Putting your dollars on the landscape in Wisconsin

Tallboys Conservation Club, Dodge County - Horicon Marsh and the surrounding areas are without a doubt one of the most important places for waterfowl in the country.  However, while the publicly-owned marsh has had much management, the smaller wetlands on private lands in the area have not had nearly as much attention.  These wetlands, while not as dramatic as Horicon, are nonetheless very important as breeding areas for waterfowl and other wildlife.  On this site, we restored 10 acres of wetland by filling in 1,000 feet of ditch and removing a great deal of sediment.

Nick Simonis, Wood County- There is much restoration potential in the "central sands" area of the state, but we reduced it somewhat when we restored three acres of wetland on this property.  The landowner is very dedicated to wildlife preservation and has led us to several other projects.

Morris Link, Columbia County - This is an excellent project located just south of Rio.  About 8 years ago WWA staff restored a portion of the system on an adjacent landowner's property.  However, due to former landowner issues they were not able to fully restore the site.  When Morris Link bought the property, he contacted us indicating that he wanted to continue with the restoration.  We filled in 800 feet of ditch and restored about 8 acres in three distinct wetland basins.  The landowner will also be putting about 30 acres into prairie.

Paul Boutwell, Dane County - This project is located on a tributary to Black Earth Creek.  A former sod farm, the site was heavily tiled and inundated with sediment.  We removed the tiles (which were flowing like fire hydrants) and scraped away sediment, restoring about 3 acres of wetland.

Mark Anderson, Marinette County -  This is another project that shows how dedicated we are to forming strong partnerships.  The Marinette County Land Conservation Department was a big help financially with this project.  We created a berm over an area that had been pushed away to drain a seven acre wetland basin.  This fully restored the basin.  Three acres of prairie will be planted this spring.

Necedah National Wildlife Refuge, Juneau County-  Necedah NWR is heavily ditched from farming back in the 1900's, but the refuge staff is dedicated to slowly make these ditches obsolete.  This year they continued by putting ditch plugs in two locations.  The West Boundary Wetland Restoration restored 25 acres of wetland, and the Carpenter Lateral Wetland Restoration restored 17 acres.  We will be continuing with this process for quite some time as there are plenty of ditches to fill.

Gene Feldman, Sheboygan County -  Geoff Schramm, WWA member and biologist with the Sheboygan County Land Conservation Department, set up this project that WWA helped fund.  They removed a tile line and sediment from a two-acre wetland basin.  This project is adjacent to a 40-acre Wetland Reserve Program site.

Wolter Family Farms, Green Lake County -  We restored a beautiful kettle basin, approximately 6 acres in size.  These types of permanent wetlands play a vital role both for migratory stopover and nesting.  This basin was almost completely covered by sediment and ringed with invasive trees.  The trees were removed, the wetland re-contoured and this spring we will plant an extensive prairie buffer around the site.  River Crossing school kids did the soil surveys on the site, topographic mapping and cover descriptions.  In addition, after the excavation had been finished, they built and erected several wood duck houses.

City of Platteville, Rountree Branch - WWA coordinated efforts with the WI DNR, City of Platteville and a local developer to protect a section of the Rountree Branch associated wetlands and surrounding uplands.  The developer agreed to donate the property (valued at $175,000) to the City of Platteville.  In addition, they put $8,500 in a trust account for upland restoration plantings.  The value of this property will be used to match a stewardship grant to acquire more land in this special area.  The land will be permanently open to the public.

Pecatonica River, Iowa County -  This was a complex project done in partnership with the WI DNR and The Nature Conservancy.  We restored floodplain and floodway wetlands in this 60-acre site along the Pecatonica River.  In addition, we restored the banks along the entire length of the River that meandered through our site.  The actual restoration was conducted by using a very difficult technique called cross-contouring.  This allows the site to react naturally during two year storm events.  This site will provide diverse and extraordinary wetland habitat.  Floodway floodplain wetland restorations are the future in Wisconsin.

Hunter Farms, Sauk County -  We removed sediment and a drain tile from this 2-acre site.  It adjoins a natural forested wetland that was suffering from reduced water supply.  Forested wetlands are one of the most endangered types of wetland in Wisconsin.  By restoring hydrology to this site we had an impact area several times the size of the work area.  In addition, the landowner has retired several acres of surrounding cropland that will be seeded to native grasses.

Spider Lake Chain, Sawyer County -  We continued to work with Sawyer County LCD.  We have found the restoration of shoreline wetlands to be very challenging.  Proper installation of the bio-logs and integration of these logs into the existing shoreline is critical to project success.  Along with this we must be able to accurately predict water levels during the growing season to make certain that our plantings can get established.  We were part of a work group that searched nationally for actual experiences people have had using bio-logs.  From this information we have begun to develop a practical way to determine what techniques can be used on a given site.  Plant mortality has been a real issue with these restorations.  Like anything new, experience will eventually guide us.

Mequon Nature Preserve -  We finished phase four of our restoration work on this now 750 acre site.  It is difficult to judge the wetland restoration impact from any given construction activity.  The land is criss-crossed with dozens of tile lines channeling surface and sub-surface flows away from the site.  We removed a tile line this time that resulted in the filling of a wetland basin completed in phase two. I have stopped trying to predict and we will just continue to restore this site one piece at a time.

Ozaukee Washington Land Trust, Washington County -  We worked with the OWLT staff, DNR and our friend Alice Thompson on this 10-acre project.  What appeared as a simple ditched wetland turned out to be a small complex of interlinked basins.  Everyone put their heads together on this one and restored the site so that all the wetland basins would again function as a system.  Site soil types provided additional challenges and we found subtle landscape changes had potentially dramatic results.