Hit the trail for a dramatic look at Wisconsin’s geologic past. The impressive bluffs, valleys, waterfalls, and lakes of Wisconsin’s state parks provide more than beautiful scenery and recreational opportunities. They are windows into the distant past, offering clues to the dramatic events that have shaped the land over billions of years. Author and former DNR journalist Scott Spoolman takes readers with him to twenty-eight parks, forests, and natural areas where evidence of the state’s striking geologic and natural history are on display. In an accessible storytelling style, Spoolman sheds light on the volcanoes that poured deep layers of lava rock over a vast area in the northwest, the glacial masses that flattened and molded the landscape of northern and eastern Wisconsin, mountain ranges that rose up and wore away over hundreds of millions of years, and many other bedrock-shaping phenomena. These stories connect geologic processes to the current landscape, as well as to the evolution of flora and fauna and development of human settlement and activities, for a deeper understanding of our state’s natural history. The book includes a selection of detailed trail guides for each park, which hikers can take with them on the trail to view evidence of Wisconsin’s geologic and natural history for themselves.

Cattails grow in a marsh, pitcher plants grow in a bog, jewelweed grows in a swamp, right? Do sandhill cranes live among sandy hills? Frogs live near lakes and ponds, but can they live on prairies, too? What is a pine barrens, an oak opening, a calcareous fen? Wisconsin’s Natural Communities is an invitation to discover, explore, and understand Wisconsin’s richly varied natural environment, from your backyard or neighborhood park to stunning public preserves.Part 1 of the book explains thirty-three distinct types of natural communities in Wisconsin—their characteristic trees, beetles, fish, lichens, butterflies, reptiles, mammals, wildflowers—and the effects of geology, climate, and historical events on these habitats. Part 2 describes and maps fifty natural areas on public lands that are outstanding examples of these many different natural communities: Crex Meadows, Horicon Marsh, Black River Forest, Maribel Caves, Whitefish Dunes, the Blue Hills, Avoca Prairie, the Moquah Barrens and Chequamegon Bay, the Ridges Sanctuary, Cadiz Springs, Devil’s Lake, and many others. Intended for anyone who has a love for the natural world, this book is also an excellent introduction for students. And, it provides landowners, public officials, and other stewards of our environment with the knowledge to recognize natural communities and manage them for future generations.

On a December day in 1968, DDT went on trial in Madison, Wisconsin. In Banning DDT: How Citizen Activists in Wisconsin Led the Way, Bill Berry details how the citizens, scientists, reporters, and traditional conservationists drew attention to the harmful effects of “the miracle pesticide” DDT, which was being used to control Dutch elm disease. Berry tells of the hunters and fishers, bird-watchers, and garden-club ladies like Lorrie Otto, who dropped off twenty-eight dead robins at the Bayside village offices. He tells of university professors and scientists like Joseph Hickey, a professor and researcher in the Department of Wildlife Management in at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, who, years after the fact, wept about the suppression of some of his early DDT research. And he tells of activists like Senator Gaylord Nelson and members of the state’s Citizens Natural Resources who rallied the cause. The Madison trial was one of the first for the Environmental Defense Fund. The National Audubon Society helped secure the more than $52,000 in donations that offset the environmentalists’ costs associated with the hearing. Today, virtually every reference to the history of DDT mentions the impact of Wisconsin’s battles. The six-month-long DDT hearing was one of the first chapters in citizen activism in the modern environmental era. Banning DDT is a compelling story of how citizen activism, science, and law merged in Wisconsin’s DDT battles to forge a new way to accomplish public policy. These citizen activists were motivated by the belief that we all deserve a voice on the health of the land and water that sustain us.

Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest is an informative, colorful, comprehensive guide to invasive species that are currently endangering native habitats in the region. It will be an essential resource for land managers, nature lovers, property owners, farmers, landscapers, educators, botanists, foresters, and gardeners. Invasive plants are a growing threat to ecosystems everywhere. Often originating in distant climes, they spread to woodlands, wetlands, prairies, roadsides, and backyards that lack the biological controls which kept these plant populations in check in their homelands. Invasive Plants of the Upper Midwest includes more than 250 color photos that will help anyone identify problem trees, shrubs, vines, grasses, sedges, and herbaceous plants (including aquatic invaders). The text offers further details of plant identification; manual, mechanical, biological, and chemical control techniques; information and advice about herbicides; and suggestions for related ecological restoration and community education efforts. Also included are literature references, a glossary, a matrix of existing and potential invasive species in the Upper Midwest, an index with both scientific and common plant names, advice on state agencies to contact with invasive plant questions, and other helpful resources. The information in this book has been carefully reviewed by staffs of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Bureau of Endangered Resources and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Arboretum and other invasive plant experts.

Back in print! This magnificent, encyclopedic reference to 157 fish species--which are found not only in Wisconsin but also in much of the Great Lakes region and Mississippi River watershed--has been a model for all other such works. In addition to comprehensive species accounts, Becker discusses water resources and fisheries management from both historical and practical policy perspectives.

In early 1958, in the far northern town of Cornucopia, Wisconsin's "last" timber wolf was accidentally run over by an automobile. The "humane" intention to end the animal's suffering produced a grisly aftermath: the wolf survived the impact of the car, was bludgeoned with a tire iron twice but survived, and finally had its throat slit with a restaurant knife. This horrifying scene is certainly an apt (if appalling) symbol of the timber wolf's early fate in Wisconsin. Feared, detested, hunted down for state-authorized bounties, the animal was systematically exterminated as an enemy of man and progress. Yet this bleak chapter in the history of conservation has a happier ending. Seventeen years later, in 1975, the timber wolf had officially reestablished itself and, as a protected species, is now flourishing under the care of Wisconsin's Department of Natural Resources. Few can be more caring than the author, a DNR educator in wildlife management. As an inquisitive teenager, Richard Thiel began his pursuit of the Wisconsin timber wolf's story in the mid-1960s and has been at it ever since. The result is this arresting, intensely readable book, a story of fear, mistrust, and misunderstanding that ends, thankfully, as one of hope and appreciation.

Practical handbook to help achieve the goal of restoring wetlands in New Zealand. Aimed at individuals, community groups, schools, agency land managers, NGOs' and ecologists. Includes CD with references and websites.

First published in 1949 and praised in The New York Times Book Review as "full of beauty and vigor and bite," A Sand County Almanac combines some of the finest nature writing since Thoreau with a call for changing our understanding of land management.

A profile of twenty of Wisconsin's finest streams. The authors share their fishing experiences, offering detailed maps and descriptions of the stream's location and natural setting, and conservation history.

In this matched set, more than 80 top outdoor and nature writers share favorite tales of life in the woods, fields, waters and wilds of Minnesota and Wisconsin. These books make ideal gifts for hunters, fishermen and outdoor lovers of all kinds. Each book reflects the distinct landscape and literary character of its state.