Blogger Rachel Tilseth points out that Wisconsin is the only state which had allowed the use of dogs in wolf-hunting, setting up inevitable and bloody dog-wolf confrontations:The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, charged with overseeing the wolf hunt, has no rules in place that require hound handlers to report dogs injured or killed in the pursuit of wolves during a hunt. In fact, there is no monitoring or certification program whatsoever in place for the use of dogs in the wolf hunt; thus the state has little ability to hold hound hunters accountable for training or hunting violations or to prevent deadly and inhumane wolf-dog confrontations (e.g., hunters allowing dogs to overtake and kill rifle-shot wolves). These circumstances explain why Wisconsin stands alone: using dogs to hunt wolves is no better than state-sponsored dog fighting.And Jodi Habush Sinykin reprised in a letter to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel some of the ways Wisconsin's wolf hunt had already been mismanaged:
Wisconsin relies, still today, on a 1999 wolf management plan so out of date that it takes no account of proven data or changed realities, including the Department of Natural Resources’ public survey results revealing increasingly tolerant attitudes toward wolves on the part of a majority of Wisconsin citizens.
Gov. Scott Walker (R-Wis.) attacked Donald Trump during the second Republican presidential debate on Wednesday, saying that the reality show host would be an unprepared "apprentice" in the White House.
"We don't need an apprentice in the White House — we have one right now," said Walker, a reference to Trump's former role as host of NBC's reality show "The Apprentice" and a jab at President Obama.
"We don't know who you are, where you're going, we need someone that can actually get the job done," he added.
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The State of Climate Change Science in the Great Lakes Basin
Climate change is posing significant risks to communities, health and well-being, the economy, and the natural environment. These impacts are expected to become more severe, unless concerted efforts to reduce emissions are undertaken.
Climate change effects are being experienced in the Great Lakes. Effects observed across the basin include warming temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, decreased ice coverage, and variations to historic fluctuations of water levels. For example, over the last 60 years (1950-2010), the Great Lakes basin has experienced an increase in average annual air temperatures between 0.8-2.0 degrees C (1.4-3.6 F), with this warming trend projected to continue, according to a 2015 State of Climate Change Science in the Great Lakes basin report...
Recognizing the potential impacts of climate change on Great Lakes water quality and ecosystem health, Canada and the United States incorporated a Climate Change Impacts Annex in the 2012 Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement (GLWQA). The Annex is focused on coordinating efforts to identify, quantify, understand, and predict climate impacts on the quality of waters of the Great Lakes, and sharing information that Great Lakes resource managers need to proactively address these impacts. Implementation of this Annex is led by Environment and Climate Change Canada and US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.* A second December 12, 2016 report, featuring Toronto and Milwaukee, was titled:
Great Lakes Cities Prepare for a Changing Climate
On the opposite end of the Great Lakes is Milwaukee, where officials believe the greatest threat from climate change is an increased risk of severe storms causing major flooding. Milwaukee suffered “100-year storms” in 2008 and 2010 that caused stormwater and sanitary sewer system back-ups and subsequent backflows into people’s homes. Erick Shambarger, environmental sustainability director for Milwaukee’s Environmental Collaboration Office, said the city put together a “flooding study task force” following the 2010 storm – recognizing that severe storms are on course to become more frequent in the future. Milwaukee’s sewer infrastructure isn’t built to withstand storms of that magnitude, he said.
The city is tackling the problem in multiple ways. Milwaukee has implemented a “Green Streets Stormwater Management Plan,” Shambarger said. That means any time a street is reconstructed due to pothole or pavement issues, it is inspected to see what sort of infrastructure would work there to contend with major rain events...
The Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District has its own project to help deal with flood risks with the County Grounds Basin, a way of containing heavy amounts of rain in a specific area to avoid floods. The $90 million project can retain and store 315 million gallons of water during a severe storm, bringing excess water from the Underwood Creek into the basin by way of an underground tunnel...
Elsewhere in the city, Shambarger said officials are considering converting unoccupied, abandoned and foreclosed properties into storm reservoirs, channeling that backflow floodwater to those properties’ basements to spare occupied homes...The basements would be covered with turf after the house is demolished so that it can better fit in within the neighborhoods.
Shambarger added that Milwaukee officials also are interested in combating the “heat island effect,” where the pavement causes the area around it to get hotter than it would otherwise. This could include removing pavement, which in turn helps the stormwater runoff issue...
Milwaukee has set up a Better Buildings Challenge to cut energy use in commercial buildings throughout the city, offering free assessments and loan financing to building owners that want to upgrade their properties. These can range from adding renewable energy sources to improving energy or water efficiency. Shambarger said the city also has residential programs to help homeowners purchase solar panels for their homes or to secure loans for energy efficiency upgrades, and is working to improve energy efficiency at manufacturing plants.
“Everything we’re talking about is adapting to climate change, but that’s all in addition to work on energy efficiency and climate mitigation,” Shambarger said.
"Yes, we are aware of that...," Dick said.* On January 10th, Dick also confirmed that the DNR page had been edited following an inquiry from a conservative staffer at a central Wisconsin weekly newspaper:
The Lakeland Times reported that Wisconsin's environmental protection agency removed information saying humans and greenhouse gases are the main causes of climate change two days after the newspaper raised the issue with Secretary Cathy Stepp.
“After questioning from The Lakeland Times, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has changed its climate-change web page to reflect a policy of neutrality on its causes and effects, rather than embracing the dramatic manmade hypothesis the web page has touted since the Doyle administration,” the paper reported on Friday.
DNR spokesman Jim Dick on Monday acknowledged the paper raised the issue with [Secretary Cathy] Stepp during an interview.
"The Lakeland Times reporter did bring that particular Great Lakes web page to our attention during a phone call on other matters," Dick said in an email. "We reviewed it and decided to update it as we’ve stated in previous statements."
By the time a guard at Copper Lake School for Girls got to her cell, Sydni Briggs was hanging by a homemade noose slung over a door hinge...
Guards and a nurse performed CPR on her for at least 20 minutes while they waited for paramedics to arrive at the troubled juvenile prison in Wisconsin’s rural north.
Briggs survived but emerged from a months-long coma with serious brain damage.Do you remember this disgusting story about conditions in the state's youth prison which we the taxpayers pay for?
Lincoln Hills youth had toes amputated after run-in with staffThe allegations have been horrendous and are getting worse:
...teenagers sentenced to serve time at the state’s youth prison in Irma face being taken to a cell no larger than about the size of a gas station bathroom, outfitted with a single metal bed and metal toilet. There’s one window in the cell’s door, as wide as the inmate’s face, that looks across a hallway into another cell.
Food is slid through what could be a mail slot.
In some cases, inmates at the youth prison have spent weeks at a time in isolation, according to current and former inmates and staff. The official policy limits confinement in isolation to 60 days.
That practice, along with alleged overuse of pepper spray and mechanical restraints, violates inmates’ constitutional rights, according to a federal lawsuit brought this week by four current and former inmates of the state’s youth prison, and the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin
Retired Racine County Circuit Court Judge Richard Kreul was caught off guard when he heard a 2012 letter he sent to Gov. Scott Walker about a sexual assault at Lincoln Hills had surfaced.
That surprise turned to outrage after learning the governor never saw the letter and that years passed until investigations into problems at the Irma youth prison began.
“I guess the expression would be, ‘They swept it under the rug,’” Kreul said this week in a phone interview from his home in Texas, where he moved after retirement.
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License sales steady (over 633,600)But The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel recently said the DNR had reported a substantial drop in 2016 deer license sales despite a relatively-larger herd:
Notably, hunter participation also was down. The agency sold 598,867 gun licenses, a 40-year low and the first time the number has dipped below 600,000 since 1976...
The 2016 deer kill was down despite a statewide herd that was likely larger this year, according to DNR preseason forecasts.* And while the report touts state deer herd management, a Green Bay columnist in September, 2016 highlighted this well-known issue which hits a contrary note:
DNR glosses over Wisconsin's CWD problem* On a page titled "Environmental achievements," there is this text with photos:
Hired two new staff to work on environmental compliance for industrial sand mining
Leads to faster permitting and better oversightBut a late 2014 report had this discouraging headline:
New report finds majority of frac sand mines committed environmental violationsand a separate, late 2105 report included this information:
[Chippewa Falls activist Pat] Popple and other residents say the state isn’t doing enough to monitor the mines. Roberta Walls, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Industrial Sand Sector Specialist, declined to comment for this report. According to a presentation she provided in place of a comment, the state had only fully completed 68 compliance inspections out of the state’s 129 facilities as of June 2015.
“They don’t have enough people,” Popple said of the Department of Natural Resources, which has been routinely cut under Gov. Scott Walker’s administration. “They simply don’t have enough people to go around and oversee [the mines].”No offense to the hard-working DNR line staff, but it's widely known that the booming frac sand industry has outpaced DNR management's focus, and that the DNR suffers from deep staffing and funding cuts and other problems introduced ideologically by Gov. Walker and the current top agency managers.
Every two years, Section 303(d) of the Clean Water Act requires states to publish a list of all waters that are not meeting water quality standards. In the proposed 2016 list update, DNR proposes to add 225 new waters. A majority of the listing additions were waters that exceed total phosphorus criteria. A significant number of new listings were also based on poor biological condition. Ten waterbodies are proposed to be delisted.* And there's more, like celebrating the state park system while the DNR is likely to raise fees for a second straight year and is looking for corporate sponsorships to backfill Walker's total withdrawal of state operating funding, and look at this contradictory wolf kill data for 2013 that rhetorically makes the out-of-quota killing of six animals disappear:
A coalition of multiple organizations is seeking to mobilize crowds in major cities to demonstrate against President Donald Trump’s environmental policies.
It’s the latest action following the Women’s March on Saturday, which, if the Metro’s trip count is any measure, had a bigger showing than Trump’s Inauguration in Washington, D.C., a day earlier.
On Wednesday, the Sierra Club, one of the organizations that’s involved, announced it will sponsor a “People’s Climate March” on April 29, 2017, in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere around the country.
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Too bad Wisconsin right-wing GOP Gov. Scott Walker set back rail manufacturing in Wisconsin, blocked the Milwaukee-Madison Amtrak extension and has no comprehensive state transportation plan except over-scheduled, under-financed 'plums' now-stalled - - poorly planned projects set in motion unsustainably to please his road-builder and legislative pals.And in June, 2015, I put this lede on a post:
Data has been available for a long time exposing Wisconsin's lobbyist-driven plan to over-borrow-and-spend on wider highways the public doesn't want or need or can afford (think I-94 from Miller Park to the man-made mess known as the Zoo Interchange or the projected expansion of I-39/90 from Rockford to the Wisconsin Dells, for just two among many examples).And a few months earlier, I'd noted, how many times do you have to ask?
Again, and again.
And not just near Milwaukee, as the battle goes on against State Highway 23.
But props to citizen blogger Gretchen Schuldt for taking the time to discover how the agency is using data to unleash the bulldozers and inflate state debt:
The “large urban freeways” WisDOT cites to justify its east-west I-94 expansion project carry an average of just 34% of I-94′s traffic load, according to WisDOT data.
Similarly, Jeff Gonyo and his fiscally-conservative suburban and rural allies who have been trying for years - - with some success in the courtroom - - to block the wasteful and unjustified expansion of State Highway 164 in Western Waukesha County north into the hills of Washington County brought their energy and facts to a recent state budget hearing:And in November of 2014, barely able to contain myself, I wrote:
Understanding the Walker/GOP/road-builder complex spending binge
To fully appreciate Team Walker's recklessly wasteful 'plan' to beg, borrow and otherwise tax you for the fresh billions that make all the road-builders' dreams come true - - to the year 2032! - - imagine that your selfish, estate-plundering drunken uncle has just presented you with a holiday wish list and scheme to keep himself satisfied, solvent and soused for the foreseeable future by diverting the lion's share of the family's already-debt laden assets into a trust which he manages, and can spend, at will.
It is a closed loop, planned and implemented by and with state and federal dollars spent in Southeastern Wisconsin predicated on the either/or scenario.
Highways, yes. $6.5 billion worth between 2004-2030.
Rail and other transit, no new dollars...
This imbalance in planning and spending on transportation is embedded because the lobbies for highways are stronger, better-positioned and richer than are the advocates for transit.Wisconsin's debt-ridden highway spending is a multi-agency, perpetual private-public con, and it is completely fair politically that the burden for resolving it falls to Scott Walker - - though he is likely to pass on the pain to taxpayers, their children and numerous public services that will be starved of needed funding so the big con can be made to disappear.
Scott Walker 