The Political Environment: Walker budget kills UW-M Downer Woods 'permanent preservation'

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Walker budget kills UW-M Downer Woods 'permanent preservation'

Walker's budget clear-cuts environmental programming, science, institutes, public input, staff and long-cherished stewardship goals across the Department of Natural Resources and University of Wisconsin system - - one summary post here with five documented links - - and goes out of its way to remove the permanent preservation status of the Downer Woods on the UW-M main East side campus.

Here is the State Statute that provides that protection and public mission.

UW-M's website has a description of this special scientific and public asset which Walker, with no warning or justification - - except his blatant servitude to corporate donors - - would hand over to developers, along with the historic Downer college buildings from which he is also deleting their protected status - - as a special, targeted stick-in-the-eye to a neighborhood which voted heavily against him:

DOWNER Woods

The Downer Woods Natural Area is an 11.1 acre fenced forest, under permanent preservation, on the UWM campus, which became part of the UWM Field Station in the Spring of 1998. Prior to 1998, the woods were not managed as a natural area, and the vegetation bore little resemblance to that of the mature beech-maple forest which must have once occupied the site.

Perhaps the most immediately apparent feature of the plant community when the Field Station assumed responsibility for its management was a dense shrub layer of non-native buckthorn and honeysuckle.

After the Field Station began managing the site, exotic species started to be controlled, a formal trail system was constructed, a permanent grid system was constructed, and the vegetation of the forest was sampled.

The plant species list and vegetation data are available on request. Now that the thicket of non-native shrubs has been removed and adequate trails are provided, Downer Woods is being used extensively by neighbors and students for enjoyment of the natural area.