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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.

More than 30 months after Gov. Tony Evers signed the 2023-25 biennial budget into law, setting aside $125 million to help Wisconsin communities mitigate PFAS pollution in the state’s drinking water, the Wisconsin Assembly on Friday unanimously passed two bills to get the money out the door. 

This is the second time legislation to spend the money has reached this point after Evers vetoed a PFAS bill in 2024 over objections that the bill was too friendly to polluters. Since the money was set aside, the issue has been mired in partisan feuding. 

As the Assembly scrambled to finish its work by its self-imposed Friday deadline before lawmakers head home to campaign for reelection, negotiations over the specific language of the legislation pushed the vote, initially scheduled for Thursday, past 8:30 p.m. on Friday evening. 

The two bills were among the last pieces of legislation the Assembly voted on in normal session before adjourning. 

The bill establishes programs to spend the money through grants for private well owners and municipal drinking water systems, boosting the state’s testing capabilities and research into PFAS at Universities of Wisconsin institutions. 

Republicans, with the support of business groups, have been trying to craft legislation that protects “innocent landowners” from being held responsible for PFAS pollution while Democrats and environmental groups have argued the initial bill too widely defined “innocent,” letting polluters off the hook while weakening the state’s toxic spills law. 

The return of the bill this session was met with renewed optimism that a bipartisan agreement could be reached. However, after Republicans narrowed the definition of innocent landowners, business groups such as Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce and representatives of the state’s paper industry abandoned the effort, saying they couldn’t support the proposal anymore. 

Throughout the two and a half years of debate, residents of communities affected by PFAS pollution have continued to struggle, often calling for the Legislature to instead enact standards for the acceptable level of PFAS in the state’s groundwater — the source of drinking water for the hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites with private wells. 

PFAS pollution has affected larger communities such as Madison and Wausau and small communities such as French Island near La Crosse and the town of Stella near Rhinelander. The class of man-made chemical compounds was widely used in certain kinds of firefighting foams and household goods such as nonstick pans and fast-food wrappers. PFAS have been connected to health problems such as developmental problems in children and certain types of cancer. 

On the floor of the Assembly Friday evening, with lawmakers desperate to hit the road, only three representatives spoke on the bill. 

Rep. Lori Palmeri (D-Oshkosh), a member of the environment committee that produced the bills, touted the measures as a “great compromise” despite late-night final revisions to the bill, while Rep. Jill Billings (D-La Crosse) recounted the “horrifying” struggles PFAS contamination has caused for her constituents on French Island. 

Rep. Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz), one of the bill’s authors, said the bill is a “small step” toward fully solving the PFAS problem in the state but that the body was finally passing a bill that was the hardest to get across the finish line of his whole career in the Assembly. 

Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), one of the co-authors and lead negotiators on the PFAS legislation, celebrated the compromise that came from long negotiations with Evers and the Department of Natural Resources. 

“Today’s vote in the Assembly will bring a massive, multiyear effort to address PFAS contamination in Wisconsin even closer to fruition,” he said in a release sent before 6 p.m. Thursday, more than a day before the Assembly actually voted. “Wisconsinites across the state have suffered for far too long from PFAS polluting their land and water. Bill passage will put innocent communities and landowners on the best path forward to remediate PFAS while ensuring they are not punished or forced into bankruptcy over pollution they did not cause.”

In a week in which the Assembly broke through on a handful of issues that have long been mired in the Legislature’s partisan muck, Wimberger said the bipartisan compromise was notable. 

“Even a broken squirrel can find a clock twice a day,” he said.

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• As low-income households make tough decisions amid rising health care, food and utility costs, firewood banks are providing a community service to keep people warm through the cold winter months.

• Organizations like the Alliance for Green Heat have helped serve the 2.3 million U.S. households that rely on firewood for heat, but the group has had to rebrand under the Trump administration, which placed a premium on harvesting timber from federal lands.

• There are an estimated 250 firewood banks across the country. Resources are available to help start a firewood bank in regions that don’t have access to one.

When Denny Blodgett learned his northwest Wisconsin county intended to burn wood harvested during a road-widening project near his home, he thought it would be unthinkable for that fuel to go to waste.

As Blodgett recalls, he offered some of the harvested wood to an older man from his church, and word spread around his community of Danbury that he had firewood to give.

“And pretty soon, we’re helping 125 families,” said Blodgett, who founded Interfaith Caregivers’ Heat-A-Home program.

That was three decades ago.

Last year, volunteers delivered nearly 200 loads of split wood to local households.

And as the cost of living increases amid federal cuts to social safety net programs, struggling families increasingly face a winter of tough choices as they try to meet their basic needs.

Food, medicine or heat?

Interfaith is one of about 250 known firewood banks across the country that seek to ameliorate the demand for energy assistance.

There isn’t a clear definition for firewood banks, which have been around since at least the 1970s, but have roots in Native traditions since time immemorial. They can take the informal form of Good Samaritans delivering logs to neighbors to large take-what-you-need distribution sites operated by cities or Indigenous tribes.

But the common denominator to these networks of care is their low- or no-cost service to people who lack the means to purchase alternative forms of heat and process their own firewood. Often, both factors stem from the same issue, such as illness or aging.

The U.S. Census Bureau estimated as of 2020 that 2.3 million households in the United States rely on firewood as their primary source of heating fuel.

But one of the great paradoxes of what researchers term “fuel poverty” is that those struggling to keep their homes warm in rural, often heavily forested areas lack ready access to wood.

“I’ve got 20 acres of oak and hardwood here and a chainsaw and a log splitter, but I’m pretty much unable to really do much with it,” said Danbury resident Peter Brask, 78, who struggles with neuropathy. “I just still feel embarrassed asking for help because I’ve been so self-sufficient all my life.”

Last year’s wood delivery from Interfaith was a “lifesaver” for getting through the winter, the retired IBM software specialist said.

Blodgett, a former U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel, purchases and accepts donated wood, delivered to a yard adjacent to his home. A processor cuts “cattywampus” piles of timber into smaller pieces, and volunteers split them into burnable portions.

The wood dries until it’s “seasoned.” The less moisture in a log, the cleaner and more efficiently it burns.

Interfaith purchased two trailers a few years ago with money the group obtained from the Alliance for Green Heat, a nonprofit that advocates for the use of modern wood-burning heating systems.

Buoyed with money from the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, it has issued more than $2 million in grants to firewood banks that help them purchase safety equipment, chainsaws and wood splitters, as well as smoke detectors for wood recipients.

Overlooking a renewable resource like wood at the potential cost to human health is unthinkable, said the organization’s founder John Ackerly, especially when so much potential firewood ends up in landfills — the “scraggly stuff” that lumber mills can’t offload. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency calculated 12.2 million tons of wood ended up as municipal solid waste in 2018.

“Usually, firewood is not a very profitable thing to sell, very labor-intensive and very heavy,” Ackerly said.

Another opportunity presented by firewood banks is providing a local outlet that avoids spreading wood infested with invasive species. Banks also avert the dumping of wood sourced from storm-damaged trees, exacerbated by climate-change-magnified severe weather — winds and snow.

“We’re losing our power, our electricity in these storms all the time,” said Jessica Leahy, a University of Maine professor, who co-authored a guide to starting community wood banks. “It would be great to have everybody in the most carbon-neutral heating source for their house. That sounds great, but there are people burning their kitchen cabinets in order to stay warm.”

Now in its fourth year issuing grants with federal dollars, the Alliance for Green Heat had to rebrand after the Trump administration pushed for increased timber harvests on federal lands in the name of national economic security.

This year, firewood banks seeking grants must source wood from actively managed federal forests, a potential problem for the handful of states that lack them.

“Before, we really touted the program as serving ‘low-income populations’ with a ‘renewable, low-carbon fuel,’” Ackerly said. “We had to remove that language, but we were able to keep doing what we had been doing the same way.”

Researchers who mapped wood banks across the U.S. identified a second in Wisconsin — the Bear Ridge Firewood Bank, sponsored by the Stockbridge-Munsee Band of Mohican Indians — and a handful in other Midwestern states, including Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota. 

Clarisse Hart — director of outreach and education at Harvard Forest in Petersham, Massachusetts, and one of the researchers — said firewood banks often go by different names depending on the region: firewood assistance program, firewood for elders, firewood ministry, wood pantry and charity cut, to name a few.

Other exchanges happen behind the scenes, she said, often on private, community social media pages — making banks harder to identify.

Often, the operations depend on the commitment of volunteers. 

“A lot of people want to give back, but they don’t know what to do,” said Ed Hultgren, who started an Ozark, Missouri, wood bank in 2009. “It doesn’t have to be wood ministry. You find a gap in your area and see if there’s something you can do to fill it.”

Wayne Kinning — a retired surgeon who volunteers with his Fenton , Michigan, Knights of Columbus council — is one of a dozen or so men from St. John the Evangelist parish who cut, split and sell low-cost firewood. The proceeds support local charities.

“We donate all our time and even our chainsaws,” he said. “That, of course, then gives a person a sense of meaning in their day and a sense of worth in their giving.”

Among Blodgett’s helpers are a snowmobile club, several churches and a Jewish summer camp. Another dedicated volunteer — Wendy Truhler, 74, of Danbury — has assisted Blodgett for nearly two decades, since her spouse died.

“Listen, I helped my husband split for 30 years. I know how to lift and work a splitter and this and that,” she told Blodgett when she started. “I would rather be outside than glued to a little 12-inch computer screen.”

Blodgett delivers wood throughout the year, which takes the pressure off the winter rush.

He fills the extra time working on other Interfaith projects: constructing wheelchair ramps for families and running the Christmas for Kids program.

Last year, 335 children received toys and clothes from their wish lists. Families also get a $50 food card. And he makes sure they get another resource wood provides.

A decorated tree for Christmas.

Firewood banks offer heat, and hope, to rural homes in need 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.

Hydrogen has the potential to be a climate-friendly fuel since it doesn’t release carbon dioxide when used as an energy source. Currently, however, most methods for producing hydrogen involve fossil fuels, making hydrogen less of a “green” fuel over its entire life cycle.

A new process developed by MIT engineers could significantly shrink the carbon footprint associated with making hydrogen.

Last year, the team reported that they could produce hydrogen gas by combining seawater, recycled soda cans, and caffeine. The question then was whether the benchtop process could be applied at an industrial scale, and at what environmental cost.

Now, the researchers have carried out a “cradle-to-grave” life cycle assessment, taking into account every step in the process at an industrial scale. For instance, the team calculated the carbon emissions associated with acquiring and processing aluminum, reacting it with seawater to produce hydrogen, and transporting the fuel to gas stations, where drivers could tap into hydrogen tanks to power engines or fuel cell cars. They found that, from end to end, the new process could generate a fraction of the carbon emissions that is associated with conventional hydrogen production.

In a study appearing today in Cell Reports Sustainability, the team reports that for every kilogram of hydrogen produced, the process would generate 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide over its entire life cycle. In comparison, fossil-fuel-based processes emit 11 kilograms of carbon dioxide per kilogram of hydrogen generated.

The low-carbon footprint is on par with other proposed “green hydrogen” technologies, such as those powered by solar and wind energy.

“We’re in the ballpark of green hydrogen,” says lead author Aly Kombargi PhD ’25, who graduated this spring from MIT with a doctorate in mechanical engineering. “This work highlights aluminum’s potential as a clean energy source and offers a scalable pathway for low-emission hydrogen deployment in transportation and remote energy systems.”

The study’s MIT co-authors are Brooke Bao, Enoch Ellis, and professor of mechanical engineering Douglas Hart.

Gas bubble

Dropping an aluminum can in water won’t normally cause much of a chemical reaction. That’s because when aluminum is exposed to oxygen, it instantly forms a shield-like layer. Without this layer, aluminum exists in its pure form and can readily react when mixed with water. The reaction that occurs involves aluminum atoms that efficiently break up molecules of water, producing aluminum oxide and pure hydrogen. And it doesn’t take much of the metal to bubble up a significant amount of the gas.

“One of the main benefits of using aluminum is the energy density per unit volume,” Kombargi says. “With a very small amount of aluminum fuel, you can conceivably supply much of the power for a hydrogen-fueled vehicle.”

Last year, he and Hart developed a recipe for aluminum-based hydrogen production. They found they could puncture aluminum’s natural shield by treating it with a small amount of gallium-indium, which is a rare-metal alloy that effectively scrubs aluminum into its pure form. The researchers then mixed pellets of pure aluminum with seawater and observed that the reaction produced pure hydrogen. What’s more, the salt in the water helped to precipitate gallium-indium, which the team could subsequently recover and reuse to generate more hydrogen, in a cost-saving, sustainable cycle.

“We were explaining the science of this process in conferences, and the questions we would get were, ‘How much does this cost?’ and, ‘What’s its carbon footprint?’” Kombargi says. “So we wanted to look at the process in a comprehensive way.”

A sustainable cycle

For their new study, Kombargi and his colleagues carried out a life cycle assessment to estimate the environmental impact of aluminum-based hydrogen production, at every step of the process, from sourcing the aluminum to transporting the hydrogen after production. They set out to calculate the amount of carbon associated with generating 1 kilogram of hydrogen — an amount that they chose as a practical, consumer-level illustration.

“With a hydrogen fuel cell car using 1 kilogram of hydrogen, you can go between 60 to 100 kilometers, depending on the efficiency of the fuel cell,” Kombargi notes.

They performed the analysis using Earthster — an online life cycle assessment tool that draws data from a large repository of products and processes and their associated carbon emissions. The team considered a number of scenarios to produce hydrogen using aluminum, from starting with “primary” aluminum mined from the Earth, versus “secondary” aluminum that is recycled from soda cans and other products, and using various methods to transport the aluminum and hydrogen.

After running life cycle assessments for about a dozen scenarios, the team identified one scenario with the lowest carbon footprint. This scenario centers on recycled aluminum — a source that saves a significant amount of emissions compared with mining aluminum — and seawater — a natural resource that also saves money by recovering gallium-indium. They found that this scenario, from start to finish, would generate about 1.45 kilograms of carbon dioxide for every kilogram of hydrogen produced. The cost of the fuel produced, they calculated, would be about $9 per kilogram, which is comparable to the price of hydrogen that would be generated with other green technologies such as wind and solar energy.

The researchers envision that if the low-carbon process were ramped up to a commercial scale, it would look something like this: The production chain would start with scrap aluminum sourced from a recycling center. The aluminum would be shredded into pellets and treated with gallium-indium. Then, drivers could transport the pretreated pellets as aluminum “fuel,” rather than directly transporting hydrogen, which is potentially volatile. The pellets would be transported to a fuel station that ideally would be situated near a source of seawater, which could then be mixed with the aluminum, on demand, to produce hydrogen. A consumer could then directly pump the gas into a car with either an internal combustion engine or a fuel cell.

The entire process does produce an aluminum-based byproduct, boehmite, which is a mineral that is commonly used in fabricating semiconductors, electronic elements, and a number of industrial products. Kombargi says that if this byproduct were recovered after hydrogen production, it could be sold to manufacturers, further bringing down the cost of the process as a whole.

“There are a lot of things to consider,” Kombargi says. “But the process works, which is the most exciting part. And we show that it can be environmentally sustainable.”

The group is continuing to develop the process. They recently designed a small reactor, about the size of a water bottle, that takes in aluminum pellets and seawater to generate hydrogen, enough to power an electric bike for several hours. They previously demonstrated that the process can produce enough hydrogen to fuel a small car. The team is also exploring underwater applications, and are designing a hydrogen reactor that would take in surrounding seawater to power a small boat or underwater vehicle.

This research was supported, in part, by the MIT Portugal Program.

© Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

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