Advocacy

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Birds, Beauty, and Not Too Many of Us

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With proper respect for social distancing, I hope many of you are able to get out and experience what nature can offer. We in Madison Audubon and other conservation organizations talk, plan, raise money, volunteer, and finally spend hours and hours in the field restoring parts of nature. Time to remember that nature can restore us.

Some of our favorite places to experience nature — state and county parks, for example — might be drawing crowds that push the social distancing limits. Here are two suggestions for off the beaten track lands that will be glorious to visit and not too crowded.

Photo by Joshua Mayer

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Streaming Birds

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Streaming Birds

Spring is sprung and our bird friends are oblivious to our anxiety. Their beauty and vitality can take us out of ourselves for precious rejuvenating hours.

How about a new place of many of you to look at some of our most interesting birds and some other amazing creatures? Try spring creeks!

Much of Madison Audubon's territory lies in Wisconsin's Driftless Area and holds a resource that is quite rare globally: spring creeks. A spring creek is spring fed; as important, the source of those springs are sandstone and limestone aquifers that confer wonderful productivity to the water.

Photo by Joshua Mayer

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Bursting with Life: Spring with Kids Outside

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For each of the last two years, Carolyn has worked with the DNR, Dane County Land and Water Resources Department, the Southern Wisconsin Chapter of Trout Unlimited, and Lincoln Elementary to provide a field trip for Josie's fourth grade class on the Sugar River. The site is the County's Basco Sugar River Wildlife Unit #1, on STH 69, just south of Paoli and across the road from Basco.

Madison Audubon photo

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Big change to DNR/Conservation Congress hearings

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One of the venerable traditions in Wisconsin's conservation activity is the spring hearing conducted in each of Wisconsin's 72 counties by the DNR and the Conservation Congress. Its agenda includes in-person discussions and votes on changes to DNR's fishing, hunting, and trapping regulations and environmental policy and the election of county delegates to the Conservation Congress.

But COVID-19 has brought a huge change to the hearing. In the announcement you see here, the DNR has suspended the in-person portion of the hearings. They will be conducted entirely online. The announcement instructs how each of us can participate.

Photo courtesy of Forest Historical Society, FCC

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Wisconsin's Birds in a Changing Climate

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Three birds, similar stories. We are in a climate crisis, and a bird emergency. Higher temperatures, more storms, changes in food supply, and more make the future for many of the world’s — and our state’s — birds look pretty grim. These three examples shed some light on the problem, and most importantly, the real, impactful things we all can do to help.

Bobolinks, scarlet tanagers, and Wisconsin’s woodpeckers need you.

Photo by Rick Kelly