by Dreux J. Watermolen
Back in 1995, shortly after relocating from northeast Wisconsin to Madison, I crossed paths with Dave Siebert walking down State Street over a lunch hour. He said something like “Hey, Cal DeWitt is thinking about getting a bunch of folks together who work on wetlands. There are people at UW, Wisconsin DNR, NRCS, Fish and Wildlife Service, The Nature Conservancy, and Ducks Unlimited all doing their thing, but no one seems to know what anyone else is up to. Wouldn’t it be great if we could just get together and share what we’re working on? You should come. We’re meeting at the Memorial Union in a couple of weeks.”
Thus was my introduction to the Wetland Science Conference, then referred to as the Wetland Science Forum. At that first forum, a small group of us gathered in Tripp Commons for seven presentations as well as break-out discussions on wetland mitigation banking, groundwater protection, ethics and stewardship, and landscape scale considerations. We thought it was so much fun that we should do it again.
And we did each of the next four years in Madison. Then Joanne Kline proclaimed this couldn’t be a “Wisconsin” forum if we’re always meeting in Madison. So, we made a bold decision and went all the way to Milwaukee. And then Fond du Lac. And in 2002, the Forum grew to a 2-day event.
Betsy Day and Alice Thompson reminded me this year that it was Dave Siebert who stood up at the end of that first forum and suggested we didn’t need to create a new organization to support an annual affair—we could just ask Wisconsin Wetlands Association to be the convenor. What a great idea that turned out to be!
Now after 30 years, we have heard from dozens of authors and scholars, including giants in the field; folks like Cal Dewitt, Joy Zedler, Jim and Libby Zimmerman, Bud Harris, Leigh Fredrickson, Ken Potter, George Kraft, Ken Bradbury, Don Reed, Galen Smith, Jim Meeker, Eric Epstein, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Tracy Hames, and Katie Beilfuss to name just a few.
For the past 15 years, I have had the great fortune to serve along with others on the conference advisory panel. During this time, I have had a front-row seat to witness our Wetland Science Conference grow from a handful of talks and posters to three days of hands-on workshops, topical symposia, and interactive working groups.
We’ve added field trips to Wetland Gem® sites and various herbaria and natural history museums. Exhibitors and sponsors have joined in from a wide range of wetland practice.
We’ve expanded our support for students and early career professionals through poster and paper competitions and career workshops. We’ve benefited from silent auctions and this year a Little Free Wetland Library.
Along the way, we’ve partnered with other organizations to expand our reach and diversify our learning, including Wisconsin Woodland Owners, Prairie Enthusiasts, Soil and Water Conservation Society, Society of Wetland Scientists, and Trout Unlimited to name a few.
In recent years, Wisconsin Wetlands Association has held its Annual Meetings in conjunction with the conference. We’ve celebrated anniversaries and legislative victories. Notably, we worked on and celebrated Ramsar designations, as now Wisconsin has more Ramsar sites than any other state in the nation except California.
We heard from a few politicians, policymakers, and agency leaders. We benefited from Gubernatorial proclamations and Ho-Chunk blessings. We’ve been to 13 cities and held two virtual conferences during the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic. We’ve battled bitter cold, unseasonable warm spells, massive snowstorms, and extensive spring flooding. And as I looked through all the photos from the last 30 years, I couldn’t help but notice we’ve seen an awful lot of truly ugly hotel carpeting.
Our focus over the years has remained on wetland science and the past couple of years have placed a strong emphasis on hydrologic connectivity. That may seem like the buzzword of the day, but, in fact, hydrological connectivity has been a persistent theme across the past 30 conferences. It started with groundwater protection and landscape connections in the very first forum and extended through coastal, lacustrine, and riverine connections in multiple conference themes.
Like hydrologic connectivity, biodiversity conservation has been a staple. We first heard from Bob Hay about amphibian deformities and from Joel Trick about migratory bird use of isolated wetlands at the second annual gathering. This was followed by talks on vegetation responses to drawdowns, endangered Hine’s emerald dragonflies, fairy shrimp in ephemeral wetlands, microbial populations on artificial surfaces, amphibian and fish responses to restoration, and numerous other flora and fauna talks, including some of my favorites. We hosted symposia on dragonflies, wetland butterflies, herpetology, and waterfowl.
Wetland delineation, wetland assessment, wetland restoration, and invasive species management have been common threads over the years, as has wetland mitigation.
Technology talks at early conferences addressed wetland mapping and emerging GIS technologies. These were followed by talks on satellite image interpretation, web-based tools for wetland assessments, and automated data loggers and acoustic monitoring devices. In 2024, Jason Granberg offered a workshop on the use of artificial intelligence (AI), and this year we have a poster on drone-flown LIDAR.
We also learned about the connections between wetland science and people. We’ve learned about beavers and braiding sweetgrass. We’ve considered the effects of human-caused climate and land use changes on the ecosystems we cherish.
While science has been our focus, we have also had much fun over the past 30 years. We’ve had photo booths, perused comic book displays, read poetry, watched movies, competed in scavenger hunts, heard Alice Thompson’s laugh, played cornhole and Wetland Jeopardy, and been entertained by the Surly Surveyor and the Last of the River Rats and even a unicyclist.
Having fun while learning seems to be a great recipe for success. Personally, I have found the dinner table conversations, the social hour games and networking, and the informal poster chats to be some of my most beneficial learning experiences. Like many of you, I have come to view this conference as one of my favorite professional events to attend.
In closing, I cannot help but think of how this conference has paralleled the careers of many treasured colleagues. I have watched as some of those who participated in that first conference have progressed through their careers to retirement, many of whom still join us at the conference as retirees attending on their own dime. To those, I say thank you for coming back year after year and continuing to journey with us as the field of wetland science has grown and progressed.
Thank you for all the memories from the past 30 years.
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From the Director: What brings us together
Let’s go back to the beginning and revisit what ultimately brings us together—our love of wetlands.
