous post.)

As dusk draws the flowers into shade, one by one the butterflies begin to gather. They flutter toward the trees and cluster together, clinging to leaves and bare branches. A small crowd of people stand below, craning their necks to watch. Now and then the butterflies startle, quivering their wings in unison, open and shut, open and shut. After a while they are still. Then they vanish in deepening darkness.

A cloudbank obscures the moonrise. But the sunset made up for it.

I return before dawn on Saturday. A few clusters of monarchs remain where I’d seen them the night before. But many already are letting go, floating away on the breeze, like autumn leaves. The moon is still full. As I watch it set beyond the trees I breathe an inaudible bon voyage to the monarchs setting off for Mexico.

*To read the entire poem by Rumi, which is lovely, click here.

To see more photos of the County Grounds go to my Flickr album.

North Bank Trail nears completion in Menomonee Valley

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I discovered the new North Bank Trail by chance last week. Clearly I haven’t been spending as much time in the Menomonee Valley as I did when I was artist in residence there. Although slated to be completed in the fall, the project appears to be pretty far along already.

Formerly one of the “wildest” sections of river in the Menomonee Valley, the riverbank had been severely eroded and the river’s edge virtually inaccessible. The most striking feature of the new North Bank is the re-contoured slope and burlap-encased terraces.

Situated across the river from Three Bridges Park, the new trail begins at the 33^rd Court bridge and connects the existing park bike trail with the Hank Aaron State Trail in Stormwater Park.

The North Bank is not officially part of a named park. The Redevelopment Authority of the City of Milwaukee owns the land (as well as Three Bridges Park). In addition to providing the trail link, the project serves two other purposes: bank stabilization is intended to limit erosion and keep soil from sloughing into the river.

It also provides public access to the water via two stone staircases that anchor each end of the trail.

Previously, cyclists who crossed the bridge from the park onto 33rd Court were forced to continue past Rexnord, Palermo’s, and Ahern and to share the roads with semis and thousands of those companies’ employees. The new trail enables riders to stay off the streets and along the river—a much more enjoyable ride. 

The $1.4 million project is funded by grants from an alphabet soup of agencies, including WisDOT, CMAQ, EPA, GLRI, MMSD, and the Fund for Lake Michigan, as well as some matching funds from the City of Milwaukee. I was surprised to find that the pavement terminates in Stormwater Park where it meets the existing gravel of the Hank Aaron Trail. I learned that some of the grant funds require the asphalt and that the existing trail is not part of this project. The pavement may be extended in the future when additional funds are available.

Of course the newly stabilized bank looks unnatural—I’ve already heard that comment after posting an image on Facebook. It is one of the great paradoxes of our time (which has been dubbed the Anthropocene era because of human influence on the earth’s “natural” processes) that natural areas require human intervention in order to provide a satisfying experience of nature. This is particularly true in urban areas where there is the need is greatest.

If you need proof of the healing effect of time on such a managed landscape just go across the bridge to the park. When it opened three years ago it looked just as unnatural—and five years ago it looked far worse!