Committee Reports, MAS Wins and Work in Progress
Steve Scaffidi WTMJ, thank you for championing the work we do at Milwaukee Audubon! Tune in to this week's WTMJ Outdoors episode as board member Eric Norberg discusses the importance of protecting and restoring native habitats and landscapes for future generations.
🎧 Milwaukee Audubon Society segment begins around 26:45.
WTMJ Outdoors by Steve Scaffidi and Jaslyn Snell
We had a great burn day, although the specific area we planned to ignite wasn’t completed this time — that opportunity will come. What truly mattered was the gathering itself. Sixteen fire and land stewardship enthusiasts came together to share knowledge, strengthen connections, and advance our collective understanding of site management.
The photo below (by Eddee Daniel) offers an excellent visual of the day’s success: perfect smoke management and a clear sense of how the site fits within its surrounding landscape. The drone imagery, in particular, adds valuable perspective — the tan-colored upper wet terrace visible on the right edge of the photo is a clear marker of our progress and an important reference for future work.
Photo credit: Eddee Daniel
Tune in as board member Maggie Szpot joins Steve Scaffidi for an inspiring discussion about the Milwaukee Audubon Society, our mission to preserve and restore Wisconsin’s natural environments, and meaningful ways the community can get involved.
Listen in around the 20:00 minute mark to hear about the Milwaukee Audubon Society.
https://wtmj.com/podcasts/wtmj-outdoors/2025/10/25/wtmj-outdoors-preserving-the-outdoors-10-25-25/
Eleven MAS board members and volunteers gathered at Lizard Mound State Park on March 29th to hunt for white-oak-type seedlings. Our hope was to identify as many as 20-25 promising seedlings and mark them with short lengths of bright pink flagging. Mission accomplished! Thanks to heavy acorn production and good germination, we were able to identify a generous number of oak seedling clusters. Nothing we do is invasive, and this will help protect these highly desirable trees as we work to restore the oak savannah. The next step will be to work with our local Wisconsin DNR Forester to direct our installation of Tubex-type tree shelters. This will allow the WDNR Kettle Moraine Forestry team to protect and monitor these genetically valuable trees.
Drone Photography by Elliott Boyd
It was near zero degrees and calm when eleven of us gathered before sunrise in the plowed parking lot of Lizard Mound Park on the morning of Winter Solstice Sun Rise (WSSR), Saturday December 21, 2024.
Our purpose was not to co-opt traditional ritual or promote a new one, but rather to document the sun-rise’s alignment with the unique Lizard Mound. We talked about an ancient Menomini legend that serves as a mnemonic for mounds and features of the site.
Observing winter solstice sun-rise at the horizon during Wisconsin's gray-sky Decembers is uncertain. Almost an hour before sunrise the extended eastern horizon had a rosy glow. And, a few minutes after “official” sunrise, the sun cleared the distant tree canopies. We were rewarded with clear sight of the early sun over the tail of the 260-foot-long Lizard Mound.
A highlight of this WSSR gathering was the commentary of a Menominee Tribal leader who not only knew from childhood the legend that we met to discuss, but expanded on how tribal beliefs and practice about gender roles build on the legend. His message made our time at the Lizard Mound particularly significant and memorable. Good relations were strengthened.
The morning’s walk ended as the story recounts, in grandfather Winter Hawk’s bosom, where we gathered as a group.
Based on Milwaukee Audubon Society’s land management recommendations for the park and lessons from MAS’s adjacent Bear’s Head Springs property, after snowmelt the Friends intend to mark naturally seeded white-oak-type seedlings that the carry the site’s genetics and can become the next generation of anthropogenic oak savanna trees. This work will be done in co-operation with Kettle Moraine State Forest staff and once located, these seedlings will be fitted with tree protectors to become the site’s future open-grown trees. As few as twenty-five small, white-oak-type seedlings would be adequate stocking for this site’s savanna future.
Although some of the current mature white oak have forest-grown form or suffer defects, it is important that they are retained as seed trees because their genetics hold essential data for future genetics and biogeographic research of the Lizard Mound group as a distance-pilgrimage destination.
Information on upcoming Friends of Lizard Mound Park events will be posted on Milwaukee Audubon Society’s web site.
Original construction of the site’s unique Lizard Mound has preserved its angular relationship with winter solstice sun rise (WSSR) for many centuries. The morning sun seemed to linger beyond the Lizard Mound’s tail on Saturday December 21, 2024.
Menominee leader, Bryant Wapoose, explained that the mound’s lizard form, symbolic of boy, is consistent with the Menomini legend of “The Boy Who Caught the Sun.”
Ron Preston photographing a student looking across the Milwaukee River to the east-bank green lawn where the Kletzsch Park Dam fish passage will now be built. The thunderbird has landed on the concrete of the west bank where the original spring flow still emerges from an outflow pipe near his right foot. Building the fish passage on the east bank will spare the legacy oaks of Indian Prairie’s anthropogenic savanna and may allow MMSD to daylight Indian Prairie’s original canoe landing to the right of this photo.
By Jim Uhrinak and Matt Smith
Photos by Eddee Daniel
If Buffalo Speaks Reserve is the crown jewel of the Niagara Escarpment along the east side of the Horicon Basin, the Kolterman Indian Mound Group is one of the facets that makes it sparkle.
