Wisconsin’s peregrines began a steady decline following the widespread use of DDT (a chemical insecticide). The last nests in Wisconsin were abandoned in the early 1960s. The Wisconsin Peregrine Falcon recovery program began in 1987 and works to help rebuild the peregrine falcon population. UWM has worked to become a part of the USFWS recovery effort in Wisconsin by building its own nest box on top of the EMS building in 2007.  The UWM nest site has produced a total of 46 young.  The young falcons are banded before they leave the nest. Banding of the young hatched at UWM allows researchers to monitor the bird’s lifespan and track the falcons’ whereabouts to locations as far as Texas!  In 2020, a total of 116 young were produced at 38 nest sites in Wisconsin.

This year, UWM’s nest is home to four new chicks. The chicks hatched from May 2^nd-4^th. The young chicks were removed from the nest to be banded on May 24^th. Now the young falcons have been named! Each falcon is named after people with relation to either Wisconsin or national ecological efforts. 2021 Falcon Names: Emma Lucy Braun, Aroline Scmitt, Alfred Russel Wallace, and Theodore Roosevelt. Learn more about UWM’s falcons and see the new chicks here.

Emma Lucy Braun (April 19, 1889 – March 5, 1971) was a prominent botanist, ecologist, and expert on the forests of the eastern United States who was a professor at the University of Cincinnati. She was the first woman to be elected President of the Ecological Society of America, in 1950. She was an environmentalist before the term was popularized, and a pioneering woman in her field, winning many awards for her work. She is known primarily for her seminal book, Deciduous Forests of Eastern North America, first published in 1950 with later facsimile reprintings.

Aroline Schmitt (1904 – 1995) is a good example of how women have been instrumental in leading citizen conservation crusades in Wisconsin and the nation. During the 1940 to the 1960’s, she advanced the principles and practice of sustainable forestry, organized and led new conservation organizations, and worked hand in hand with many other conservation leaders. Despite health challenges, she fought with tenacity and charisma to advance major conservation policies affecting Wisconsin’s natural heritage.

Alfred Russel Wallace (8 January 1823 – 7 November 1913) was a British naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist, and biologist. He is best known for independently conceiving the theory of evolution through natural selection; his paper on the subject was jointly published with some of Charles Darwin’s writings in 1858. This prompted Darwin to publish his own ideas in On the Origin of Species. Like Darwin, Wallace did extensive fieldwork; first in the Amazon River basin, and then in the Malay Archipelago, where he identified the faunal divide now termed the Wallace Line, which separates the Indonesian archipelago into two distinct parts: the biogeographical realms of Asia and Wallacea, a transitional zone between Asia and Australia.

Theodore Roosevelt (October 27, 1858 – January 5, 1919) was an American statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer, who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909.