In the Media

Student video about Neda Mine, by Takahiro Suzuki.

European settlers to Wisconsin saw wetlands as wasted space to be drained. But that view changed over time, and in 1952, Wisconsin’s DNR made an intact wetland in Ozaukee County known as the Cedarburg Bog a Wisconsin State Natural Area, only the second piece of land to receive that designation at the time.

Since 1989 The UWM Field Station has been home to a time machine, better known as the weather station of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Field Station. The weather station collects electronic data on local temperature, rainfall, solar radiation, wind speed, wind direction and humidity, and is helping researchers look back in time to make predictions about the effects of climate change into the future.

UWM Today’s Tom Luljak talks with Jim Reinartz, the director of UWM’s Field Station.

On today’s Wisconsin Life we’ll learn about the unique ecology of the Cedarburg Bog.

With 400-plus acres of prairie, forest and wetland teeming with exploration and restoration, the UWM Field Station is the perfect natural classroom.

Formed more than 10,000 years ago when a glacier receded in what is now the Town of Saukville, the 2,200-acre Cedarburg Bog was used primarily for hunting waterfowl and owned by private landowners. That changed in 1964 when a rare gem of 320 acres was donated by the Nature Conservancy to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which established a field station there.

Janine Roubik shows us around the beetle traps at the UWM Field Station (20 miles north of Milwaukee) on her way to a degree in Conservation & Environmental Science.

Diane Martin visits the Neda Mine Bat Hibernaculum in Dodge County, winter home to an estimated 500,000 bats, the 3rd largest known bat sanctuary in North America.