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• Wisconsin has fewer remaining lead water pipelines than previous estimates, suggesting officials may be able to eliminate them faster and at lower cost than expected.
• New inventory requirements have given regulators and utilities their clearest picture yet of where lead pipes remain and where more investigation is needed.
• Federal regulators now require water systems to replace all lead service lines by the end of 2037 because no level of lead exposure is considered safe, especially for children.
• More than 181,000 Wisconsin service lines (12% statewide) are still classified as unknown because many communities lack complete records and must verify pipe materials through inspections and outreach.
• Federal infrastructure funding has provided major support for lead line replacement projects across Wisconsin, but officials expect available funding to decrease in the coming years.

Wisconsin may be closer than previously thought to eliminating lead water pipes. About 164,000 municipal and community lead water service lines still need replacement with safer materials, according to a Wisconsin Watch analysis of water system data reported in April. That’s roughly one of every 10 municipal and community water lines statewide. 

The estimate includes confirmed lead lines — roughly 146,000 across 137 municipal and community water systems — and an estimated share of service lines with unknown materials that are statistically likely to contain lead, based on EPA methodology.

Some data gaps remain, including some water systems that did not file a report on time.

Still, the total is far below previous government estimates as more complete inventories more clearly show where lead pipes remain, part of a nationwide effort to reduce exposure to the toxic metal linked to serious health risks.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated in 2025 — before many water systems completed or updated their inventories — that nearly 180,000 water lines in Wisconsin were made of lead, a sharp drop from its 2023 estimate of over 256,000.

“We may be able to remove all (lead service lines) faster, fully, and forever – sooner and at a lower price tag than expected,” Erica Galante-Johnson, senior lead service line replacement policy analyst at Environmental Policy Innovation Center, wrote in a report comparing the lead service line estimate before and after new inventory data became available. 

Why replace lead service lines?

Once a popular material for water service lines, lead was banned by regulators for such purposes in Wisconsin and nationwide beginning in the 1980s due to concerns about potential lead exposure. 

“There is no safe level of exposure to lead,” the EPA’s website says. 

Children are especially vulnerable to lead, since even low levels of exposure can lead to behavioral and learning problems. High levels of lead in blood can cause seizures, coma or death. Adults exposed to lead are more susceptible to cardiovascular and kidney problems.

Water systems limit risk by treating pipes with chemicals that reduce corrosion, but failures such as Flint, Michigan’s crisis a decade ago show how those safeguards can break down, exposing residents to lead. 

That’s why federal regulators now require aggressive replacement timelines. 

Municipal and community water systems must replace all lead or galvanized pipes before the end of 2037. Some Wisconsin cities, like Madison and Stoughton, have already replaced all lead pipes. Many others, including Eau Claire, Milwaukee and Wausau, have projects underway to replace them at no or low cost to homeowners.

At least 29 municipalities in Wisconsin have received more than $159 million through 2025 to replace lead service lines through the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed by then-President Joe Biden.

The EPA in May announced an additional $94.3 million Wisconsin allocation under the 2021 law. 

Biden’s EPA revised its Lead and Copper Rule, tightening monitoring requirements and establishing  timelines for replacing lead pipes. 

The first step: requiring water systems to document what’s underground.

More complete information helps identify where lead lines are concentrated, said Ann Hirekatur, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources’ lead and copper section manager.

The inventories are more than a bureaucratic exercise. Federal rules now tie them directly to replacement requirements.

Wisconsin water systems previously needed only to report estimates of their lead service lines to the state Public Service Commission.

Biden’s EPA changed that. Water systems were required to submit an initial inventory by October 2024, listing the best available information about each water line. That gave DNR officials line-by-line records for the first time, Hirekatur said.

By Nov. 1, 2027, water systems must improve those records by trying to identify service lines of currently unknown material and documenting connector materials. After that deadline, any service lines with an unknown material will be treated as lead, and water systems must start replacing at least 10% of lead lines under their control each year. 

The new regulations require digging through historical documents — or even digging up pipelines one by one — to confirm the material and location. 

The more rigorous process revealed more lead service lines in some communities than previously thought. That includes Whitefish Bay, which documented more than 56% of service lines as lead during the first draft of its inventory.

Locating pipelines can be challenging

Despite the new inventories, regulators still have yet to identify the materials in more than 181,000 Wisconsin service lines, or 12% of all statewide.

As of April, 312 of 610 Wisconsin municipal water systems identified materials in every service line. About 60% of systems recorded 5% or fewer pipelines as unknown material. 

Meanwhile, 102 municipal water systems reported more than half of their lines as unknown, with 12 yet to submit inventories. 

“Some systems kept good records, and some systems don’t have any records at all,” Hirekatur said.

Water system managers must show their work in documenting the makeup of service lines. 

The best evidence is a “tap card” that describes the pipe’s primary features and installation history.

But many communities never preserved those records because they were not required to do so.

The city of Lancaster illustrates that challenge. Water system officials started looking for lead pipes in the 1990s, and they initially found only two and about 50 others whose material was unknown. But the DNR initially marked more than 1,700 out of the city’s 1,845 lines as unknown because the verification documentation fell short of standards.

The utility didn’t save old paper inspection records, said John Hauth and Jamie McCartney, the retiring and incoming directors of public works, respectively.

Calling DNR representatives “very helpful,” Hauth said his inventory is now getting into “pretty good shape.” 

“We send it to them, they will highlight areas and send it back and say, ‘OK, well, you know you need to explain this better, or you need to match this up,’” Hauth said.

Gathering evidence

At the DNR’s suggestion, Hauth and McCartney used construction records to rule out neighborhoods built after lead was banned from new pipeline construction and found water meter replacement records to fill in some blanks.  

The managers submitted a revised draft, still under DNR review, that labeled fewer than 400 service lines as unknown. The city plans to verify the remaining resident-owned lines through door-to-door visits and use hydro-excavation equipment to check city-owned lines.

“We’ve only got the few that we know of,” Hauth said. “I think it’s gonna be manageable.” 

Josh Hyndman, Mount Horeb’s former water system manager, also has experience with thin documentation. The village started replacing lead pipes in 2011 and compiled its inventory as early as 2021 to apply for a DNR lead line replacement grant.

“We went down into our basement and started pulling out all the old records,” Hyndman said. “ I found a construction date that was from January of ’78, and it spelled out that everything would be three-quarter-inch copper for all businesses.”

That helped Hyndman determine that all service lines installed after 1978 were copper, reducing the number his team had to inspect or excavate.

In 2024, Hyndman left Mount Horeb for a job in Whitewater. Mount Horeb now has just one lead service line remaining, beneath a vacant lot. He said the inventory process was much easier in Whitewater because the city maintains comprehensive records for each line. As of April, Whitewater had 16 lead service lines and plans to replace all but one serving an abandoned water tower by the end of 2027.

Most unknown service lines are located on the private side of the water system, Cathy Wunderlich said. She is project manager and principal technologist with the engineering firm Jacobs, which the DNR contracted through 2028 to help local water systems finish their inventories. The service is free, with the costs covered by a federal grant.

Lead and copper are rarely used for water lines over two inches in diameter, so they’re more commonly used in private-side pipes instead of the public side, Wunderlich explained. 

Although municipal water systems do not own the private side of service lines, they must document them. That requires permission and access from property owners. 

A more cost-effective approach encourages residents to submit evidence, said Shawn Kerachsky, CEO of Community Infrastructure Partners, which used federal grants to contract with Wausau and Racine to inventory and replace the lead lines.

“This is not an engineering and construction problem,” Kerachsky said. “It’s a public health issue that happens to be solved through very simple engineering and construction, but world-class communication outreach and logistical planning.”

His company promoted the “Equiflow” campaign when helping Wausau complete its inventory — partnering with local organizations to encourage residents to identify their water lines by uploading photos or allowing technicians to inspect them. The approach helped Wausau reduce its share of unknown service lines to about 30%. 

The DNR also offers grants to help water systems educate residents about inventory and replacement projects.

What’s next?

Water systems will ultimately use the data to apply for federal grants and loans to fund lead service line replacements. 

“We encourage water systems to replace them as soon as possible, because it’s in the best interest of public health,” Hirekatur said. “Right now, there’s more money available through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law funding, and once that gets used up, there’ll be a lot less funding available.”

The DNR will announce which projects it will select for federal pipeline replacement funds by year’s end. The program offers loans with a 0.25% interest rate, far below market rates, and principal forgiveness. The department expects to have some funding available in 2028, but much less than previous years.

Wisconsin’s lead pipe count is falling. But the search isn’t over. is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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Riders of all-terrain vehicles in Wisconsin have some new requirements after new rules took effect at the start of this month.

Changed rules include include prohibitions against towing objects with people onboard, restrictions on window tinting — and a seat belt requirement.

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources said under the new law “ALL occupants of a UTV including the driver and passengers have to wear a seat belt.”

These regulations were approved by a unanimous vote of the Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, which updated the administrative codes.

Wisconsin has seen a surge in ATV and UTV activity in the past few years and an accompanying increase in fatal crashes.

As of January, the DNR reported more than 528,000 registrations for the trail-ready vehicles. The Wisconsin ATV/UTV Association says it has more than 40,000 members and about 130 local chapters across the state.

Randy Harden, the group’s president, said the association was included in talks with lawmakers about the regulation updates. The old ATV/UTV regulations were inconsistent, and behavior seen on trails was also part of the reason for the updated regulations.

A previous version of the law required seat belts, and Harden says its intention was always for it to apply to everyone in a vehicle. But when a rider in southwest Wisconsin challenged a ticket in court, it revealed an inconsistency in the way the policy was worded.

“The judge looked at the wording that was drafted, and it said all passengers must wear a seat belt, (but) didn’t say the driver,” Harden said. “This (new rule) corrects that and says all passengers and the driver must wear a seat belt.”

Last year, there were at least 300 ATV or UTV crashes reported to the DNR, resulting in 277 reported injuries.

“The majority of our serious injury and fatal crashes occur because of occupants choosing to not wear a seat belt or helmet,” said Lt. Jacob Holsclaw, DNR off-highway vehicle administrator.

In 2025 alone, the DNR reported a total of 41 deaths. In 32 of those fatal crashes, the people involved were not wearing seat belts. Only four of those deaths were in vehicles other than a UTV, DNR data shows.

It was the second-deadliest year for Wisconsin UTVs and ATVs on record.

While the new seat belt requirement is clear, advocates are realistic about its use.

“Will everybody do it? Absolutely not,” Harden said. “Does everybody wear their seat belts in the car? No, but that doesn’t mean you stop trying, and that’s really what this effort is.”

The DNR says enforcement will be handled through normal patrols by conservation wardens, sheriff’s offices and police in some areas.

“Officers will often use education and even citations if operators are found in violation of the new laws,” the DNR said in an email with WPR.

 DNR data for 2024 shows 115 citations for operators not wearing seat belts.

Towing, tinting rules among other requirements

Under the new restrictions, it is now illegal for a UTV/ATV to tow people on a roadway or trail. The restriction has exceptions for private lands and on ice while going under 10 miles per hour, the DNR says.

“It excludes if your machine breaks down,” Harden said. “That’s a common sense exclusion,” he said.

Other changes include making it mandatory for riders younger than 18 to have a DOT-approved helmet and requiring eye protection if the machine does not have a windshield. The new law also limits window tinting.

The DNR says there are now fines for causing intentional damage to an ATV/UTV, which could be up to three times as much as the cost to repair it.

This story was originally published by WPR.

Riding an ATV/UTV in Wisconsin? Buckle up, with updated laws is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

A Bayfield County judge has issued a partial stay against the permits allowing Enbridge to construct its reroute of the Line 5 pipeline across northern Wisconsin. The stay only applies to construction at four waterway crossings. 

The Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians, along with a group of environmental and civic organizations, filed the lawsuit in Iron County Circuit Court against Enbridge’s construction permit in February after an administrative law judge had previously upheld the Department of Natural Resource’s decision to grant the permits. 

Enbridge is being forced to reroute the pipeline, which has crossed the state for decades, after a federal judge ruled in 2022 that it illegally crossed Bad River tribal land. The tribe and allied groups have opposed the reroute, arguing it still poses a threat to local waterways and Lake Superior while infringing on the tribe’s treaty rights to access public land. 

In his ruling, issued Friday, Judge John Anderson wrote that the tribe must clear a high legal bar to be granted a stay because the administrative trial process already established the basic facts of the case. Comparing his role to that of an appellate court assessing a circuit court ruling, he wrote that he can’t give the petitioners an opportunity to a “fresh opportunity to relitigate those contested issues and facts” of the case. 

“Considering the deference the Court must give the ALJ regarding its factual findings, it is very difficult to issue a full stay of permits primarily because petitioners disagree with the ALJ’s findings,” he wrote. 

But he found that the administrative law judge had misinterpreted a previous case upon which Enbridge argued it had the right to conduct construction across waterways without permission from the person who owns the “riparian” area near those waterways. 

“These are highly sensitive areas, not only for Bad River, which relies on these waters, but also for all the citizens of this state,” he wrote. “The Bad River and its headwaters and tributaries are a unique and special place.  On this narrow legal issue, the irreparable harm near this waterway which cannot easily be rectified by other means or remedied at law is weighed against the need to show a strong likelihood of success.”

Anderson found that Enbridge will be required to obtain additional permits for its construction at the four waterways. 

After the ruling, John Petoskey, the tribe’s attorney, said the halt to construction will protect the tribe from immediate harm. 

“I’m relieved to have this partial construction freeze protecting the Band from further immediate harm,” said Earthjustice Senior Associate Attorney John Petoskey. “We trust the Court will agree that Wisconsin’s unlawful permitting decisions — which have ultimately put northern Wisconsin wetlands, waterways, and tribal nations at existential risk — deserve serious legal scrutiny.”

Enbridge spokesperson Juli Kellner said in a statement that the company is in the process of obtaining DNR permits to work on the relevant waterways, that the permits include conditions to mitigate environmental damage and that the ruling won’t delay construction. 

“State permits include 250 conditions and mitigation plans which avoid, minimize, monitor, and remedy environmental impacts,” she said. “Line 5 is critical energy infrastructure serving 10 refineries and propane production facilities — and continues to operate safely and reliably delivering critical, affordable energy to the Midwest and Great Lakes regions.”

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Early last month, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources announced a deal to add 100 acres to  Devil’s Lake State Park, expanding recreational opportunities at one of the DNR’s most popular properties. The move also calls attention to the dwindling life of the Knowles-Nelson Stewardship grant program that made the acquisition possible. 

The nearly 40-year-old stewardship grant program has long been a bipartisan success story, allowing the purchase and protection of hundreds of thousands of acres of land across the state. 

Growing opposition to the program within a subset of the Republicans in control of both chambers of the state Legislature — stemming from a combination of antagonism toward land conservation and concerns about the property tax base of Northwoods communities — stymied multiple legislative efforts to re-authorize the program beyond its set expiration at the end of June. 

The Devil’s Lake purchase marks what could be one of the last major actions of the stewardship grant program, which has allocated more than $1.2 billion to conserve more than 700,000 acres of Wisconsin land over its lifetime. 

The program had about $5.5 million remaining as of early April, according to DNR spokesperson Molly Meister. That money is divided into a number of categories, with $2.9 million earmarked for acquiring general easements — agreements with landowners that conserve and protect the land without transferring ownership — and $1.3 million set aside for general land acquisitions. Another $666,667 is meant for acquiring easements specifically for the Ice Age Trail, plus $8,333 for Ice Age Trail land acquisitions. An additional $600,000 is set aside for acquiring land for county forests. 

Meister told the Wisconsin Examiner in an email that the money set aside for the DNR to acquire land itself is expected to be fully used by the time the program expires, while the money set aside for easements will largely be used, but the exact amount is dependent on the agency finding interested landowners. 

“We are currently negotiating with landowners who have expressed a willing interest in selling their land to the department and anticipate all Stewardship general fee acquisition funds to be encumbered before the end of June,” she said.  Easement acquisitions, Ice Age Trail (both fee and easement), and County Forest acquisition is a similar process, but as you have noted, depends on willing landowners looking to acquire an easement versus an outright purchase in the remaining months. We expect a significant amount, but not all, of these funds will be encumbered before the end of June.”

While the program is set to expire, there are ongoing Knowles-Nelson projects around the state that have already been funded through the grant program yet won’t be completed for a few years. Meister said that program staff will close out those active projects before moving to other jobs within the DNR. The rest of the agency has also faced significant cutbacks in recent decades, due to budget constraints and Republican opposition to environmental protection initiatives. 

“It will take several years to close out currently active projects. Staff will continue to work on finishing up these projects,” Meister said. “After these projects are closed out, DNR staff will continue working on other department priorities. Over the past 20 years, we have lost over 500 FTE positions, so there is always more work to do.”

David Grusznski, the Milwaukee programs director for The Conservation Fund, the land conservation non-profit that facilitated the DNR’s purchase of the Devil’s Lake property, told the Examiner that through the stewardship program, the DNR has often been able to function as the last piece of the funding puzzle for projects that conserve land and provide access to that land for the public. 

“It’s very rare that one pot of money funds an entire acquisition, so money is always being leveraged with other people’s money,” he said. “So without the state stewardship funding being able to bring in a portion of that money, we, a lot of partners, are going to be unable to leverage federal dollars, state, city or county dollars that may be available. And we’re going to have to really rely pretty heavily on private fundraising, which is going to be extremely difficult.”

Now, he said, non-profits and land trusts across the state are coming to terms with the pending loss — which will push planned projects years into the future while putting organizations across the state in direct competition over the same pot of private philanthropy money. 

“I think this is all really just starting to set in with a lot of people across the state,” Grusznski said, “as far as the money is not there — what do we do?”

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The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources held a public hearing Tuesday on a request from the AI data center company Vantage for an air quality permit to operate 45 diesel backup generators at the company’s proposed hyperscale data center in Port Washington.

The department has already granted a preliminary approval to the permit request. Members of the public complained at the virtual hearing that the DNR chose not to conduct a full environmental impact assessment — despite southeastern Wisconsin’s existing classification as a high air pollution region. 

Michael Greif, an attorney with Midwest Environmental Advocates, said that all 45 generators operating at once for one hour would emit the same amount of nitrogen oxides as more than 5 million cars driving over one mile of nearby Interstate 43 — or seven times the hourly nitrogen oxide emissions for all of Ozaukee County. Exposure to nitrogen oxides have been tied to respiratory issues such as asthma. 

“It is also one of the first hyper scale AI data centers proposed in Wisconsin,” Grief said. “So it raises new and unreserved questions about energy use, climate impacts, air pollution and public health, and for all those reasons and more, DNR is legally required to prepare an EIS for the Vantage data center.”

Residents of the area put it more simply, complaining about the air pollution they’re already dealing with every day. 

“Our lakeshore is at capacity,” Sheboygan resident Rebecca Clarke said. 

Many speakers also expressed frustration at their lack of a voice in the state’s surge in data center development and proposals. 

“This community has not been given a fair process,” Port Washington resident Carri Prom said. “We’ve been speaking about this process for months. We’ve largely been ignored, and yet, here we are.”

The air pollution permit is one of the DNR’s few chances to weigh in on a data center proposal that has drawn widespread opposition in Port Washington and across the state. The Public Service Commission, the agency that regulates utility companies in Wisconsin, has given the public little confidence it will do enough to prevent electric bills from increasing.

Local zoning boards and city councils, enticed by the promise of property tax revenue, have often signed off on data centers after agreeing to non-disclosure agreements to keep the details away from their constituents. 

“I think things are very backwards, and that we’re proceeding with all of these projects before we even have any idea of how to protect residents,” said Sarah Zarling, an environmental organizer who’s been involved in the data center fight. 

Over the past year, as the number of data centers operating, under construction or proposed has continued to increase, public opposition has grown. Multiple pieces of legislation for regulating data centers were proposed by lawmakers of both parties, yet none passed  before legislators adjourned for the year. Data centers have become a big issue in the Democratic primary for governor and a number of environmental groups have called for a moratorium on data center development until stricter regulations can be put into law. 

Brett Korte, a staff attorney at Clean Wisconsin, told the Wisconsin Examiner in a statement after Tuesday’s hearing that the disconnected government approval process only highlights Wisconsin’s lack of a coherent plan.

“One of the pressing issues related to the data center boom currently underway in Wisconsin is that there is no overarching plan to ensure they don’t harm communities in our state,” he said. “Nor is there even an effort to fully understand the harm they will cause. Local governments make zoning decisions, the PSC approves the construction of power plants and transmission lines, and the DNR implements water regulations and issues air permits.” Yet no state office is responsible for looking at all of the issues raised by data centers at once.

Korte added that a better process for planning future renewable energy sources, stronger carbon emission standards and a more concrete plan for achieving Gov. Tony Evers’ goal of powering the state with 100% clean energy by 2050 would help the state better manage data center growth. 

“No one is asking: Do the benefits of data centers outweigh their environmental harm?” he continued. “That is why Clean Wisconsin continues to call for a pause on data center construction until the state has a comprehensive plan to regulate their development.”

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Members of an ad hoc Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources committee are urging wildlife regulators to work with a national expert as they finalize recommendations to guide state beaver management policy for the next decade.

Researchers and conservationists serving on the advisory body — which is largely composed of DNR staff and government and tribal representatives — hope that including additional scientific expertise, and even a potential computer-guided aerial beaver dam mapping survey, could assist regulators at a time when climate change is beginning to significantly alter Wisconsin weather patterns and pose widespread ecological risks.

“We’re taking our species out faster than they can recover, and when we are overexploiting our trout, when we’re overexploiting animals, plants, habitats, that’s going to make us lose these species faster,” said University of Minnesota ecohydrology professor Emily Fairfax, who has helped review and fact-check several beaver management plans and recently spoke to the committee. “I don’t think we have time to wait — full stop.”

A shift would transform long-standing beaver policy that frames the critters as a nuisance species.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s wildlife services program has removed beavers and their dams in Wisconsin since 1988 under contract with the state, along with local governments, railroad companies and Indigenous tribes.

At least five states across the Mississippi River basin and Great Lakes region contract with the federal wildlife services program for beaver removal, but Wisconsin stands out among states for the quantity of beavers and dams USDA employees clear, the millions of dollars Wisconsin has invested to do so and the state’s justification.

Current trout policy includes killing beavers 

USDA killed roughly 23,500 beavers across 42 states in 2024, about 2,700 of which were in Wisconsin, ranking the state among the top five in the nation.

In Wisconsin, the agency focuses on abating transportation hazards, such as flooded roadways. But, perhaps most controversially, about a third of sites where USDA traps beavers are coldwater streams.

Wisconsin currently prioritizes maintaining free-flowing conditions on the state’s prized coldwater streams, partly to appeal to its “customers” and their fishing preferences.

But the strategy has faced increasing scrutiny, even among anglers, who are divided over the issue. Some beaver advocates say the state agency charged with protecting and enhancing natural resources shouldn’t let commercial interests unduly guide its decisions. 

In 2025, the agency trapped and cleared dams in more than 1,550 miles of coldwater streams — roughly the driving distance from Milwaukee to Salt Lake City, Utah. The DNR uses proceeds from annual trout fishing stamp sales to finance the annual undertaking.

At least two other states, Minnesota and Michigan, have employed the USDA for trout stream clearing, but at a significantly reduced scale.

The DNR doesn’t know the impacts of these policies on Wisconsin’s beaver population, as it ceased conducting aerial surveys in 2014. Agency staff, instead, estimate beaver numbers and harvest impacts using trapper surveys and voluntary reporting of annual take. Staff believe the population remains stable statewide or is even growing.

Conservationists are calling on the DNR to systematically survey the state’s beaver population. Without obtaining a reliable count, they say, it’s impossible to devise a science-based management plan. Even if beaver removal continued on trout streams, critics say the state could better estimate the population by having trappers register their beaver take, as the DNR requires for turkey, deer, bobcat and bear harvests. 

Meanwhile, an expanding body of research is showcasing beavers’ ecosystem and economic benefits and the drawbacks of removal.

Beaver dams help limit flooding

When beavers remain on the landscape, they create wetlands, which mitigate climate change impacts like drought, wildfires and flooding. Problems thought to be endemic to the American West are now creeping eastward.

Thunderstorms wreaked havoc in southeastern Wisconsin last summer, bringing more than 14 inches of rain to some parts of Milwaukee within 24 hours on Aug. 9-10. Roughly 2,000 homes sustained major damage or were destroyed in the ensuing floods, and the county now faces more than $22 million in public infrastructure repairs after being twice denied federal disaster assistance.

Beaver dams can dissipate torrents of water when the sky opens — even to the city’s benefit.

Using computer models, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee researchers estimated that the Milwaukee River watershed could accommodate enough beaver colonies to reduce flood water volumes by 14% to 48%.

Wisconsin beaver policy understudied

But scientists face decades of institutional consensus in Wisconsin that beavers degrade stream habitat and threaten wild coldwater fisheries.

DNR fish biologists say that beavers warm water temperatures and plug coldwater streams with silt. When unobstructed, the water bodies, which tend to contain few fish species, flow fast and hard.

“Past studies have identified some positive but mostly negative effects of beavers on trout, and my research builds upon this,” DNR fisheries scientist Matthew Mitro told the beaver management committee. “The option for lethal removal (of) beavers is an important tool that should remain available for resource managers.”

Yet critics charge DNR biologists with managing streams for the primary benefit of one species by trapping out another, justifying the practice using research that hasn’t undergone scientific peer review.

A 2011 academic review of beaver-related research conducted in the Great Lakes region, which predated Mitro’s recent research, found that 72% of claims concerning beavers’ negative impacts are speculative and not backed by data, while the same held true for 49% of positive claims. The negative claims included the idea that beaver dams warm stream temperatures and block trout passage.

DNR biologists often note that academic literature largely has been conducted in the western United States and can’t be directly transplanted to Wisconsin’s comparatively flat landscape.  

That is all the more reason to get off our haunches and wade into beaver ponds, Fairfax said.

“We have to follow that up by collecting our own data sets,” she said. “We have to publish them in peer-reviewed journals and get that scientific stamp of approval.”

Beaver trapping and natural predation are distinct from targeted eradication, Fairfax noted. The former can be sustainable, while stream-wide depopulation and dam removal can damage entire ecosystems. 

It’s also possible that stream clearing prevents beavers from moving to parts of Wisconsin where they are wanted or where they could thrive with fewer conflicts.

Federal government assesses Wisconsin’s beaver dealings 

The DNR beaver management plan’s update coincides with a new USDA environmental assessment of the potential impacts of its beaver and dam removal in Wisconsin.

A conservation organization founded by beaver management committee member Bob Boucher announced its intent to sue the federal agency to compel it to update its previous assessment, published more than a decade ago. Then Boucher threatened to sue the DNR after it wouldn’t release a draft of the new one, currently under review.

The 2013 assessment determined that USDA’s involvement in clearing streams and conflict areas did not significantly impact the beaver population. It estimated wildlife managers would only trap about 2,000 beavers annually, but the agency exceeded that figure within a few years.

The USDA recommends staying the course, using lethal and nonlethal methods. When analyzing alternatives, the agency concluded that other wildlife managers would continue trapping with or without federal involvement.

The USDA allocates some funding for the installation of flow control devices that can reduce the footprint of beaver ponds by lowering water levels. But nearly all beaver conflict sites the USDA handles in Wisconsin are managed through trapping. Levelers do have limited effectiveness in settings like high-flow streams or infrastructure-heavy floodplains. 

Wildlife managers say that they need flexibility because no two beaver sites are identical. 

“We’re not against beaver complexes,” DNR fisheries biologist Bradd Sims told committee members. “We’re not against ecosystem diversity, and I don’t know why people try to paint us that way. We’re an open-minded bureau that’s open to different management styles.”

Trout and beaver proponents do agree that climate change poses an existential threat to biodiversity. While the former group might view beavers as harmful to coldwater streams, the latter see their potential as a partner in creating resilient landscapes that accommodate not only fish, but also frogs, turtles, bugs, bats, birds and humans.

The committee’s next meeting is March 18 in Rothschild, Wisconsin. Ultimately, DNR staff will rewrite the current plan, release a draft for public comment and discussion at open houses, and present a revised document to the state’s natural resources board for ratification.

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. Sign up for Wisconsin Watch’s newsletters to get our news straight to your inbox.

Pest or climate ally? DNR weighs new beaver management plan under mounting scrutiny is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.