Landowners in southwestern Wisconsin: are you members of the Blue Mounds Area Project? If you can see Blue Mounds from your land, or pass it by on the way to work (who doesn't?), then you should be a member!
A nice series of talks is scheduled for the upcoming weeks. Even if you are not a member, these talks are open to you. I have pasted the details below.
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Here is our line up for our Winter Ecological Education Series. Please feel free to share this with others or post to a different list. We're hoping for great turn outs.
The Blue Mounds Area Project (BMAP) will sponsor four educational evening seminars this winter on a variety of topics for land owners and conservationist interested in native landscape restoration and protection. The Thursday evening events are all scheduled for 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm at the State Bank of Cross Plaines located at 1740 Bus Hwy 18-151 E. in Mount Horeb (next to Culver's Restaurant). The meeting room is upstairs; stairway is immediately on your left after the first set of entry doors. Refreshments will be served.
January 15. Funding Your Conservation Project - An overview for landowners to the alphabet soup of public and private financial assistance available for habitat, water quality and land improvement and protection projects. Agency representatives from the federal USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy Inc., Pheasant Forever, WI Dept. of Natural Resources and others will give short presentations and answer your questions.
January 29. Stream and Wetland Restoration in the Driftless Landscape - Principals of local stream ecology and review of local projects that are aimed at creating and restoring stream habitat and improving water quality. Panel presentation with representatives from WI Dept. of Natural Resources, Dane Co. Land and Water Conservation and H2O Underwater Habitat Inc.
February 12. Native Seed Collection and Propagation - Learn the principles of native seed selection, stratification, germination, and transplanting from Corrine Daniels, Director of Restoration Nurseries for Applied Ecological Solutions and Blue Mounds Area Project Ecologist Cindy Ramseyer.
February 26. Citizen Monitoring on Land and in the Water - An introduction to the Blue Mounds Area Project's citizen-action monitoring project focusing on savanna and woodland habitats. Becky Olson, the executive director of the USRWA, will discuss citizen monitoring efforts along stream corridors and how that information is being used in policy and conservation today.
Not sponsored by BMAP but of similar interest and conveniently scheduled for the same location, the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection
(DATCP) and the American Farmland Trust will hold a two hour workshop to describe the tools that could be available for landowners and local municipalities to conserve farm land. The Working Lands Initiative Meeting will be Thursday, January 22, 1:00 pm to 3:00 pm. Tools that will be described include updates to the Farmland Preservation Program, creating Enterprise Areas across the state to focus efforts, and tax credits, the purchase of conservation easements on farms using state funds to be matched with federal, local or private dollars. For more information on DATCP's Working Lands Initiative, visit www.datcp.state.wi.us/workinglands.
For more information contact: Carroll Schaal, (608) 437-6247 or Cindy Ramseyer (608) 523-4213.
Web site for more information on the Blue Mounds Area Project
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