Snowy owl sightings in Wisconsin are up this winter, compared to recent years. Posts sharing their location on social media can bring birders out in force. But wildlife experts say sharing rare species locations online can be stressful for animals confronted with camera-wielding crowds.
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The recent uptick in avian flu is not only affecting industrial chickens, eggs and cattle. It’s also harming wild birds.
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Wisconsin wildlife officials have identified the highly contagious avian influenza virus in wild ducks along Lake Michigan.
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The Milwaukee County Zoo is closing its aviary for “the foreseeable future” as a precaution against highly contagious avian flu, the zoo announced Thursday.
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For those lucky enough to spot a snowy owl this winter, experts say the best approach is to enjoy the rare sighting from afar and allow these birds to continue their journey undisturbed.
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The state endangered regal fritillary butterfly. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources)
With nature comes change. It’s seen in migrating birds, heard in frog songs, smelled between wildflower petals, touched in the gentle landing of a butterfly, and tasted in the pollinator-dependent food we eat. But what happens when the flocks thin out and the marshlands fall silent? When flowers cease to bloom, and crops wait in vain for the aid of bees, butterflies, bats, or hummingbirds? What happens when the biodiversity witnessed by one generation fades into memory the next?
These questions are crossroads at which modern societies, including the U.S., now find themselves. And for researchers like Jay Watson, a conservation biologist focusing on terrestrial insects, it’s heartbreaking. “It’s very frustrating and depressing,” said Watson, who works with the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation/Division of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks in the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “You just want to keep trying to help any way you can.”
For years, scientists have warned of Earth’s 6th great mass extinction, with species now disappearing at an estimated rate of 1,000 to 10,000 times higher than natural according to the World Wildlife Foundation. From 1970-2020, according to the 2024 Living Planet Report, there has been a 73% decline in the population sizes of over 5,400 vertebrate (backboned) species. About 3 billion birds have been lost in the United States and Canada over a single human lifetime.
Research in 2019 also showed that 40% of insect species worldwide were declining, and expected to disappear entirely within a century. How that shows up in Wisconsin depends on where and how you look. Many people reflect on memories of cleaning cars of insects after traveling with both nostalgia and sadness. If you’re one of those people, then you’re not alone.
“Since I started in 2010, [the] northern blue butterfly, that’s related to the Karner blue butterfly . . . has, as far as we know, been extirpated from the state,” said Watson. In other words, we can no longer find the butterfly species in the Badger State. The butterfly thrived on a rare plant species called the dwarf bilberry which grows in frost packets, or areas that freeze late enough to where other plants wouldn’t survive.
Butterflies are crucial for ecological balance. Many plant species depend on their pollinating prowess, including food crops. According to an article in Forbes, pollinators contribute between $235 billion and $577 billion in global food production. Butterflies and moths are also important in the food chain as prey for many species such as bats. “One in three bites of [human] food have been touched by some type of insect, typically as pollination,” said Watson.
Although just as valuable as insects, bats are often misunderstood creatures. J. Paul White, a DNR ecologist studying mammals with a specialty in bats, told Wisconsin Examiner that the flying mammals contribute “upwards of $3 billion to the U.S. agricultural industry, through pest control and in other ways.”
Wisconsin bats mostly consume insects, including those that harm crops and forests. “So they keep our forests healthy,” said White. “Bats provide many different benefits…They’re the primary nighttime flying insect predator.” Bats, especially when coming out of hibernation or when rearing young, can regularly eat their own weight in insects. With that, White explained, “they bridge a lot of gaps between you know, farmers, forestry industry and just in general, the human population and helping predate on many of the insects that can cause people either discomfort, or crop damage, or forestry damage.”
Wisconsin has eight bat species, some of which migrate and others that over-winter in caves. A ninth – now listed as federally endangered – hasn’t been seen in the state since the 1950’s.
It’s not unheard of, though, for nature to throw us a curveball. “For the longest time, we only had seven species,” said White. Around 2015, breeding colonies of a newcomer species – the evening bat — were discovered in southern Wisconsin. It’s not the only time that happened. In Grant County, populations of Indiana bats were found hibernating, unusually far north for the species.
Watson pointed to a similar situation with the Southern Plains bumble bee. Another newcomer, the bee was first noticed within the last couple of years. “We’ve had a few observations last year [2023] and a few again this year,” said Watson in a 2024 interview. “So it’s like, you know, what’s going on here?” Watson speculated that it likely began moving north slightly. It’s also possible, however, that naturalists and enthusiasts just missed it. “Something’s changed,” said Watson, “because we’re having people detect it, and we didn’t have that prior.”
Both the evening bat and bumble bee discoveries underscore the importance of field work. The evening bat was found as researchers looked for two species threatened in the state, the northern long-eared bat and tri-colored bat, also known as the eastern pipistrelle. White explained that the area being searched was not a traditional survey area. Nets established near a small riverway captured bats flying on their night time hunts. “And we happened upon a juvenile evening bat,” said White, “which indicated, obviously, that there was at least some reproduction occurring within a short area and short distance.”
Several Wisconsin bat species are vulnerable. The Northern long-eared bat is listed as federally endangered. “All four cave bats are considered state threatened in [Wisconsin],” said White. Others are being reviewed for possible new listings.
Among the greatest risks to Wisconsin bats is an invasive fungus which causes White Nose Syndrome. “There is no greater threat to bats,” White said of the fungus. It targets hibernating bats by causing them to be more active during hibernation and burn through their reserves. “Leaving a hibernation site anywhere from January, February, March, is pretty much a death sentence,” White told Wisconsin Examiner. “So we had individuals not only dying from exposure to the elements, but also predation.” Predators would circle around bat dwellings, picking them off as they left.
Pesticides, habitat degradation, and climate change could also be macro-stressors for Wisconsin’s bats. Yet, it’s not always easy to know why a species may be disappearing. Over the years, Wisconsin populations of grassland skippers, a group of numerous butterfly species, have also declined.
“They get their name because they skip across as they fly,” Watson explained. “But quite a few of those have been disappearing or decreasing from sites in Wisconsin, and I know that’s happening on a bigger scale when you look outside of Wisconsin too.” According to the Wisconsin Natural Heritage Inventory’s working list, six species of skipper butterfly are listed as rare. Watson said that one, the Cobweb Skipper, can’t be found in Wisconsin anymore. Another, the Poweshiek skipperling, hasn’t been seen in Wisconsin since 2012. “We lost it,” Watson told Wisconsin Examiner, “we don’t know exactly why.”
Determining what causes biodiversity declines can be tricky. Sometimes, a species vanishes due to natural selection and evolution. Owen Boyle, species management section manager at the DNR’s Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation, highlighted that all living things on earth – including humans – are the results of billions of species that have come and gone with time. Boyle told Wisconsin Examiner that “extinction is a natural process…it’s the flipside of evolution.” Climate change and human behavior can produce a perfect storm.
In other cases, surveying is difficult, whether it’s tracking frog songs in springtime marshes or carefully searching for the rarely seen Eastern Massasauga rattlesnake. This small, well-camouflaged, shy species — nicknamed the swamp rattlesnake — is listed as federally endangered. “Wisconsin has very few populations of that left in the state,” said Andrew Badje, a conservation biologist and herpetologist at the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation.
Another unique and difficult-to-monitor reptile is the state endangered slender glass lizard. It’s Wisconsin’s only species of legless lizard, differentiated from snakes by visible ear openings and blinking eyes. Their ability to jettison their tails — a trait of some lizards but not snakes — gives the glass lizards their name. The slender glass lizard is found in south central Wisconsin, preferring sandy habitats. These are some of the glass lizard’s northernmost populations, Badje noted.
There also isn’t a whole lot we know about their populations. Lots of favorable habitat for glass lizards has been destroyed by humans. Prior to colonization, Badje explained, indigenous tribes in Wisconsin would clear environments with controlled burns. After colonization — with many tribes shuttled off to reservations and their liveways interrupted — Wisconsin’s forests were left to thicken and mature. That change was difficult for the glass lizard, which prefers open sandy areas.
Some regions have been rendered unrecognizable. “When what we now call Wisconsin was surveyed back in 1836 by the General Land Office, in Milwaukee County as a sample, they found there were about 2,822 hectares of oak savanna,” said Chris Young, director of conservation and environmental science at UW-Milwaukee. “And in 2000 there were zero…That’s a whole… community that’s gone and so that wouldn’t just be the loss of a particular species. That would be a loss of a whole web of species.”
Young explained the number of wetlands has been reduced from 6,392 hectares in 1836 to 1,904 in 2000. “So that’s not as significant a reduction,” said Young. “And it actually points to the fact that hey, Milwaukee County still had a bunch of wetland. Where are those wetlands? What’s still there? And to what degree might we see persisting, intact communities?”
Wetlands are sensitive habitats offering refuge to often equally sensitive beings. The Milwaukee-area used to have healthy populations of wetland-loving frogs like spring peepers and wood frogs. “Even if those wetlands that they used to breed don’t necessarily get taken away,” said Badje, “a lot of people are building in the uplands nearby,” which are important for foraging and surviving winter. In other regions, habitat for reptiles like the land-dwelling ornate box turtle have been turned into farmland. Badje said this has caused box turtle populations to collapse and not be sustainable. Even turtles with some strong populations, like the Blanding’s turtle, are on the decline.
The state endangered queensnake is another sensitive and difficult to survey species. It’s a non-venomous snake specializing in eating freshly molted crayfish. It depends on clean waterways and is a “good indicator of water quality”, Badje told Wisconsin Examiner. Water quality remains a top environmental policy concern statewide for both urban and rural communities, which dot the landscape in southeastern Wisconsin where queensnakes are found.
The quest to understand changing ecosystems holds a special place in Wisconsin’s history. Naturalists like Aldo Leopold (1887-1948), sometimes called “the father of conservation”, began the labor of counting species. “As a pioneer, one of the things that he did was start to quantify species,” said Young. With a forest service background, Leopold applied his talents at quantifying lumber and acreage to hunting and game management.
Game species are good for conservation. Whitetail deer and walleye are great examples — “You know, the species that you can harvest,” Boyle told Wisconsin Examiner. Yet those species also provide public interest and revenue. Hunting licenses help fund wildlife management, and Wisconsinites can buy license plates emboldened with the images of wolves and eagles to help support conservation efforts. Boyle noted that at one time, both wolves and bald eagles had all but disappeared from Wisconsin. “Both have made amazing comebacks,” he said.
Wisconsin has some of the earliest game surveys of anywhere in the U.S., Young explained. “Leopold was going across the Midwest, so he extended beyond Wisconsin,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “But this was his home starting in 1924 and really was the focus of a lot of his work.”
To know that biodiversity is declining, it helps to have a baseline to work with. “And I think in Wisconsin we have pretty good baselines for a lot of game species in particular, and also predator species which were extirpated, if we’re talking about wolves, even before the 1920’s really,” Young said.
Although not flawless, quantitative work provides benchmarks for comparison. “So I think what scientists and what species specialists are always doing is, they’re saying what’s the best baseline numbers that we have, and where are we at now with the methods that we’re using, and how do we make adjustments?” he said.
Boots-on-the-ground field work is an important tool. It’s also one which the DNR and conservation organizations heavily rely on the public for. Every year Wisconsinites participate in frog and toad surveys, bat roost monitoring, the Bumble Bee Brigade and other programs to assess our ecological neighbors. Hunters, farmers, hikers, fishermen, and other enthusiasts also provide valuable data by reporting deer harvests, black bear dens, wolf tracks, and even the occasional game trail capture of mountain lions.
Using modern genetic science — another tool in the chest — we can get even deeper perspectives. Emily Latch, a professor of biodiversity genomics at UW-Milwaukee, said that genetics can help answer questions like whether populations are isolated, if they’re migrating, how individuals are related, the prevalence of disease, and more.
“All of those demographic trends can be, are, reflected in their genetic diversity,” Latch told Wisconsin Examiner. Genetic material comes from a variety of places such as waste, hair, skin, or carcasses. There have also been advancements in testing, such as using environmental DNA, or “eDNA” for short. By sampling things like soil or water, scientists can test for any DNA left behind. This provides incredible glimpses into what organisms may reside within an ecosystem, especially those most elusive.
“You can do a lot of things with genetics that help you understand the ecology of a system,” said Latch. The data allows researchers to peer into the secret lives of organisms, like the badger. Although it’s our state animal, we know little about the badger. “They were listed as a species with information needs,” said Latch. Without knowing more, it’s impossible to know how best to protect it.
To shed light, UW-Milwaukee launched a badger genetic study. It aimed to learn about isolated and vulnerable populations, gather data on what habitats badgers favor and what barriers they may face. “You might imagine things like the Wisconsin River,” said Latch as she listed off examples of barriers. “You might think of things like farms.” Scientists relied on roadkill animals, public reporting, hair samples, den finds and other data points.
While badgers are admired for their connection to Wisconsin, other animals attract controversy. Wolf management is a contentious issue, with hunting concerns remaining high among conservationists. Surveying wolves through collars, field work, and genetics have helped monitor the animals in Wisconsin. In 2021, a wolf hunt in Wisconsin was criticized after hunters exceeded the state-set quota.
On the other end of the food chain, research also shows strain among the deer population. In 2024, the DNR completed a study of Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a fatal degenerative neurological condition in deer. It collected data from 1,200 adult deer, fawns, coyotes, and bobcats, focusing on three northern Wisconsin counties where CWD originally surfaced in 2002. Dubbed “unprecedented” for its size, the study found that the chances of survival for female deer dropped from 83% to 41%, and from 69% to 17% for males, when taking CWD infection into account. The study found that Wisconsin’s deer population is expected to decline when CWD prevalence among females passes 29%. Deer hunting contributes upwards of $1 billion to Wisconsin’s economy.
Researchers, biologists, and conservationists stress that the impact of losing species is far greater than just recreation and food for humans. “I think our society is too fixated on having these things kind of like in a controlled setting, because that’s just the way humans are,” Badje told Wisconsin Examiner. He values “seeing these things out in the wild,” he said. “And that’s honestly why I do the work that I do, because I want other people to experience those things out in nature as well.”
There are strategies people can employ to slow the decline. Not using pesticides that wipe out pollinators like bees, and changing agricultural practices could go a long way, experts say. Growing native plants, and encouraging people to keep wildflowers in their lawns — which are often ecological deserts — could also help.
Boyle stressed the importance of robust, permanent funding for conservation and surveying. “We rely on grants and donations, mostly federal grants and donations,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. There’s also the license plate and hunting revenues, and the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin also helps. In addition, Boyle highlighted the Recovering America’s Wildlife Act, a federal proposal that would invest up to $1.4 billion annually for “proactive, on-the ground, collaborative efforts to help species at risk by restoring habitat, controlling invasive species, reconnecting migration routes, addressing emerging diseases, and more,” according to the National Wildlife Federation. It failed to pass in 2023, but has been reintroduced.
Such a move could prove revolutionary for conservation work and persevering biodiversity, advocates say. The act’s future, however, is even more murky with the election of President Donald Trump, and a Republican majority in the House and Senate. Trump has promised to roll back climate policy and has called for more domestic fossil fuel production. Although a recent attempt by the Trump administration to freeze federal grants and programs was halted by a federal judge, the fate of federal environmental workers — such as those in America’s Yellowstone National Park — remains uncertain. During Trump’s last term from 2017-2021, he removed a variety of environmental protections. One example was removing the gray wolf from the endangered species list, which then led to the controversial Wisconsin hunt.
The faster species vanish, the more we all lose together. “That’s the other scary thing right now about the biodiversity crisis is that we’re losing species that we know nothing about,” said Boyle. “We could have lost, like, the cure for cancer in some native plant in South America, and we’ll never even know it, you know?”
Why should we care about losing a butterfly here, or a legless lizard there? “It’s a very, very clear sign that there are things wrong in the environment,” said Boyle.
Young believes that the work will take lifetimes. “It’s going to take, not just the next generation,” he told Wisconsin Examiner. “We can’t just look at the kids and say, ‘well they’re going to have to fix all this.’” Instead, every generation has had its work to do, “and for generations to come, this will be part of that work.”
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