Point au Sable - Green Bay Waterfront

Reconnecting Menominee students with their roots in the bay of Green Bay

On: August 4, 2023

In: Chief Lamotte, Christine Fossen-Rades, Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, David Overstreet, Green Bay, Margaret Ellis, Menominee Indian High School, Point au Sable, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, Wequiock Creek Natural Area, Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources

By Margaret Ellis – Yotsi’nahkwa’talihahte (Wild Rose), Oneida Nation
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay First Nations Graduate Assistant, Wisconsin Sea Grant

Wequiock Creek Natural Area is one of six places managed by the University of Wisconsin – Green Bay (UWGB). Other areas include the Cofrin Memorial Arboretum and Point au Sable.

In the early stages of the management and restoration of the Wequiock Creek Natural Area, David Overstreet was hired to work with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources to identify interested parties to the land and to conduct an archaeological dig. Overstreet is a consulting archaeologist for the Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and has been doing cultural digs such as this one for many years. The area is the original homeland to many First Nations: Menominee Tribe of Indians of Wisconsin, Ho-Chunk Nation, Potowatomi and Oneida Nation of Wisconsin. At this point, UWGB knew it had to bring the Indigenous voice back to the lands to ensure any restoration efforts incorporated its original inhabitants.

Consulting Archaeologist David Overstreet, works with Menominee youths on Point au Sable in Green Bay. Image credit: Margaret Ellis

One such effort to bring the voice back is to connect Indigenous youth to the area. Overstreet and Bobbie Webster, the natural areas ecologist from the UWGB Cofrin Center for Biodiversity, hosted an archeological dig at Point au Sable this spring. The Point au Sable area is an important site to the Menominee Nation as it is the ancestral and ceded territories of the Menominee Nation. There are references in surveyor notes from early 1800 to Menominee, Ho-Chunk, Potawatomi and others.

Point au Sable was always a popular spot. We also know Chief Lamotte had a residence at Bay Settlement when he signed the Menominee Treaty of 1831. The goal of the dig was to find any artifacts that may be from Menominee ancestors so they can be analyzed and protected from any further restoration efforts and movement of lands. The dig was also a means of connecting Menominee youth with their original homelands and historical items.

This was the second year that Overstreet organized the dig with Menominee Indian High School students at the tip of Point au Sable, about a mile walk out into the bay of Green Bay. The students were led by Christine Fossen-Rades, a science educator at the Menominee Indian High School. After a quick visit to Wequiock Falls, the students met at Point au Sable.

Overstreet and his son, Ryan, marked off archaeological sites prior to the dig so that once everyone arrived, the students could just grab their shovels and sifters and trek the mile to the dig site. They were asked to dig holes to a certain depth or until they hit darker soil. They then used shaker boxes made of screen mesh to sift the soil and sand. The items they were looking for included important artifacts such as cracked rocks, bones, coal and any other objects that may have come from the original inhabitants. Overstreet educated them in the process of bagging items of interest and labeling them so he could bring them to his lab for analysis. The Menominee youth and Tribe are a big part of this process and benefit from any research and lab results.

Menominee Indian High School students helped uncover the past on Point au Sable in Green Bay. Image credit: Margaret Ellis.

My favorite part about this activity was seeing the elements of past, present and future — Menominee students working on lands that belonged to their ancestors in an effort to support the preservation of their culture while using modern-day science. The activity represented an Indigenous worldview of continuity and the circular nature of our being. Experiencing this connection to the past felt like coming full circle and I’m glad to have been involved in it.

This dig is part of an ongoing effort to bring Indigenous voices and presence to UWGB natural areas. As an Indigenous person and UWGB student, I appreciate the movement toward a more inclusive as authentic relationship between UWGB, its natural areas, and the Indigenous Nations that once called them home.

The post Reconnecting Menominee students with their roots in the bay of Green Bay first appeared on Wisconsin Sea Grant.

Original Article

Blog | Wisconsin Sea Grant

https://www.seagrant.wisc.edu/blog/reconnecting-menominee-students-with-their-roots-in-the-bay-of-green-bay/

Marie Zhuikov

Snapshots that help conserve shorebirds in decline

On: June 2, 2015

In: Biodiversity, Bird Survey, birds, graduate students, Green Bay, Point au Sable

Scientists collect a snapshot of a bird’s life when they capture, band, and release it. Each coded band and any data collected at the same time like date, location, sex, age etc. are recorded in a database that can be shared by scientists around the world. When the same bird is seen somewhere else, that observation location provides another snapshot that is added to the database, helping scientists to reconstruct the movements of individual birds. This continuously growing database makes it possible to study dispersal and migration, behavior and social structure, life-span and survival rate, reproductive success and population growth.

Environmental Science & Policy Master’s candidate Tom Prestby is observing shorebirds migrating along the lower Bay of Green Bay (Brown County, Wisconsin, USA) in order to provide much needed information about the importance of near shore habitat for numerous species of conservation concern including three species in high peril and 12 in high continental concern.

Semipamated Sandpiper photo by Tom Prestby — Semipalmated Sandpipers on the shore of the Bay of Green Bay.

He photographed the Semipalmated Sandpiper shown here in late May 2015 at his research site in Green Bay. The code on the blue band on the bird’s leg allowed him to discover that it was banded on January 14, 2014 in Maranhao, Brazil, and so had traveled nearly 2000 miles to get to Green Bay. Semipalmated Sandpipers, so-named because their toes are webbed for only part of their length, breed on open tundra, so it’s journey is only a little more than half finished. It still must travel another 1200 miles or more to northern Canada and Alaska to breed this summer, resting at along mudflats, sandy beaches, shores of lakes and ponds, and wet meadows. These birds make that incredible 3000 mile journey in only about two months time and rely mostly on stored fat reserves to power them through migration. Summer is short in the arctic, so after they breed they begin their fall passage in July at a more leisurely pace and typically arrive back in their South American wintering grounds by mid-October.^[1]

Unfortunately, this species is on the 2014 State of the Birds Watch List, which lists species most in danger of extinction without significant conservation action. Even though populations appear to be stable at some arctic breeding grounds in Alaska, surveys by researchers in Canada and the United States indicate that the numbers of birds reaching South America wintering grounds have declined by 80% over the last 20 years. Canadian scientist Stephen Brown who has been tracking the birds as they arrive on Coats Island in the far north of Hudson’s Bay explains, “We need to understand the migratory pathways of the species in order to know where the decline is occurring, and what can be done to reverse it.”^[2]

Prestby’s observation is helping other scientists to do just that. He is continuing to monitor shorebirds at his research sites including the recently restored Cat Island Chain in person and through the use of remote cameras. He is enthusiastic about his graduate experience. “It is fascinating to be able to look into the life of one of these birds and very satisfying to contribute to a great database!” His master’s research will provide important information about shorebird migration and use of wetlands encircling the bay of Green Bay that will help scientists to better understand and conserve these trans-American travelers.

References

1. All About Birds: http://www.allaboutbirds.org/guide/Semipalmated_Sandpiper/id

2. Manumet Center for Conservation Studies: https://www.manomet.org/newsletter/first-ever-geolocator-results-semipalmated-sandpiper-show-remarkable-year-long-odyssey

Considering a career in Environmental Science? Learn more educational opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Green Bay, the Original #EcoU!

Original Article

Biodiversity

https://blog.uwgb.edu/biodiversity/2015/06/snapshots-can-help-conserve-shorebirds-in-decline/

Vicki Medland

Bird Banding at Point au Sable

On: November 20, 2013

In: birds, Econotes, graduate students, Point au Sable, UWGB, volunteer opportunity

Almost 80% of songbirds that nest in Wisconsin are migratory, many traveling vast distances every spring and fall. Songbirds typically migrate at night and seek out patches of natural habitat at daybreak where they can rest. These areas must provide shelter from storms and predators, as well as provide high quality food resources so the birds can refuel for the next leg of their journey. Unfortunately, stopover habitats are becoming scarcer as natural habitat is converted for human use and landscapes become more fragmented.

UW--Green Bay graduate student Stephanie Beilke measures a bird while undergraduate Kirsten Gullett records data. — **UW–Green Bay graduate student Stephanie Beilke measures a bird while undergraduate Kirsten Gullett records data.**

Stopover habitats are a critical resource for these birds, but the ecology of birds during stopover periods is not well understood. And because increasingly large numbers of birds congregate in these fragmented habitats, ecological interactions can be intense. This may because there are many species interacting under highly variable environmental conditions. Graduate student Stephanie Beilke is banding birds to learn more about how migratory birds are affected by the type of stopover habitats they choose. Her research on migratory bird assemblages will provide insights into the resource demands and evolutionary history of migratory birds and will ultimately provide a better understanding of stopover site ecology and help guide the conservation and protection of Great Lakes coastal habitats for migratory birds.

Point au Sable offers a perfect opportunity to learn more about stopover ecology. It is a mosaic of different natural habitats including lowland and upland forest, wetlands, and Great Lakes beach. Since the late 1990s, migrating passerines have been studied at Point au Sable Natural Area, a peninsula that juts out into the lower Green Bay, just north of the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay campus. Through the years, Point au Sable has experienced many ecosystem changes including invading exotic vegetation, declining water-levels in the Bay of Green Bay, and ongoing habitat management and restoration. Despite these changes, point counts and mist-netting operations conducted by UW – Green Bay researchers have shown that large concentrations of avian migrants use Point au Sable during both spring and fall migration

This fall Stephanie and her group of volunteers set up nearly invisible finely-meshed mist nets in openings where birds are likely to fly through. Birds fly into the nets and become entangled. Trained technicians collect the birds, and then take measurements and either read the existing band or place a new a U.S. Geological Survey aluminum numbered band on the bird’s leg. Volunteers help to set up and take down the nets, alert the technicians to new arrivals, and help to record data collected. In this study netted birds will be weighed and scored for visible chest fat. Different length and width measurements are also collected. Technicians work quickly and carefully to limit the amount of stress endured by the birds.

They banded birds on 25 different days at two locations at Point au Sable Natural Area. Six mist nets were set up in either coastal shrub or in upland forest. The average capture rate was 40 birds per net, but one net in the coastal area caught 79 new birds as well as 3 recaptured birds. Forty-seven different species were banded, including 100 Tennessee Warblers. They also captured large numbers of White-throated Sparrows, American Robins, Hermit Thrushes and Golden-crowned Kinglets.

Some of the species they caught were “firsts” for the project, meaning they had never been captured before, including Black-billed Cuckoo, Blue-headed Vireo, Purple Finch, and Winter Wren. The crew also banded one Yellow-bellied Flycatcher on October 12, which, according to the Wisconsin Society for Ornithology, makes it a record late observation for the state. Most Yellow-bellied Flycatchers have migrated south by the end of September.

Stephanie will be banding again Spring 2014, stay tuned to the blog or like us on Facebook to find out how to volunteer.

Some of the birds captured in Autumn 2013