When I started at the UEC, I realized fairly quickly there was going to be a steep learning curve. [...] What I had to learn was the jargon, the slang, the lingo. And all the acronyms - we love an acronym here.

Ten years ago, on September 28, 2013, the Milwaukee Rotary Centennial Arboretum opened. Totaling 40 acres of restored land, the arboretum winds along the Milwaukee River and Oak Leaf trail expanding into Riverside Park.

Lindsey Bereckis, a graduate student in Environmental Conservation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, partnered with the Urban Ecology Center to map species richness and biodiversity in the areas surrounding each of our three branches.

This summer, I worked alongside my fellow intern, Cameron Brown, while we show new volunteers how to identify an indigo bunting call or a monarch butterfly egg.

The first time LaShaun Taylor brought her son and granddaughter to a Fishing Club event at the Urban Ecology Center’s Washington Park branch, her son, who is six, was crestfallen when the outing ended before he was able to catch a fish. That was all forgotten after the family’s second visit when he succeeded in catching and releasing five fish in one afternoon.

It is with great pride and genuine excitement for the Urban Ecology Center (UEC), that I announce a very positive leadership transition at the Urban Ecology Center. In June, I will be stepping down from the Executive Director position and the organization will welcome new leadership. This is a change I have been working on with the UEC Board and staff for the past several years and I am happy to share that Jen Hense will become the UEC’s next Executive Director.

Late last February (2018), we received an email from a community member about a beaver found dead in Riverside Park. This news was especially disheartening to us considering the near celebrity status the Milwaukee River Greenway beaver couple had gained not only publicly, but amongst staff. We had watched the activities of the beavers in Riverside Park for nearly five years and enjoyed hearing the stories from other staff and community members about their encounters.Learning about the death of one-half of the beloved couple seemed like an unnecessarily harsh way to end a long Wisconsin winter. Adding insult to injury, while going out to pay our respects to the beaver, we found it a mere three feet from the entrance to its ice-blocked den – as if it was trying to make its way back home to safety but met with misfortune first.

I’m not a professional scientist, but animal stories, biographies of scientists and works of natural history have always been my favorite reading material. Since childhood I’ve been nourished by the prose of ones who observe, measure and count; imagine and experiment. I still have natural history books I acquired as a child. One of them is Animal Behavior from the Life Nature Library series. It was published in 1965; presented as an introduction to what the editors of the time called the “infant science” of ethology.

Fall is such a wonderful time of year. The entire forest turns into a spectacle of color and light — a showy and powerful promise from Mother Nature that if we huddle through these few cold months, she’ll be back and better than ever. Walking through the woods in fall, with a crisp silent breeze and only the sound of feet through dry leaves, one might think that the forest seems to be settling down for a big nap.

An earlier than average warming event followed by another period of freezing temperatures is called a false spring. A stretch of warm, sunny weather will "trick" many plants into opening their buds early. The subsequent freezing temperatures can kill the young, sensitive, newly opened buds, setting the tree back significantly. To understand the effects of a false spring, we need to understand the amount of work the tree has put in to preparing for winter.