Walker's 8-year attack on Wisconsin's environment: Part 7. UW, DNR slashed

Walker has never been the science Governor. Ask any road engineer, teacher, clean water specialist, hunter nervous about chronic wasting disease, wind farm investor, solar panel producer, or data collector tracking the rankings' fall at UW-Madison.

So getting ready to run (and fall flat on his face) for President meant proposing a budget that obliterated many UW and DNR environmental programs, which of course, were based on science and research.

Walker's budget also would have sold off UW-Milwaukee's Downer Woods- -  which doubles as an outdoors science lab and urban park in a blue neighborhood - - to the highest bidder.

The Legislature balked at the UW programmatic slash-and=burn, but in the end the UW system took the first of two, $250 million budget reductions - - see second to last bulleted item, here - - and the DNR would lose scores of educator and science positions that continued to weaken its fundamental conservation mission.

* February 27, 2015:

Walker budget would cut numerous UW environmental programs, DNR jobs

As if Walker's across-the-board staff and program cuts to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources (66 science positions, for example), his removal of policy-making authority from the citizen-attentive Wisconsin Natural Resources Board, an exemption for the huge UW system statewide from energy saving goals, his removal of state financing from recycling programs and his 13-year suspension of the popular Knowles-Nelson land purchase and stewardship program weren't enough slams at public access and public policy-making, science and resources, his proposal to restructure the UW system and slash its budget would have also mandated many deep cuts in UW managed and offered environmental activities, said the budget document.

This is a link to Part 6 from October 19, 2018.