Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance

Not many of us have seen the birth — and death — of an entire ecosystem, right in our own backyard. But when Tom Mace was 9 or 10 years old, he and his best friend did.

Tom grew up less than 100 feet from the wetlands in Menasha. After a day of catching bait for fishing, he and his best friend came home with two buckets of leopard frogs. When his mom insisted that the creatures couldn’t stay in the buckets overnight, they released them into the wetlands nearby. The next year, “you could hardly hear anything for all the chirping of the frogs.”

The frog population boomed, and the mosquito population dropped. The year after that, black bass moved in and nested, feeding on the frogs. But he never got to see what would have happened in the following year. Instead, a developer filled in the wetlands and built a neighborhood. It killed all the frogs, and the next year the bass left too.

“We lost the wetlands, lost the frogs, lost the bass,” Tom said. “So that’s the sad story of why you don’t fill in wetlands.”

Tom Mace, retired environmental scientist

Tom understood what this experiment was teaching him, and it launched him into a long career in environmental research and monitoring. From the rivers in northern Maine to the mountains of Mexico, and from the glaciers and sea ice of the arctic to the dry land of the American southwest, Tom watched the data accumulate steadily.

“I’m a data and measurement guy,” he said. “There’s data there. Real honest to goodness measurements.” One of his last tasks before retirement was to look ahead to the year 2080 to identify future vulnerabilities. If we don’t make changes to the ecosystem now, what is at risk of damage or loss in the future?

Now that he has moved back home to Menasha, he can’t help but apply this kind of thinking to the same wetlands and lakes he loved as a boy. “I can see how things are, how they used to be (because I grew up here), and I can look ahead based on what I know about changing climate.”

He worries about the blue-green algae that blooms in Lake Winnebago, and whether a large bloom could one day overwhelm our ability to screen toxins out of the drinking water for 200,000 people. He worries that too much vegetation in the water will create anoxic zones – areas of the lake without dissolved oxygen. “Fish can swim out of small zones, but a big zone means dead sturgeon.” And he doesn’t want to see that.

What Tom does want is to preserve all of the natural resources of this community for future generations. And he hopes that everyone is able to find common ground in that goal and not wait any longer to get started.

“If we had understood this in the 1970s, we would have a lot less to do,” Tom noted. “And if we wait until 2050, we’ll be in real trouble.”

“Is Fox-Wolf going to have a big enough impact to cause change?” Tom asked. It depends on whether or not people are willing to act on what we know.

He encourages everyone to look at the data and use their critical thinking skills. “We can’t undo everything,” he said, “but we can change what we’re doing now.”

If your property were disappearing at a rate of one foot a year, how long would it take until it was gone entirely? And what would you do about it?

Erosion can be a long slow process that isn’t always visible. But when Valerie and Allen Stabenow moved into their home on Lake Poygan, they noticed right away.

“We were losing a foot of land a year,” Valerie said.

On the back of their property, where the channel offers lake access to their neighbors, the problem was wildlife. Turtles laid their eggs on the shore, then raccoons came to dig up the eggs.

On the lake side of their property, the problem was the power of wind, waves, and ice. The relentless energy of weather pounded the shoreline in every season.

They knew they were losing property fast. When they saw an aerial photo of their property, through the shallow water, they could see what was likely dry ground of their yard in the recent past. And they knew they had to do something before the rest of their property was underwater or washed away entirely.

But Valerie and Allen are go-getters, raised to take the initiative to get things accomplished. “You can’t sit back and wait for someone else to do it,” Allen said. “If you do, it’s probably not going to happen.” So they got to work.

When Valerie and Allen lived on the lake in Montello, they were involved in water quality improvement for the lake district there. Then they moved to Winneconne.

“We were actively searching for something like Fox-Wolf to continue our work,” said Valerie. They watched for a year or two to see how Fox-Wolf works, to see if it had momentum.

“Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance is clearly the player in this area,” said Allen. “You keep an eye on the whole watershed, and all the competing interests. I’m impressed with the leadership. Some folks come and go, but you keep moving forward.”

After volunteering with Fox-Wolf programs and investing in erosion prevention, they decided to become members at Fox-Wolf. “We choose our lifetime memberships carefully,” Allen said. “Fox-Wolf is a get-it-done organization. So are we. What they do directly affects this property and also our lives.”

When you partner with Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance, you are part of a community that isn’t waiting.

Members of Fox-Wolf provide critical funding that increases capacity and reach, and starts impacting the environment immediately. You support on-the-ground projects, general outreach, education, and hands-on engagement. Learn more about how you can join this community at www.fwwa.org/membership.

On the channel side, they added native plants with long roots to stabilize the soil. They still have turtles (and raccoons), but the shoreline is holding. On the lake side, they’ve added riprap to the shoreline and a breakwall off shore.

These big projects were not cheap. But as Allen said, “You either invest now, or you lose the property.”

Allen and Valerie were glad to get help with their projects in the form of cost-sharing grants, thanks to Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance and Winnebago County. And today, they see the impact of over a decade of improvements.

It’s also important to Valerie and Allen to share what they know. “An organization like Fox-Wolf empowers us to spread the message,” said Valerie. They invite conservation staff and students to tour their property and see what they’ve done. They let their neighbors know what they are up to and share their experiences with other shoreline property owners.

“What we’ve done here has been successful,” said Allen. But watching the two of them continue to work around their property, planting new trees and maintaining a small wetland, it’s clear they’re not done.

They’re concerned about the increase in algae blooms, more than they’ve noticed in the past.

“I’m a swimmer. I grew up on lakes. But I would not swim in this lake,” said Valerie. She is particularly concerned about the toxic blue-green algae that can foam up nearby. “I don’t want the water to get so disgusting that I can’t even kayak.”

So you can find Valerie and Allen working on water quality in other ways around the watershed. You might see Valerie in her kayak, identifying and removing invasive species, or pulling trash out of the water. Allen will talk to anyone about the work they’ve done and why it matters.

“We’re just caretakers until whoever comes after us,” they said.

Imagine having to bring your own water to the beach.

Kevin Fermanich doesn’t have to imagine this, because he’s already seen it. He was at a state park one day when there was algae blooming along the beach. He didn’t know if it was toxic or not, but it was certainly a nuisance. He didn’t want to have his kids swimming in the water.

Then he noticed another family show up. A woman went back and forth several times from her car to the beach, carrying jugs of water.

“She carried several gallons of water from her car to the beach for her kids to play with,” Kevin said. “Along a Great Lakes beach. She had to bring her own water to the beach, just to build sand castles.”

Kevin Fermanich, retired environmental scientist

For some people, that would be the story that motivated them to engage with conservation for the first time. But for Kevin, this was not his first brush with polluted water.

“We live ¼ mile from the East River [in Green Bay],” he said, “but that’s not a place we’d go paddling. It’s chocolate-colored at times and has significant algae. It impacts our choices about where to be.”

Before he retired and became a kayaker, Kevin worked for UW-Green Bay researching soil and water quality. He discovered that Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance had connections to funding sources and centralized much of the conservation work across a variety of other companies and organizations.

“I’ve stayed with Fox-Wolf for so long because I am impressed with Fox-Wolf and what you have been doing. Working with Katie and the integrated water plan was important. Yours is as good of a partnership as any in the Great Lakes region.”

Kevin may have been an environmental scientist, connecting academics with water quality, but he also understands the importance of water from a personal perspective. He owns the farmland where he grew up. When he saw erosion damaging the land and carrying away valuable topsoil, he worked with his tenant farmer to put in contour strips.

That’s where Kevin sees the full complexity of our watershed. “What’s happening on my farm in the upper watershed is connected to what’s happening between Green Bay and Lake Michigan. I work at the scale of what’s happening in the soil… it impacts the rivers, all the way out to the Bay, to Lake Michigan, to the Atlantic Ocean. There’s a microscopic connection from my soil to the Great Lakes.”

Kevin takes his stewardship of the land seriously. He hopes to start additional conservation practices on his farm. But these things don’t happen overnight. “We need to change momentum and habits, and bring farmers along with us,” said Kevin. “It’s challenging but rewarding to come up with ways that are more sustainable.”

Why work so hard on the challenging tasks? “Some of it’s a hope; some is an imperative,” said Kevin. “Things will get worse if we don’t become more resilient and make our landscape more adaptable to our changing environment.”

What is Kevin’s hope? That we can have our landscape in balance with producing food, fiber, and resources while minimizing the impact on water resources.

And having drinkable, swimmable water. “That’s a good goal,” he said. “Everywhere, as many places as possible. That should be the goal. That’s my hope for the future.”

Rick Fox grew up on Lake Michigan in Kenosha, always on the water. He was a SCUBA diver by age 13, and by 15 years old knew he wanted to be an oceanographer when he grew up. He ended up with a career as an environmental scientist, consulting with large companies and government agencies. He worked on superfund sites, including the removal of PCBs in the lower Fox River.

“I’m proud of my career, but it was not as satisfying as it could have been,” Rick said. Working on billion-dollar projects to remove pollution involves collaboration between corporations, lawyers, non-profits, and government agencies, and too often they didn’t work well together.

Groups with different perspectives would point fingers at one another rather than working toward solutions. “I’m not looking to accuse anyone,” Rick said. “Let’s build a coalition and just move forward.”

When it came time to retire, he and his wife ended up on the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago. “We didn’t know anything about Lake Winnebago,” he said, “except it’s a big lake with good fishing.”

As they were moving in, the town was facing problems with runoff. With large spring storms becoming more common, no one could ignore the rain that would race across the fields and flood the community. “All this water, milky brown with manure and top soil, it’s going in our garages and basements,” Rick said.

His neighbors knew Rick had worked in that field and quickly connected him to the new community committee. “The first thing I did,” Rick said, “was get a hold of Korin and other staff at Fox-Wolf.” He learned that Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance was already working in the area on the Pipe Creek Watershed. And Rick noticed that Fox-Wolf was working hard to build bridges between groups with different perspectives. “In particular,” he said, “I see it as you work with farmers.”

Property owners on the town committee were blaming farmers, until they realized that farmers don’t want to lose that topsoil either. “There was a convergence of interest for all of us. It wasn’t us/them, but we,” said Rick.

“What we’re all realizing is we can’t point fingers. We have to line up and work together.” That meant not only a town committee, but starting a farmer-led group as well. And now the town committee and the farmer-led group are working toward the same goals, in collaboration and alignment with Fox-Wolf.

Rick is thankful for the chance to get back to the grassroots type of cooperation. “To me, it’s all about partnerships. We can do this better. I spent 30 years trying to do projects better. I am so impressed with Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance. You are amazingly efficient and get things done. I want to help champion that. That’s why we decided to write the check for a lifetime membership.”

Rick said he became “more retired” just yesterday, but he’s clearly not slowing down. “I got a little bit of mud in my garage,” Rick said. That’s how it started. “But I’m really here for the blue-green algae. I worry for my dogs, the swimmers in the lake… it’s got to be bad for the fish too. Cyanotoxins in the water is scary.” And while that may seem like a daunting task to take on as a retirement project, Rick sees how to break it down to make it manageable for all of us.

“Every little thing you do has an effect. So it’s worth doing the small things that may not seem like they’ll add up,” said Rick. “Take three feet of your lawn and convert it to native plants. It’s a step. Go from three applications of fertilizer to two; that’s a step. Pick up that piece of trash. What the heck can we do? Everything we can.”

Travis Coenen grew up on the river in Wrightstown, fishing, canoeing, and launching from the boat ramp. As an adult, he works for the community as the Village Administrator of Wrightstown.

He was aware of the pollution in the river, even when he was young. He didn’t know what was causing it, but when the algae would bloom in late summer, “all of a sudden the river would turn bright green – like in Chicago for St. Patrick’s Day when they dye the river. It didn’t seem right.”

His family enjoyed fishing, but his parents would encourage him to bring home a perch from the bay or up north. “We would go north to Clintonville or Tomahawk,” Travis said, “and the lake waters were so much clearer than the Fox River.”

By the time he was taking biology and chemistry classes in high school and college, Travis had his aha moment. He understood that the problem was what we were putting into the water. At that time, it was the PCBs in particular, coming from the manufacturing along the Fox River.

But that wasn’t the only thing. Travis also noticed that as generations changed and property was handed down, people were adding septic systems to old cabins. And he realized the dirty water from those buildings used to go straight to the lake. “I was just swimming there!” Travis said. “How can that be? We need to do something better.”

While the DNR sets regulations for stormwater treatment according to the size of the community, Wrightstown is working to exceed those expectations. Travis knows that “water quality is part of our community,” so the Village has partnered with area municipalities to meet higher standards.

The Village is also partnering with Fox-Wolf to restore Plum Creek. There’s so much erosion and sediment in the creek that Travis says it looks like “a chocolate milk stream coming into town.” This project will start at the mouth of the creek and provide almost a mile of shoreline restoration.

A project of that magnitude is often beyond what a small community can fund. “This is a million-dollar project, but we’ve only had to pay 20%,” said Travis. The grant money brought in by Fox-Wolf Watershed Alliance has dramatically increased the impact the community can afford.

The Plum Creek project isn’t done, but the Village is already seeing the benefits of doing more than is required for water quality. Travis says you can see it in the fish.

There’s a small, family fishing tournament in Wrightstown every year, trying to see what is the biggest fish of each species they can catch. At first, they only caught carp, catfish, and bullhead. But recently, they’re also catching perch, walleye, muskie, crappie, and bass. Not only are there more species, “the coloration of the fish is so much better. The clarity of the river is so much better.”

And that’s how Travis knows the work is making a difference. “I feel blessed that I got acquainted with Fox-Wolf. The collaborative efforts they’ve initiated, created, or facilitated have been amazing,” he said. “They’re stewards out there trying to actually fix things. Their feet-on-the-ground initiatives are actually happening.”

Plum Creek flows into the lower Fox River carrying so much sediment it looks like chocolate milk.