Activists marched from the Capitol to the DNR Monday to demand the agency rescind its permit for Enbridge Line 5. | Photo courtesy Ian Phillips
A group of about 50 activists occupied the lobby of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Monday to protest the agency’s approval of a permit to construct a 41-mile reroute of Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline through northern Wisconsin.
Several members of the group tried to enter further into the building and one activist was arrested and put in jail, according to a news release from the coalition of indigenous and environmental groups who planned the protest. Two others were warned they’d be arrested if they tried to enter the building again.
For years, the Bad River band of Lake Superior Chippewa have fought against the pipeline, 12 miles of which crosses the tribe’s reservation, raising concerns about the pipeline’s effect on local water and the broader effects that fossil fuels have on the environment.
After declining to renew the easement that allowed the pipeline to cut across their land, the tribe sued in federal court to have it removed. In 2022 a judge ruled that Enbridge was trespassing and would have to reroute the pipeline.
The tribe is opposed to the proposed route for the new pipeline because it would be directly upstream of the reservation.
Late last year, the DNR granted a crucial permit approval for the relocation just days after another of Enbridge’s pipelines, Line 6, was found to have leaked more than 69,000 gallons of oil in the Jefferson County town of Oakland.
On Monday, the group of activists marched from the state Capitol to the DNR offices to deliver a letter demanding that the agency revoke its permit approval and support the decommissioning and removal of Line 5.
“Enbridge Line 5 abets mayhem all around the world: deforestation and water pollution in Alberta, where companies scrape tar out of sand; oil spills across Wisconsin and Michigan; and the global heating equivalent of detonating hundreds of atomic bombs in the atmosphere every single day,” Greg Mikkelson, an organizer with the Cross Border Organizing Working Group, said in a statement. “The proposed expansion of this pipeline would lock in dependence on this disaster-genic source of energy for decades to come. Meanwhile, Wisconsinites consume virtually none of the oil or gas carried in Line 5. Shame on the DNR for approving the expansion, even while covering up a brand-new spill from Line 6, another Enbridge pipeline in Wisconsin.”
Former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum participates in a swearing-in ceremony of state lawmakers on Dec. 2, 2024, in Bismarck, North Dakota, shortly before completing his term as governor. (Photo by Michael Achterling/North Dakota Monitor)
WASHINGTON — Utah Sen. Mike Lee announced Monday he had postponed the confirmation hearing for two days for President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Interior Department.
Lee, chairman of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, delayed former North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s hearing, which had been scheduled for Tuesday, until Thursday.
“Governor Doug Burgum has been fully cooperative throughout the confirmation process, promptly submitting his paperwork to the Office of Government Ethics,” Lee wrote in a statement. “Despite his compliance and the Energy and Natural Resources Committee noticing the hearing in accordance with all rules, OGE has yet to complete its review. This bureaucratic delay is unacceptable.”
Lee wrote the extra 48 hours was meant to give the Office of Government Ethics a bit more time to wrap up its work, but cautioned the agency should work quickly.
“To ensure transparency and uphold the integrity of this process, the committee will postpone Governor Burgum’s hearing until Thursday,” Lee wrote. “However, we expect OGE to act with urgency and complete its review without further unnecessary delays. The American people deserve a government that operates efficiently to advance their priorities, and we remain committed to ensuring these critical confirmations move forward as quickly as possible.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, and Energy and Natural Resources Committee ranking member Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., both raised concerns last week about Burgum’s hearing taking place before certain paperwork was filed with the committee.
“The Senate has a constitutional duty to advise and, if it determines, consent to the President’s nominees. This requires careful consideration of each nominee,” Heinrich wrote in a statement released last week. “To achieve this, for decades, nominees that have come before the ENR Committee have submitted responses to a standard questionnaire and a completed financial disclosure form, approval from the Department’s ethics office, and completion of an FBI background check. Until these steps have been completed, I will not consent to notice of nomination hearings.
“Every nominee, every party, every administration should be subject to the same standards. I would urge Chairman Lee to reconsider his decision.”
Heinrich and seven other Democrats on the committee and one independent released a letter Monday morning, urging Lee to delay the hearing until the panel received “the standard financial disclosure report, ethics agreement, or the opinions from the designated agency ethics officer and the Office of Government Ethics stating that the nominee is in compliance with the ethics laws.”
“In view of the fact that the Committee still does not have these documents, which are essential for us to faithfully discharge our constitutional advice-and-consent responsibilities, we respectfully request that you postpone the scheduled hearing on Governor Burgum’s nomination for at least a week to give Members sufficient time to receive and review these materials,” the lawmakers wrote.
Those lawmakers included Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, Angus King, a Maine independent, Alex Padilla, D-Calif. and Ron Wyden, D-Ore.
The Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, led by Kansas Republican Sen. Jerry Moran, later on Monday postponed its Tuesday hearing for Trump’s pick to lead the VA, citing an uncompleted background check.
“Congressman Doug Collins has submitted all his paperwork in a timely manner and has been transparent and forthcoming with the committee,” Moran wrote in a statement. “At this time, the FBI has not completed its customary background check of Congressman Collins. In accordance with long-standing practice, the committee should have an opportunity to review Congressman Collins’ FBI file before the confirmation hearing. I expect the FBI to complete its review quickly so that the committee can move forward with its role of evaluating the President’s nominee.”
Trump announced in November that he had selected the former Georgia congressman to lead the VA.
Around 4 gallons of crude oil reached groundwater at the site of an Enbridge spill that leaked around 69,000 gallons at the company’s Line 6 pump station in Jefferson County, according to a final report submitted to federal regulators.
Capitol Police arrested one individual Monday for disorderly conduct and resisting an officer during a protest of Enbridge’s proposed Line 5 reroute at the offices for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
ALTADENA, CALIFORNIA - JANUARY 08: A person uses a garden hose in an effort to save a neighboring home from catching fire during the Eaton Fire on January 8, 2025 in Altadena, California. Over 1,000 structures have burned, with two people dead, in wildfires fueled by intense Santa Ana Winds across L.A. County. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
As climate change warms the planet, wildfires have become so unpredictable and extreme that new words were invented: firenado, gigafire, fire siege — even fire pandemic. California has 78 more annual “fire days” — when conditions are ripe for fires to spark — than 50 years ago. When is California’s wildfire season? With recurring droughts, it is now year-round.
Nothing is as it was. Where are the worst California wildfires? All over. Whatever NIMBYism that gave comfort to some Californians — never having a fire in their community before — no longer applies to most areas.
Los Angeles County is the latest victim. The fast-growing Palisades Fire, whipped by vicious Santa Ana winds, ignited along the coast in Los Angeles Tuesday morning, destroying homes and forcing evacuation of about 10,000 households. Within hours, another wildfire, the Eaton Fire, erupted to the northeast, in Altadena, in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, where wind gusts were clocked at almost 100 mph. And then late Tuesday night, a third Los Angeles County fire ignited in the San Fernando Valley area of Sylmar, and by Wednesday morning, a fourth, this one in the Sepulveda Basin.
Fire officials reported that more than 1,000 homes in just Pacific Palisades have been destroyed and many people were injured, including five fatalities from the Eaton Fire. Nearly the entire county is shrouded in smoke advisories. All of Southern California is experiencing drought conditions, with close to zero rainfall since July.
Southern California’s coastal fires typically have to be driven by desert winds. But no longer. Vegetation along the usually moist coast is often so parched that it doesn’t need winds to fan wildfires.
Also, in the far north, California’s so-called “asbestos forests” have lost their immunity. Massive fires tore through dense, moist rainforests where climate change chased away the region’s protective layer of fog and mist.
What causes California’s wildfires? Arson and power lines are the major triggers. A 2022 audit showed that utilities aren’t doing enough to prevent fires. But lightning-sparked fires, like the one that burned Big Basin park, are a fairly recent trend. Unpredictable and hugely powerful lightning storms — tens of thousands of strikes in a span of days — bombard already dry and vulnerable landscapes. Scientists say to expect more lightning as the planet warms. And, aided and abetted by drought, more than 163 million trees have been killed by drought or insects.
And much, much more costly. The Legislative Analyst’s Office provided this sobering calculation: CalFire’s total funding for fire protection, resource management and fire prevention has grown from $800 million in 2005-06 to an estimated $3.7 billion in 2021-22.
As the impacts and costs surge, homeowners are still finding that insurance companies are canceling their policies — even if they fire-harden their property.
More attention is being paid to the unhealthy smoke lingering in communities. Even California’s crops are harmed, with concerns about a smoke- tainted grape harvest and impacting the state’s $58 billion wine industry.
California’s landscape evolved with fire. What remains is for its inhabitants to adapt to the new reality.
A new report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum has found that recycling services are stressing local government budgets due in part to a decline in state aid.
Jerry Boardman doesn’t remember exactly when he started collecting acorns in the fall.
But the thousands upon thousands of them he gathers to share with people working to improve habitat along the Mississippi River makes the 81-year-old resident of De Soto, Wisconsin, a small village between La Crosse and Prairie du Chien, a pretty big deal.
“It’s like a myth or a legend,” Andy Meier, a forester for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers who receives a portion of Boardman’s bounty, said of the integral role it plays in his work. “It just has always been that way.”
Jerry Boardman of De Soto, Wis. (Courtesy of Jerry Boardman)
In reality, Boardman began collecting around the time that the need for acorns — a nut that contains the seed that grows oak trees — was growing critical. For the past few decades, the trees that grow in the Mississippi River floodplain, known as floodplain forests, have been struggling. Although they’re named for their ability to withstand the river’s seasonal flooding, they’ve recently been overwhelmed by higher water and longer-lasting floods.
Overall, forest cover along the stretch of the river from Minnesota down to Clinton, Iowa, decreased by roughly 6% between 1989 and 2010, according to a 2022 report on ecological trends on the upper Mississippi. In the years since, losses in some places have neared 20% — and were particularly acute following a massive flood event in 2019.
What exactly is driving the excess water isn’t fully fleshed out, but climate change and changes in land use that cause water to run off the landscape faster are likely factors.
The result is mass stretches of dead trees that can no longer perform their functions of providing wildlife habitat, sucking up pollutants that would otherwise run downriver and slowing water during floods.
Floodplain forests in the lower section of the river are also diminished. The Lower Mississippi Alluvial Valley, which stretches from where the Ohio and Mississippi rivers meet, in Cairo, Illinois, to the Gulf of Mexico was once almost entirely forest. Today, about 30% of that land is treed.
Government agencies and various nonprofits are attempting to reverse the forestland decline by planting new trees, and volunteers like Boardman are key to the effort.
Local is best
Reno Bottoms, a sprawling wetland habitat on the river near Boardman’s hometown of De Soto, is one place where tree die-off has been extensive. Boardman, who has been a commercial fisherman, hunter and trapper on the river for most of his life, called the change in forest cover in recent years “shocking.” To combat it, he puts in about 100 hours a year between August and October gathering acorns from the floodplain in De Soto, Prairie du Chien and La Crosse.
To maximize his time, Boardman uses a contraption not unlike ones used to pick up tennis balls to scoop up the acorns. One small variety, though, requires one to “get down on your hiney or your knees” to pick them up, he said. For those, he relies on a little grunt work.
The idea is that if the trees that produced the acorns were successful enough at warding off flood damage to drop seeds, those seeds might be similarly resilient if replanted.
Acorns gathered by De Soto, Wis., resident Jerry Boardman are planted near McGregor Lake, a river backwater near Prairie du Chien. Boardman collects tens of thousands of acorns per year to give to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Fish and Wildlife Service, which plant them to take the place of dying trees in the floodplain. (Courtesy of Andy Meier, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers)
Boardman looks for acorns from the bur oak, pin oak and swamp white oak, the latter of which is particularly well suited to the floodplain forest. And the numbers he puts up are impressive — last year, he collected about 130,000; this year, 65,000.
He splits up the total to give to the Army Corps and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, both of which have foresters planting trees to restore floodplain habitat.
“Pretty much everything that Jerry collects, in one way or another, will return to the river,” said Meier, the corps forester.
Last fall, for example, between 20,000 and 30,000 of Boardman’s swamp white oak acorns were scattered near McGregor Lake, a river backwater near Prairie du Chien where the corps is piloting an effort to protect trees from flood inundation by raising the forest floor a few inches.
This spring, Meier said, he was “blown away” by the approximately 1,000 seedlings that had taken root there and begun to sprout.
Having access to Boardman’s acorns is important because it gives the corps the chance to experiment with direct seeding, instead of buying young trees and planting them. Direct seeding is both cheaper and more likely to result in a viable tree because the seed is local.
“When we have an opportunity to get something we know came from the river, we know that it’s adapted to growing there,” Meier said.
Not every community has a Boardman, though, and many organizations doing reforestation work have to shell out for seed or look for options from further afield.
For example, M&C Forest Seeds, based in Clarendon, Arkansas, pays seed collectors cash for acorns and then re-sells sorted seed to government agencies or nonprofits. M&C contracts with collectors to gather acorns at particular latitudes along the river, which they then market to replanting efforts at similar geographic locations.
Living Lands and Waters, an Illinois-based environmental organization, uses nurseries to cultivate oaks from the region and distributes more than 150,000 trees annually in three-gallon pots to volunteers or individuals.
Little by little, through the efforts of various government agencies and nonprofits, it all ends up in the ground.
For instance, since 2007, Living Lands and Waters has planted more than 2 million trees along waterways in the Mississippi River Basin. The Nature Conservancy, using U.S. Department of Agriculture and other program funds, has reforested about a million acres across Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas in the last 30 years. Much of that acreage was on low-lying farmland prone to flooding that had once been forest.
Volunteers key to planting efforts
Whether collecting seeds or planting them, volunteers like Boardman are key to making the work happen.
Ev Wick, a fifth grade teacher at De Soto’s Prairie View Elementary, has taken his students out for an acorn-gathering day with Boardman for the past several years. Boardman scouts the best trees ahead of time, Wick said, then the kids get to work. They can pick up between 5,000 and 6,000 in a day, propelled by friendly competitions to see who can collect the most or fill their bucket quickest.
They’re interested when Boardman tells them all the acorns they collect will eventually be planted on the islands they see in the river, Wick said.
Fifth grade students from Prairie View Elementary in De Soto, Wis., gather acorns in fall 2024 near the Mississippi River. Their work assists Jerry Boardman, a De Soto resident who collects thousands of acorns annually to help restore trees in the river floodplain. (Courtesy of Ev Wick)
Last October, Living Lands and Water brought together people from groups like the Clean River Advisory Council and the Rock Island County Soil and Water Conservation District to plant oak trees near the Quad Cities. Volunteers planted 85 oak trees in a park by the Mississippi River in Illinois City, Illinois. This event helped restore forests but also provided opportunities for people to learn and connect with nature.
“We get individuals that may have never planted a tree before but want to come out because it sounds like a cool, fun thing,” said Dan Breidenstein, vice president of Living Lands and Water. “Not only did they learn how to plant a tree, but they also learned about these different species that we were doing. Every time they visit that area or drive past that building, they’re connected to the area around them, and that tree’s not going anywhere.”
Organizers are particularly tickled when young people show up.
“My favorite part of today is being outside and in the environment because I don’t go outside much,” said Brooklyn Wilson, a high school junior who volunteered at the October event. “The most important thing to understand is that as a community we need to be able to come together and help and pick up and do what we need to do to better our environment and neighborhoods.”
Perhaps some of the young volunteers will follow in Boardman’s footsteps.
As for Boardman, the chance to donate acorns or otherwise help out is a no-brainer.
“That river has given me so much,” he said. “I’ve just got to give back all I can give.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.
Disclosure: The Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, The Nature Conservancy and the Clean River Advisory Council receive funding from the Walton Family Foundation.
Wisconsin State Capitol on a snowy day. (Baylor Spears | Wisconsin Examiner)
Depending on your perspective, some of the most anticipated or dreaded parts of Wisconsin’s climate are winter snows and cold. This year, a blanket of snow around the holidays had all but melted away by the new year. In the future, holiday seasons accompanied by white, glittering snowfall will be less and less common.
That’s according to a report by Climate Central, a recipient of funding by the Bezos Earth Fund and the Schmidt Family Foundation which describes itself as a policy-neutral, independent group of scientists and communicators. The report found that over the last decade Wisconsin has seen more winter days above freezing. Those warmer temperatures have ripple effects on snowfall, winter recreation and ecosystems. Climate Central researched the effects of climate change in Wisconsin using meteorological data from 2014-2023, with a focus on the winter months from December to February. The analysis found that during those months over the last decade, nearly 40% of Wisconsin’s 72 counties added a week’s worth of above-freezing winter days.
Birds gather to feast on seeds as snow falls in the winter of 2024. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Wisconsin was one of 50 states and 123 countries and territories included in the report. Data for 901 cities covered observed average temperatures from 2014-2023, as well as estimates of what temperatures would have been without human-induced climate change due to fossil fuels and greenhouse gas emissions. The report found “locations across the globe where cold winter days are disappearing in a warming world, compared to a world without climate change.”
For individual Wisconsin counties, that meant significant increases in the average number of days above freezing. The report found that Milwaukee County, for example, added an average of 13 days above freezing, the most of any county. Ozaukee and Kenosha counties added 12 days, while Door, Racine, and Manitowoc added 11 days. The counties of Kewaunee, Waukesha, Sheboygan, and Washington all added an average of 10 more winter days above freezing over the last decade.
The numbers across other Wisconsin counties showed a similarly dramatic shift. In Wood County between 2014-23, according to the report, there was an average of 10 days above freezing during the winter months, with five days added by climate change. In Marinette County, there was an average of 10 days above freezing, with five attributed to climate change. In Brown County, there were 12 days above freezing, with six of them added by climate change, according to the report.
But in a state known for its harsh winter weather, is milder weather really all that bad? “I like to call these strangely warm winter days delight-mares,” Kristina Dahl, vice president of science at Climate Central, told Wisconsin Examiner in an email. “Having a relatively warm winter day can be a delightful break from the coldest, darkest season of the year. But if you take a half step back and think about why that day is so warm – or what it might mean for your local economy or ecosystems – you’re confronted with the reality that human-caused climate change is altering so many aspects of our daily lives.”
A lake dock in winter near Antigo, Wisconsin. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
Addressing the effects of climate change has been a growing concern statewide. Some regions experience greater shoreline erosion, crops grown by agricultural communities struggle because of volatile winters, unpredictable springs and dry summers.
Noticeable swings in weather patterns have increasingly made headlines in Wisconsin. In 2021, there was severe summer flooding in parts of Milwaukee, and strong winds downed hundreds of trees. In mid-December of the same year, temperatures in Milwaukee and Madison reached the low 60s. States across the Midwest experienced a rash of tornadoes which killed dozens of people. In January 2022, the previous year’s record-setting warm weather was replaced by arctic cold. During that summer, lives were lost in Milwaukee due to extreme heat and flooding. Extreme heat was a concern again in 2023, when a wildfire in Waushara County burned over 800 acres.
The warmer winter weather has also started to change traditional recreation in Wisconsin. Last winter, some snowboarding and skiing spots closed due to lack of snow. The same thing happened during the winter of 2022. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has long highlighted the effects of climate change on activities like ice fishing, snowmobiling, snowshoeing, boating, hunting and other outdoor activities which Wisconsin is known for. Fishing alone represents a $2 billion industry in Wisconsin.
“Warming winter days, like those we document in this report, have repercussions throughout our society,” said Dahl. “When days are above freezing, any precipitation will come in the form of rain rather than snow, and snow on the ground begins to melt. That means that winter sports and recreation – an important facet of staying active in the winter months and an important source of revenue for our economy – are threatened. It also means that traditions and cultures can be impacted, for example, through the loss of access to traditional Indigenous hunting grounds. And because many crops, including apples, require a certain amount of chilling time in the winter in order to produce fruit come spring or summer, warming winter days can translate to reduced crop productivity.”
As cold and inconvenient as snow can be, its disappearance changes many things which have come to define Wisconsin.
This report has been updated with a link to the Climate Central webpage for its report.
Braedyn Locke #18 of the Wisconsin Badgers throws a pass in the second quarter during the game against the Minnesota Golden Gophers at Camp Randall Stadium on Saturday, Nov. 29. (John Fisher | Getty Images)
Carbon dioxide emissions from Big Ten football team travel for regular-season conference games more than tripled in 2024 compared to 2023 after after the addition of a quartet of West Coast schools, a Capital News Service analysis found.
Carbon dioxide is one of the major contributors to global warming. It is a greenhouse gas, meaning it traps heat in the planet’s atmosphere. Global air travel was estimated to be responsible for 2.5% of all carbon emissions and 4% of global warming, according to a study published by Our World in Data in April.
“As the Big Ten grows and its carbon-intensive activities increase, they’re contributing to higher levels of carbon emissions, so they’re fueling the heating of the planet,” said Joseph Nevins, a professor of geography at Vassar College and one of the pioneers of Flying Less, a project aimed at reducing air travel in higher education. “They’re making contributions to increasing forest fires in the U.S. Southwest and Canada, growing levels of air pollution, which have direct impacts on people’s bodily well-being.”
The Big Ten did not mention environmental impact as a consideration in making its football schedule.
“Our priority in football scheduling is to balance geography and travel to create compelling matchups in a flexible format that maximize opportunities for Big Ten teams to access the expanded College Football Playoff and win National Championships,” the Big Ten said in a statement to CNS in August.
In 2010, the Big Ten consisted of 11 schools: Ohio State, Michigan State, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Penn State, Michigan, Northwestern, Purdue, Minnesota and Indiana. Nebraska joined the contingent of Midwest schools in 2011. Maryland and Rutgers officially became members in 2014, which allowed the Big Ten to expand its footprint to the East Coast. Carbon emissions from Big Ten travel rose 6% when Maryland and Rutgers joined the conference, per an Arizona State study published in May.
In 2024, the Big Ten added USC, UCLA, Oregon and Washington, which brought its buffet of schools to 18 and expanded the conference’s geographic footprint across the country. USC and UCLA are more than 2,400 miles away from Rutgers. When UCLA football traveled to New Jersey to face Rutgers on Oct. 19, its travel emitted more than 150,000 kilograms of carbon. Six days later, the Scarlet Knights took their own cross-country trip to face USC for a nationally televised game that started at 11 p.m. on the East Coast. Those two trips emitted the most carbon dioxide of any Big Ten games.
Each of the Big Ten’s new members is traveling at least twice as much this season as the year before, with UCLA and Washington traveling more than three times as much in 2024 for regular-season conference games as they did in their final Pac-12 seasons.
Of the 18 Big Ten schools, 17 will see an increase in carbon emissions from last year. Purdue is the outlier, emitting nearly 14,000 less kilograms of carbon this year in comparison to 2023.
The four West Coast schools are the Big Ten’s highest emitters. Washington is emitting more than 500,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide, the highest in the conference. USC, UCLA, Washington and Oregon increased emissions of carbon dioxide by at least 250,000 kilograms in their first year in the Big Ten compared to their final year in the Pac-12. Penn State is projected to emit more 275,000 kilograms, Rutgers above 260,000, while Maryland is above 238,000 to take up the next three spots.
“Is it necessary? Are there alternative ways of doing things that would not only radically cut our carbon emissions, but produce a more socially and environmentally just world?” asked Nevins, who got his doctoral degree from UCLA.
The Seattle Seahawks of the NFL will travel an average of 3,227.62 miles round-trip for road games this season, the most in the league, according to Bill Speros of Bookies.com. The University of Washington football team, which plays its games less than seven miles from the Seahawks, will average 100 miles more per trip than its NFL neighbors.
CNS calculated distances from nearby major airports to find the carbon emissions total. For example, UCLA’s Oct. 19 game against Rutgers, CNS used the distance from Los Angeles International Airport to Newark Liberty International Airport. For games where teams likely used bus travel, CNS used the distance between stadiums.
CNS focused on football team travel for this analysis due to the sport’s once-a-week travel patterns. Most other sports play multiple times a week and may have less predictable travel schedules.
In 2023, the conference announced that each Big Ten football program would face all other programs at least twice in a four-year span. Between 2024 and 2028, the Big Ten has scheduled 33 cross-country trips among the seven schools on the East and West Coast (Penn State, Rutgers, Maryland, Washington, Oregon, USC, UCLA).
“We develop our scheduling formats with input and feedback from school administrators, faculty representatives, medical professionals and head coaches looking at the potential impact on academics, health, safety, rest, recovery, and overall competitive equity,” the Big Ten stated in August. “We continue to evaluate our formats and evolve as needed.”
Kerry Kenny, the chief operating officer of the Big Ten, told ESPN in 2023 that a divisional model restricted the regularity of compelling football games. Oregon and Penn State, the two teams who met in the Big Ten title game on Dec. 7, are scheduled to play each other three times in the next four seasons, which would not have been the case with East and West divisions.
In its first season with the four new schools, the Big Ten had four teams qualify for the College Football Playoffs, the most of any conference. After an undefeated regular season and Big Ten title, Oregon is the top seed in the 12-team tournament.
An Oct. 12 matchup between Oregon and Ohio State, two of the top three teams in the nation at the time, averaged 10.4 million viewers and peaked at 13.4 million in the final minutes of what was an eventual Oregon victory. It was the most-watched Big Ten primetime regular-season game since 2008, according to a press release from Comcast. Team travel for the game resulted in more than 125,000 kilograms of carbon being released.
“The ultimate variable, in my opinion, is the games are better, the matchups are better, and certainly far more important,” said Tim Brando, a longtime broadcaster for Fox Sports.
Included in Brando’s 2024 slate was a Sept. 27 matchup between the University of Washington and Rutgers. Washington emitted nearly 149,000 kilograms of carbon dioxide in its flight for the game. The Friday night matchup peaked at 2.5 million viewers as Rutgers, who made the game its annual blackout, escaped with a three-point victory.
“That was probably the most intensity and the greatest crowd [Rutgers] had for a home game in Piscataway in years,” said Brando. “In large measure, it was because Washington was the opponent, a team that was playing for the National Championship just a year before.”
What’s happening in the Big Ten is representative of the new age of college football. Division-less conferences are the new norm. The only FBS conference split into divisions this season was the Sun Belt Conference.
“The only option to get to most of these competitions is to fly, which means that necessarily there are more flights,” said Madeleine Orr, an assistant professor of sport ecology at the University of Toronto and University of Minnesota graduate. “It’s a growth strategy, as opposed to a reductionist strategy and a climate strategy.”
As awareness around the impact of air travel grows, more major sports teams and organizations are investing in carbon offsets. Carbon offsets have become a trendy way for major corporations to compensate for emissions. They do so by investing in efforts that lower gasses released into the atmosphere, essentially covering the carbon dioxide they emit.
In 2019, the NHL purchased the equivalent of more than 3.8 million pounds (more than 1.72 million kilograms) of carbon offsets to counter its playoff travel. In the five years since then, the NFL’s Houston Texans, English soccer giant Manchester United and even the Australian national men’s and women’s soccer teams have bought offsets to make up for travel.
“In order for that offset to work effectively, the offset has to immediately cancel out … (those) emissions I’ve generated,” Nevins said. “You also have to be able to verify that it’s taking place and that the cut in emissions persists over time.”
Most colleges and universities have sustainability departments that evaluate the schools’ practices and how to lessen their environmental impact. In the Big Ten, in addition to sustainability departments, schools such as the University of Illinois and Michigan have programs focused on sustainable aviation.
The University of Maryland has a pledge to offset all air travel. While Maryland is offsetting all its travel, according to a school dashboard, the number of miles athletics traveled via commercial and chartered flights from 2021 to 2023 increased by 51%. The dashboard has not been updated for 2024, the first year that would include the West Coast teams in the Big Ten.
“What we should be concerned with is: What are they teaching their students, right? What are they teaching the communities in the world?” Nevins asked. “They are normalizing a behavior that is counter to the direction you need to be heading, and they are opening themselves up to accusations of hypocrisy.”
On Nov. 20, the University of Michigan’s Center for Sustainable Studies released a paper looking at the impact of the school’s football travel. Paige Greenberg and Molly Russell, the authors, found conflict between the university’s messaging and the school’s athletics travel.
“While U-M has positioned itself as a leader in sustainability within higher education, the recent Big Ten expansion contradicts this image and poses significant challenges to the University’s commitments,” the paper said.
The 2024 season is the second of media contracts that the Big Ten has with CBS, Fox and NBC, which total more than $8 billion and will run through the 2030 season, according to the Sports Business Journal. In the 2023 fiscal year, the conference paid most of its members more than $60 million, a 3% increase from the previous year, according to USA Today.
“That seems to fall into a larger pattern where, in general, more wealth leads to more emissions,” said Seth Wynes, a professor at the University of Waterloo who has published research on the relationship between sports and climate change. “Richer individuals produce more emissions than poorer individuals. The same is true generally for nations. So as leagues or teams become more affluent, it’s not a surprising result.”
The immediate future of Big Ten football is set. Major media contracts have been signed, and games are scheduled through 2028.
Multiple experts mentioned making college sports regionally organized again would alleviate some of the problem. In the Big Ten, doing so would place the four former Pac-12 schools in a West division. That would lean into the decades-long rivalries of these programs and lessen the environmental strain of travel.
But re-implementing the East and West divisional format likely can’t be done until 2029 at the earliest, meaning the 2024 bump in emissions is likely to remain steady for the next four years.
“We should be going in the direction of more regional, not less,” Orr said. “Let’s crunch this smaller, not let’s blow it up bigger.”
Mekhi Abbott, Henry Brown, Keelin Brown, Shaela Foster, Alexa Henry, Steven Jacobs, Caroline Koutsos, Matthew Neus, Joshua Panepento, Brandon Schwartzberg, Laura Van Pate, and Matthew Weinsheimer contributed to the report.
Reading Time: 13minutesClick here to read highlights from the story
Wisconsin has lost half of its historic wetlands, with declining beaver populations playing a role.
Historic beaver loss disconnected streams from their floodplains, warming waters, sinking water tables and killing plants. Mock dams can mimic the beneficial work of beavers.
Few mock dam projects exist in Wisconsin, where strict regulations make permitting expensive. But several Midwestern organizations and landowners are starting to experiment with the structures, which are frequently used in the American West.
A cranberry farmer from Alma Center is on a crusade to restore wetlands in Wisconsin by trailblazing a new path through the state’s arduous permitting system, regardless of the substantive cost.
Jay Dee Nichols stamped and packed stiff willow branches between maple wood posts, with muffled crunches.
At 63, the semi-retired handyman from the Wisconsin city of Black River Falls has trapped beavers before. But he’s never heard of a mock beaver dam — much less constructed one.
“It gives you an appreciation for what beavers do,” Nichols said over the shrill beeping of a skid loader. A scratch on his forearm oozed blood, drying into a scarlet smudge.
“They’re one of the hardest-working animals out there, I guess.”
Nichols’ muck boots sloshed in a pool of water that already was forming behind the freshly constructed beaver dam analog, or BDA. The semi-porous wooden structures are often installed across streams to redirect water or capture sediment.
Nichols and three other workers were as busy as beavers for a week in October constructing 12 of them in a forested wetland.
It’s all part of Jim Hoffman’s latest project.
The BDAs span an unnamed, man-made channel that drains overflow from a reservoir on Hoffman’s cranberry farm, north of Alma Center in Jackson County. The water runs into South Fork Halls Creek, a trout stream where actual beavers have taken up residence.
Hoffman, 60, hopes the BDAs, which could pool up to 1.7 acre-feet of water during floods, improve water quality, stabilize eroded stream banks and enhance wildlife habitat. Most of all, he seeks to trailblaze a path through the state’s onerous dam-permitting process so other Wisconsin landowners can follow in his footsteps.
“There’s a lot of different streams and tributaries that could benefit from this,” Hoffman said.
As average Wisconsin temperatures and precipitation increase in response to climate change, scientists, environmentalists and regulators point to the promise of nature-based solutions.
Enter the beaver.
Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, drives by his cranberry marshes on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
A tree impacted by beaver activity stands in a wetland at South Fork Halls Creek adjacent to a wooded property where Jim Hoffman is building a series of artificial beaver dams on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
North America’s largest rodent is infamous for wood munching. Where they chew, wetlands often follow. The natural sponges filter water and offer flood protection.
The U.S. once was home to 60 million to 400 million beavers, which inhabited a range extending from the northern Mexican deserts to the Arctic tundra. But European and American settlers hunted them to near extinction.
As their population dwindled and agriculture and urban development expanded, wetlands disappeared. Wisconsin, like the rest of the country, lost roughly half since the late 1700s.
Without maintenance from nature’s “ecosystem engineers,” many of the nation’s once multi-threaded streams also became single-channeled and incised — disconnected from their floodplains. When this happens, water tables sink, water temperature increases and plants die. If torrential floodwaters funnel through the simple stream systems, they flush out wildlife and wood.
Nature can repair itself, but the process of restoring stream complexity can take millennia. Mock beaver dams can jump-start the process, reducing the timing to mere decades.
They also can slow the flow of runoff and allow watersheds to store more water. Hoffman sees their potential to limit flooding in Wisconsin, potentially saving taxpayer dollars and creating wildlife habitat.
Jim Hoffman takes Wisconsin Watch on a tour of his artificial beaver dam project on the wooded property he owns in Alma Center, Wis. (Trisha Young / Wisconsin Watch)
Watershed councils, conservation districts, Indigenous tribes, and state and federal natural resources agencies frequently deploy them in the American West. But their use in Wisconsin, a state with a historically tempestuous relationship with beavers, is novel. Many regulators believe the critters’ dams harm trout, and the state’s fisheries and forestry divisions contract with the U.S. Department of Agriculture to wipe out beavers that live on designated streams.
Fewer than a dozen permitted projects that incorporate BDAs or similar wooden structures have been built in Wisconsin to date. The Department of Natural Resources recently approved two on trout stream tributaries, signaling an openness to test their potential despite concerns from fisheries managers. Construction is underway in other Mississippi River basin states too, including Iowa, Kentucky and Missouri.
Wisconsin regulators generally treat BDAs as dams that impound water, making for an arduous and expensive permitting process.
Hoffman spent more than a year and $20,000 to obtain his permit. He is the CEO of a vast Wisconsin construction company and has a running joke.
“The one thing you never do is call the DNR and ask them, ‘Do I need a permit for this?’” he said.
What are beaver dam analogs?
A healthy streamscape requires space for water to slowly meander. That requires messy wood obstructions like fallen trees and debris-filled logjams.
Much like real beaver dams, the analogs obstruct water and disperse the flow across a wider area. Water pools above and below the dams, and upstream surface height increases.
Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, looks at an artificial beaver lodge he built along a pond on his property on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Sediment accumulates behind the obstructions, sometimes transforming an upstream pool into a wetland and eventually a meadow. But nature’s randomness means beaver dams or analogs can fail.
BDAs are not in themselves a solution, experts say, but tools that initiate natural processes that mend degraded waterscapes.
While their popularity increased in the 2000s, historic drawings indicate that small wicker and log dams were constructed as early as the 19th century to “correct” streams in France.
Construction these days hasn’t changed much, with workers pounding posts directly into a streambed and weaving willow or juniper branches between them. Gaps can be plugged with sediment. The analogs, which are biodegradable and transient, function well when constructed in sequence like natural beaver dam complexes. Proponents hope that using natural materials and hand labor reduces building costs, enabling more miles of restoration.
When human and beaver engineers meet
When Hoffman installed his cranberry marshes more than 20 years ago, a developer taught him an important marketing lesson: christen the business after the resource you are destroying. The developer named his housing division Fox Ridge. Hoffman, in turn, called his cranberry operation Goose Landing.
Yet, in Hoffman’s case, he didn’t necessarily displace geese. Hundreds occupy his reservoir on a given day, leaving droppings that serve as free fertilizer.
The 1,000-acre property serves as a laboratory of earthworks and a wildlife cornucopia.
Joel Pennycamp, an employee at Hoffman Construction, left, and Jay Dee Nichols, right, weave sticks and tree branches while working on building a series of artificial beaver dams on Jim Hoffman’s wooded property on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Hoffman, a Stanford engineer by training, returned to Wisconsin from San Francisco Bay in 1989 and joined the road construction business his great-grandfather started more than seven decades prior, before the United States had an organized highway system.
After starting the cranberry operation, Hoffman mined frac sand, then obtained his commercial fish farming license. Now, he’s stocked the former mining pits — since filled with water — with an angler’s dream: walleye, hybrid muskie, perch, crappie, bluegill and bass.
Hoffman sped past one of the ponds in his Ford Bronco, pointing out the artificial islands he created. To add vegetation, he grabbed trees by their rootballs and shoved them into the virgin soil.
“I like to change my environment,” he said. “I’m an earthmover by character — by business.”
Hoffman’s efforts to “rewild” his land led him to plant turnip and radish plots for deer along with oak trees to recreate a piece of Wisconsin’s historical savannas. He’s replaced row crops with prairie grass and intends to install an osprey nesting box on one of his ponds — even if it means the birds of prey eat his fish.
Mock beaver dams are Hoffman’s latest push.
His interest in them blossomed after he helped a Nordic skiing buddy release an orphan beaver on his property. They constructed a lodge for the two-year-old rodent, tucking in a stuffed teddy bear to keep it company.
“Well, it instantly swam into the pond, and that was the last we saw it,” Hoffman said.
In a section of forest far from the cranberry marshes, the drainage ditch turns into what appears to be a natural stream, which cuts through steep banks.
On both sides lies what resembles a 3- to 4-foot-tall effigy mound running perpendicular across the creek bed. Hoffman wonders if beavers were the original architects.
“It might be hundreds of years old,” he said. “I’m hoping the beavers come back here and say, ‘Well, we almost got a dam built!’”
Mock beaver dams used out West
Science backs Hoffman’s belief in the restoration power of beaver dam analogs. In one of the first major studies, researchers evaluated their trout impacts and potential to reverse stream incision.
Bridge Creek, a high-desert watershed in north-central Oregon, bore the signs of livestock overgrazing and beaver removal. Following severe storms, the main channel gradually disconnected from the landscape’s floodplain — conditions that persisted even 20 years after cattle stopped chomping on surrounding vegetation.
A shaved log lays on the ground as employees of Hoffman Construction work on building a series of artificial beaver dams on a wooded property owned by Jim Hoffman on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis.
Tree branches and sticks are interwoven into an artificial beaver dam on the property of Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The researchers monitored conditions before and after installing more than 130 BDAs in Bridge Creek. They compared those sections of creek to areas that lacked BDAs — some that beavers called home and others they did not.
Prior to the study, Bridge Creek contained some beaver dams, but they frequently blew out during major floods. Sediment didn’t have time to accumulate and reconnect the channel to the landscape.
But the BDAs acted as reinforcements.
Beaver dams in the study area increased more than sevenfold within the first eight years after the scientists added them.
In the BDA sections, land inundated with water increased by 228% and side channels increased by a whopping 1,216%, considerably more than the Bridge Creek sections that lacked them.
As the analogs rehydrated the aquifer, vegetation increased. Groundwater killed off scrubby plants, such as sagebrush, and water-loving willow trees took root.
Could mock beaver dams block or fry fish?
The impact of beavers on fish remains a hot topic in Wisconsin. For some, it’s axiomatic that beaver dams block trout passage — a belief with a long history.
But that wasn’t a problem at Bridge Creek.
The researchers tagged about 100,000 juvenile trout, enabling antennas to detect fish movement at specific stream locations. They surveyed the stream for more than a decade.
The scientists determined that the installation of mock beaver dams increased the survival, density and reproduction of juvenile trout. They detected no changes to upstream migration in the tagged trout despite the massive increase in human and beaver-made dams. Several spawners passed through upwards of 200 during their migration.
Other studies conducted in California concluded trout easily cross BDAs, either by jumping or swimming up side passages.
Another objection to beaver dams stems from the belief they invariably increase stream temperature: Beaver ponds increase a stream’s surface area, which is warmed by the sun.
But at Bridge Creek, water temperature remained constant or decreased, even during summer. The researchers suggested that pooled water upstream of the dams percolated into the ground, forcing cool groundwater to upwell downstream and mix with that on the surface. An offset to the sun.
Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, left, walks toward a series of artificial beaver dams as they are being installed on a wooded property he owns on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The complexes affected temperatures in other ways.
On one hand, they buffered water temperatures. Stream temperatures periodically fluctuate with day-night cycles and across seasons, but the mock beaver dams compressed the rises and falls. On the other hand, the complexes created variety, filled with warm and cold spots, offering fish a buffet to choose from.
Some studies have documented downstream warming from the analogs. And others from the upper Midwest have documented increased temperatures below natural beaver dam complexes and in beaver ponds, but academics have questioned the research’s scientific rigor.
Nick Bouwes, a Utah State University faculty member who worked on the Bridge Creek study and co-authored a manual that many consider the BDA bible, agrees that the structures could block fish or raise water temperatures in certain ecosystems in his native Wisconsin.
But until there is solid evidence, he said, ultimately those remain assumptions that should be studied.
“It makes you wonder what fish did 3- or 400 years ago when there was an order of magnitude more beaver and an order of magnitude more fish in these systems,” Bouwes said.
Upholding the public trust
In September, Mike Engel, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist, oversaw the installation of beaver dam analogs at Briggs Wetland near Beloit, Wisconsin.
The workshop brought together ecologists, consultants, resource managers and regulators from local, state and federal agencies, most of whom dipped their toes into BDA waters for the first time.
Although passionate about such tools, Engel says beavers and BDAs aren’t a panacea for all degraded wetlands or a warming climate.
“There’s certainly people who will grab a hold of the cute, fuzzy critter and like the idea,” Engel said, standing atop a beaver dam that formed a network of ponds adjacent to the Briggs property. “But I think more people will be interested in managing the amount of water they have — whether they need more or they need less due to climate change.”
Mike Engel, private lands biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, poses for a portrait at Briggs Wetland, a designated State Natural Area, on Oct. 23, 2024, in Rock County near Beloit, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
An artificial beaver dam was constructed during a workshop organized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Briggs Wetland on Oct. 23, 2024, in Rock County near Beloit, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
In other words, what would a well-functioning watershed look like, and what tools and techniques can achieve those ends? The case for mock beaver dams depends on the setting.
“Out West, they have miles and miles and miles of public land,” said Thomas Nedland, who conducts wetland and waterway permitting with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
If the BDAs fail, “all the water that’s backed up ends up going into the woods or the floodplain” without risk to infrastructure, he said.
“That’s not quite the setting we have here in Wisconsin.”
Such projects might lead to conflicts with property owners, especially if beavers move in and enlarge the structures. They might swamp adjacent corn fields or flood a road or backyard.
Wisconsin’s public trust doctrine also requires regulators to consider the public’s access to natural resources when making permitting decisions. The Department of Natural Resources may impose requirements to maintain the rights to boat, swim and fish, even on artificial ditches that are considered navigable waterways.
Hoffman’s project rang alarm bells for the local county conservationist, who fears the BDAs will attract beavers to the area, leaving floods and unfishable streams in their wake.
Getting the dam permit
State regulators must consider many factors in considering a beaver dam analog.
Throwing some sticks across a streambed is relatively simple, but several Wisconsin installations have relied upon consultants, federal workers or nonprofit organizations to navigate permitting.
“They’re really important devices. They have a lot of functionality. They’re very simple and inexpensive to install,” said Hoffman’s contractor, Clay Frazer, a restoration ecologist.
“And they’re way too complicated to permit right now for the average person.”
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources required Hoffman to conduct hydrologic modeling and topographic surveying before regulators approved his BDAs, which stand roughly 3 feet high.
To satisfy regulators that the analog wouldn’t overturn when water pooled behind it, he had to load test the wooden posts.
Joel Pennycamp, an employee at Hoffman Construction, cuts a log with a chainsaw while building a series of artificial beaver dams on Jim Hoffman’s wooded property on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Joel Pennycamp, a Hoffman Construction Company employee, strapped a scale around the top of one. Hoffman stood on the streambank holding onto the end of a neon orange string that stretched across the BDA. When Pennycamp tugged, each post could move no more than an inch.
Analog proponents say the rigid requirements to build transient structures unnecessarily increase costs and dampen enthusiasm to use nature-based solutions for landscape repair. A potentially laborious permitting process also misses the broader point that process-based riverscape restoration is unpredictable.
“You don’t have to be an engineer. You don’t have to be able to operate large machinery. You’re not going to completely redesign a stream to what you think it should be,” Bouwes said. “Let the stream figure it out.”
One permitting difficulty stems from, in several instances, the state’s classification of the porous structures as dams. Regulators and applicants debate a principle point: Does a mock beaver dam actually impound water or, as researchers say, merely slow or delay it? State employees say they lack latitude to interpret because BDAs, plain and simple, fit the legal definition.
“I often hear back from applicants and they’re like, ‘Well, it’s not very big,’ or, ‘It’s not intended to be there for long,’ or whatever,” said Uriah Monday, a state dam safety engineer. “But they always acknowledge that they need that pool of water to create the energy it’s going to take to do whatever they’re trying to achieve.”
For instance, he said, a raised pool of water is necessary to saturate wetlands, carve stream meanders and trap sediment upstream.
Hoffman’s stream tributary may be artificial, but the state still considers its waters navigable and thus protected. Normally, when dams obstruct public passage, the Department of Natural Resources requires the posting of a portage route.
For now, the agency isn’t requiring it, but Hoffman hopes to run with the idea.
“So I’m having some signs made up for the beavers in case they get confused when they’re swimming upstream and hit the dam,” he said, grinning widely.
The department also has authorized BDAs through a streamlined general permitting process. Hoffman’s mock beaver dams, however, did not meet the criteria to qualify.
“I don’t blame the DNR for it,” he said. “It’s just that they don’t have a system to accommodate our request.”
Kyle Magyera, who performs government outreach with the Wisconsin Wetlands Association, believes regulators should carve out exceptions from the dam rules.
Artificial beaver dams were constructed during a workshop organized by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service at Briggs Wetland on Oct. 23, 2024, in Rock County near Beloit, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
Monday thinks the existing permitting system can work, as it already has, and will ease as the department learns more about the structures. That will include monitoring at Briggs Wetland and Goose Landing.
“We’re actually hopeful too,” Nedland said. “If there’s an efficient, cost-effective way for people to do these kinds of projects in a much easier way that results in less disturbance to the landscape, like boy, that’s a win.”
BDA permitting challenges are not unique to Wisconsin. Even the Bridge Creek researchers were unable to conduct a follow-up round of restoration due to regulatory hurdles.
“It seems like every state, you have to go through the growing pains of getting people familiar with these approaches,” Bouwes said. “When they see what we’re actually doing — we’re throwing sticks in the stream to slow the water down — they become a lot more comfortable with it.”
Balancing human and beaver needs
By mid-afternoon at Hoffman’s farm, evidence of the day’s construction littered the ground adjacent to the channel where the BDAs stood: empty plastic Powerade bottles, gasoline cans, a chainsaw.
Before getting off work for the day, Nichols and Pennycamp loaded it onto a utility vehicle. Hoffman, meanwhile, browsed through a printout of his state-issued permit, reviewing the details through reading glasses he perched across his nose.
“‘The water is a cool-cold headwater. The proposed dam will not result in significant adverse effects on this resource upon compliance with the conditions in the order,’” he read aloud. “In other words, don’t flood too much, don’t warm the water up too much. Okay, well we’ll debate that later.”
He flipped the page.
A pair of beavers swims across a pond on the property of Jim Hoffman, CEO of Hoffman Construction, as the sun sets on Oct. 25, 2024, in Alma Center, Wis. (Joe Timmerman / Wisconsin Watch)
The beavers living at Hoffman’s farm are dispersing across the property. One colony chewed down some of his pines and aspens and plugged a culvert, expanding the shoreline as part of a project Hoffman didn’t plan.
It doesn’t bother him because he has more trees to spare and wants to live among the rodents, but he doesn’t begrudge beaver-bothered people. The critters create profound impacts.
Humans and beavers share a common drive to engineer their environment to live.
“We’ve got to find a way to balance the different needs of each species,” Hoffman said. “You know, us included.”
Why is he doing all this? Permitting, pounding, portage-routing. Really, why bother?
Hoffman’s campaign is more than just a new permitting process. It’s an exhortation to the state to reconsider its treatment of beavers. If he can show that mock beaver dams don’t heat the water or block fish, perhaps the state will stop removing beavers and their dams from trout streams.
“We’re going to hopefully show to them that the beavers in the ecosystem are actually beneficial,” Hoffman said.
Going through the trouble is simply part of a kindred ecosystem engineer’s balancing act.
This story was produced in partnership with the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network, of which Wisconsin Watch is a member. It was also reported with support from the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox.
An effort is underway to map the bottom of the Great Lakes to better understand its depths, potential hazards and support climate resilience in the face of extreme storms.
After 125 years, the Wisconsin State Park System has grown to include 50 state parks, 44 state trails, 15 state forests, nine state recreation areas and eight river and resources areas.
A coalition of groups are asking Wisconsin lawmakers to invest almost $1 billion in water infrastructure in addition to policy changes and other preventive measures to protect safe drinking water.
Dr. Karen Hyun will be the next secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. (Office of Gov. Tony Evers)
Gov. Tony Evers announced Monday that Dr. Karen Hyun will be appointed as the next Secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. Hyun currently serves as chief of staff of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
The DNR secretary position has been unfilled for more than a year after the resignation of former Secretary Adam Payne in October 2023. In a news release, Evers said that Hyun’s career working on environmental issues makes her “a great asset.”
“Dr. Hyun’s extensive science background and expertise working in fish and wildlife, shoreline restoration, and coastal management and resilience will make her a great asset to the Department of Natural Resources and to our administration,” Evers said. “Having spent most of her career working in environmental policy, Dr. Hyun brings a wealth of experience navigating many of the issues the department is charged with managing every day, and I’m so excited for her to get started.”
Hyun, who lives in Madison, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Earth Systems from Stanford University before getting her doctorate from the University of Rhode Island in marine science.
Before joining NOAA, the federal agency that forecasts weather and tracks oceanic and atmospheric conditions — including on the Great Lakes — Hyun worked at the National Audubon Society as director of water and coastal policy before becoming the vice president of coastal conservation in 2018.
She started her career in 2009 working as a staff member of the U.S. House of Representatives Natural Resources Committee. She then worked in the administration of former President Barack Obama as senior policy advisor to the secretary of Commerce and deputy assistant secretary of fish, wildlife, and parks at the Department of the Interior in 2015.
“I’m honored to accept this appointment from Gov. Evers to lead the DNR,” Hyun said. “Wisconsin is known for its abundance of natural resources, wildlife, and outdoor recreation opportunities, and I have spent much of my life dedicated to understanding, conserving, and promoting the natural resources and spaces that we all know and love. I look forward to working alongside the dedicated DNR staff to ensure that Wisconsin’s ecosystems, wildlife, natural spaces, and resources remain accessible, safe, and available for generations of Wisconsinites to come.”
A diesel mobile crane manufacturer in Manitowoc has reached a $42.6 million settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice and Environmental Protection Agency over Clean Air Act violations.
State regulators say nearby wells and waterways have so far not been impacted by around 70,000 gallons of oil that spilled from Enbridge's system in Jefferson County as the company and regulators face scrutiny over their response.
Login
