Upper Mississippi River Chapter IWLA Update
By Fritz Funk
Our Upper Mississippi River chapter’s collaboration with a UW-La Crosse Recreation Management class to develop QR-code-based environmental interpretation materials for Hintgen Island (near La Crosse) is drawing to a close. The class visited Hintgen Island twice over the spring semester. For the first trip on March 3, our chapter arranged rather exhilarating airboat transportation for the students because the River was frozen. A return trip on April 14 was more sedate, using the UW-L research vessel “Prairie Springs”. Mentors from our chapter met and guided the students around the island on both trips, providing help with freshwater mussel biology, fisheries, avian biology, floodplain mammals, botany and other topics. This is a pilot project on a La Crosse County-owned island to explore expansion of QR-code-based environmental interpretation materials to locations within the Upper Mississippi National Wildlife and Fish Refuge. Our chapter received a Hallstrom grant from the Wisconsin Division of the IWLA to help support this project.
Photo courtesy of Fritz Funk.
Our first returning ospreys were observed March 31 in the La Crosse marsh by John Sullivan. Last year we observed and monitored 6 osprey nests in the Pool 7/8 area, where ospreys are increasing in abundance. Ospreys are an excellent monitor of the health of the entire aquatic ecosystem because they eat almost exclusively fish, and as apex predators would be subject to bio-accumulation of environmental contaminants, if present. We’re logging our observations to our special Ike Upper Mississippi group on the Center for Biological Diversity’s “Osprey Watch” program and also with our own Facebook group. Ospreys were observed in April rebuilding their nest on the La Crosse airport landing lights, after the nest had been removed over the winter.
Photo courtesy of John Sullivan.
Our chapter hosted the Wisconsin Division annual meeting on April 18 at Hunters Last Chance Bar and Grill in West Salem, wherein we learned our new chapter is not the only Wisconsin chapter without a clubhouse, nor was it the first Division meeting at a bar and grill. We had an enjoyable fish fry the night before the Division meeting for some of our out of town guests at the Brice Prairie Conservation Association clubhouse, preceded by a hike out into the Black River Bottoms.
A hike before the fish fry. Photo courtesy of Fritz Funk.
We continue to offer well-received and informative talks at the start of our monthly meetings. On April 13, we heard "Wingdam Fish Assemblages and Long Term Resource Monitoring of Fish" (Ben Patschull, WiDNR UMR Fisheries Biologist). For our March meeting the topic was "Beavers on the Mississippi River" (Brenda Kelly, WiDNR UMR Wildlife Biologist) and on February 9 we heard from USGS’ Molly van Appledorn on "More water, more of the time: changing flood patterns of the Upper Mississippi River.”
