Community Science Annual Reviews

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.

My favorite Wes Anderson film, hands-down, is "The Fantastic Mr. Fox." The story, based on a children's novel by Roald Dahl, chronicles a family of foxes that are hunted by angry farmers after getting fed-up with Foxy's nightly chicken thievery. The biological detail that Anderson pays to all of the animals in the story is quite remarkable...While the stop-motion film is set in nowhere particular, the wild red fox can be found throughout most of Wisconsin and Canada and as far south as the northern half of Florida.

Surely all of Earth's 1.3 million invertebrate species couldn't move inside for the winter. But, where did they go? This question made me think about one bug in particular; one that I commonly associate with the warm weather. The antlion. What was my old buddy Mr. Ant Lion up to this time of year?

After talking about the Canada wildfires in school, Maxwell - a budding 6 year old environmental activist - gave a presentation to his family. His grandma, grandpa, mom, dad and brother listened as Maxwell shared, “Right now, the Earth is sad and sick. But if we help out, it will eventually turn into a happy, healthy Earth again.”

What?! No article about prancing reindeer or beautiful red cardinals?! We know, we know, but hear us out. We wanted to recognize an animal this month that we don't necessarily see in the winter, yet is living right under our feet.