Wetland Coffee Break

The Wetland Coffee Break series helps keep our community of wetland lovers connected and learning about wetlands throughout the year, from anywhere! Bring your coffee and learn about wetlands, the plants and animals that call them home, and the many natural benefits they provide to our communities. Sessions are held on Zoom and feature time for audience Q&A.

See below for a list of upcoming presentations and to register. Once you register, you’ll receive an automatic email including the URL link and password you’ll need to access the meeting. We record and post each presentation so you can watch any that you missed live. You’ll find links to these recordings below, and you can also find them on our Facebook page.

We are grateful to all of the presenters for sharing their knowledge and expertise and to everyone interested in learning more about wetlands! If you are interested in giving a Wetland Coffee Break presentation, or if you have a wetland topic you’d like to see covered, please contact Katie.Beilfuss@wisconsinwetlands.org.

We are now able to provide attendance verification to Wetland Coffee Break audience members who attend the live sessions and request this service. We created this mechanism in response to requests from members of the Wetland Coffee Break audience who would like to apply their Wetland Coffee Break learning to their continuing education or certification requirements. Learn more about how to receive attendance verification here.

Register for upcoming presentations       Watch previous presentations

Register for a Wetland Coffee Break

Impact of Great Lakes coastal wetland restoration on seasonal bird assemblages

Isabel Dunn, University of Minnesota Duluth
Friday, May 15, 2026
10:30 am CT

Description

The Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) is the leading large-scale restoration program targeting the ecological health of the Laurentian Great Lakes; since 2010, 530,000 acres of coastal wetland and nearshore habitats, as well as other habitats, have been protected and restored. The impact of coastal wetland restoration on bird assemblages has not yet been widely assessed in the context of the GLRI. Using indexed breeding season survey data from the GLRI-funded Coastal Wetland Monitoring Program (2011-2025), we evaluate changes in avian assemblages at over 20 restoration sites spread throughout all five Great Lakes. Graduate student Isabel Dunn will share the results of this analysis, which explicitly tests hypotheses linking changes in bird taxonomic and functional diversity to coastal wetland habitat restoration activities in the context of factors such as change in wetland vegetation quality and extent of emergent vegetation.

Isabel Dunn is a current master’s degree student in the Water Resources Science program at University of Minnesota Duluth. Prior to graduate school, she was an Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education research participant at the Environmental Protection Agency Great Lakes National Program Office. She graduated in 2021 from the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point with a bachelor of science degree in water resources.

Register here

The Wetland Way: Special new exhibit at the Cable Natural History Museum

Heaven Walker, Cable Natural History Museum
Friday, May 29, 2026
10:30 am CT

Description
Join Heaven Walker from the Cable Natural History Museum for an exclusive, behind-the-scenes look at their new exhibit, The Wetland Way! Get a taste for how the Museum exhibits are designed in-house and how the exhibit provides educational venue for hundreds of visitors each year. Heaven will also share information about special wetland field trips and events the Museum is offering this summer to enhance wetland learning and enjoyment.
 
Heaven Walker is the Educator/Naturalist with the Cable Natural History Museum and the current Exhibit Committee Chair. She has a background in Wildlife Biology and Interpretation and enjoys all things outdoors.
Register here

Tackling aquatic invasive species with surveys, drones, and soil cores in the Pheasant Branch Conservancy

Evelyn Web Williams, Adaptive Restoration LLC, and Tom Bernthal, retired WDNR
Friday, June 5, 2026
10:30 am CT

Description
Our ability to control Aquatic Invasive Species (AIS) is improved when we have multiple types of data, both current and historical. In this talk, we’ll discuss some of those types of data used to develop an AIS plan for Pheasant Branch Conservancy. The Conservancy is more than 600 acres of remnant and restored habitat managed by the City of Middleton, the County of Dane, and the Friends of Pheasant Branch Conservancy (FOPBC). In 2025, FOPBC received an AIS Planning grant from the Wisconsin DNR to write a plan for more than 275 acres in the southern portion of the Conservancy. Our team of five professionals from four companies gathered data using vegetation surveys, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV, “drone”) high-definition and IR imagery, and soil cores, and compared these data to historic surveys and imagery. The northern portion of the project area contains high-density invasive cattail stands mixed with higher-quality Sparganium and tussock sedge communities. The southern portion is dominated by reed canary grass. Common buckthorn and sandbar willow are common throughout. The current vegetation is particularly influenced by human-made structures such as a levy that channels nutrients and sediments into the southern portion of the Conservancy. Using these different data sources, we then created an AIS plan that prioritized high-quality areas and provided short- and long-term management recommendations for the three stakeholders.
 
Evelyn Webb Williams has been a Restoration Ecologist with Adaptive Restoration since 2021 and works with diverse private, municipal, and not-for-profit landowners to restore healthy, robust native ecosystems. She earned her PhD from UW-Madison in Botany and worked for many years at the Chicago Botanic Garden on projects in conservation genetics and prairie diversity impacts on restoration success.
 
At WDNR, Tom Bernthal served as the Wetland Monitoring and Assessment Coordinator, where he led such projects as the WI Floristic Quality Assessment Methodology and Database; Wetlands by Design, a GIS-based functional assessment of existing and potentially restorable wetlands; the SE WI Ephemeral Ponds Mapping and Monitoring Project; and other mapping and field assessment projects. As a Friends of Pheasant Branch volunteer since 1997, he has worked on wetland and prairie restoration projects, including writing and managing a series of Aquatic Invasives Control grants focused on sedge meadow restoration from 2011 to the present.
Register here

Native wetland plant restoration pilot project: Fish Creek Slough Estuary in Ashland, Wisconsin

Kevin Brewster, Super Rivers Watershed Association
Friday, July 24, 2026
10:30 am CT

Description
Join Kevin Brewster of the Super Rivers Watershed Association to learn about the ecological impacts on Fish Creek Slough from historic and present-day human presence in the Fish Creek watershed and Chequamegon Bay, invasive species dynamics, and the emerging challenges of climate change. He will discuss how the project will achieve its goal of demonstrating how application of proven restoration strategies—guided by local traditional knowledge—can help recover the ecological and hydrological health of a once-vibrant coastal wetland ecosystem. We will also discuss our plans for engaging the community in exciting volunteer work and educational opportunities as the project progresses.
 
As a life-long northern Wisconsin resident, Kevin Brewster has worked as restoration coordinator, grant writer, board member, and volunteer with the Superior River Watershed Association since 2009. Prior to that, he co-directed a reforestation and wildlife rescue project in northeastern Costa Rica and also worked as an ecological consultant for the US-Forest Service, WDNR, and local Tribal governments. He holds a bachelor’s degree in environmental journalism and graduate certification in restoration ecology practices.
Register here

Watch previous presentations

Click “Older Entries” below to see more past presentations, or view our Google Sheet index of past presentations here.