Wetland Coffee Break

Wisconsin DNR has contracted aerial herbicide application services for several years to combat invasive phragmites, cattail, and other wetland invasive plant species. Jason Fleener, wetland habitat specialist with WDNR, will outline the various steps to plan out and implement a successful spraying project, discuss how to choose the best method for application (helicopter or drone), and how to choose the right chemicals for a project. He will also share the results of treatments and lessons learned.

Jason Fleener is the statewide Wetland Habitat Specialist in Wisconsin DNR’s Bureau of Wildlife Management. He has 13 years of experience in this program overseeing wetland habitat program delivery on DNR managed lands, including hydrologic restorations, wetland infrastructure management, habitat prioritization, wild rice conservation, and wetland grant program support.

After viewing 163 films that included swamps, bogs, and other types of wetlands, we analyzed how filmmakers have used wetlands as storytelling devices, potentially shaping viewers’ perceptions. Wetlands are predominantly portrayed negatively in film, often as trials and tribulations for the protagonists. Hear from Jeff Matthews, University of Illinois, about how such portrayals could influence wetland conservation by perpetuating negative attitudes about these important ecosystems.

Jeff Matthews is an Associate Professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Matthews conducts field experiments and observational studies on plant communities in both natural and restored ecosystems to identify the factors driving changes in ecological communities.

Histories of the fur trade typically focus on the economic rise and fall of the European fur market, intercultural connections forged between Indigenous people and Euro-Americans, or the wars between Native Nations due to economic participation and alliances. However, an important yet understudied aspect underlying all of those is the fur trade environment. Between 1630 and 1830, fur hunters exterminated more than 95 percent of the region’s beaver population. In this talk, Hayden Nelson will share how the historical overhunting of beavers substantially altered the forested wetlands around Lake Superior. He’ll also discuss the interconnected ways in which other animals responded to the decline of beaver.

Hayden L. Nelson is a PhD Candidate in History at the University of Kansas, where he specializes in environmental and Indigenous history in the North American West. His dissertation, “The North Woods: An Environmental History from the Pleistocene to the Pyrocene,” investigates how both human and non-human actors interacted with and transformed the transnational forested region of the western Great Lakes and Upper Mississippi watersheds from the end of the Wisconsin glaciation to the beginnings of industrial logging. His work has been supported by the American Society for Environmental History, the Newberry Library, the United States Forest Service, and more.