WI DNR returning to State Fair after Walker/Stepp banishment

Look, Bucky, the Wisconsin DNR is being allowed to talk to you. Stop on by.

Part of the way that the business boosting bellhop team of Stepp and Walker implemented their donor-driven, science-denying, dirty air and water enabling agenda for Wisconsin was to remove the DNR nearly entirely from public view at the annual Wisconsin State Fair. 

Divorcing the public, WI DNR flips off State Fair

The theory behind the agency's intentional separation by Walker management tools from the mass of people who normally interacted with displays at the DNR's State Fair building, chatted up staffers there and took home education brochures was to trick the public into believing that the DNR had no public mission anymore and people therefore had had no connection with it

The DNR's Lakeshore State Park in downtown Milwaukee draws people to hike, bike, fish, see wildlife and enjoy freshwater and prairie restoration. The Evers administration is reconnecting the agency to its public mission which Walker ignored or gave away.

 - - a mission which Walker and Stepp were as interested in burying as the larger "Wisconsin Idea" public service tradition Walker failed to deceitfully erase.

You know: strip DNR employees from the fair, and, presto! - - no one  around to answer a few questions like, why is my trout stream full of algae?, or why is grandma's well water full of chemicals and feces? - - a fresh story about that is here - - or why did the DNR delete information about climate change science from its website, or try and kill its magazine after a successful 100-year run?

So props to Preston Cole, install the DNR by Gov. Earl as Stepp's replacement (though she's been given access to a bigger sandbox to defile) for returning DNR employees, their resources and the public interest to one of the largest annual state gatherings.

The Journal Sentinel's super-informed outdoors writer Paul Smith has the details:

A water theme runs through most of the displays, a link to Gov. Tony Evers' declaration of 2019 as the "Year of Clean Water" in Wisconsin.