 Welcome everybody. It's great to see a big crowd here. We are going to do a number of presentations. I'm going to start with Icebreaker of Swartz, and then I'll introduce Kendra, who's with the Lakes for Natural Resource Partnership as well. Christine, who's with the Ozaki Washington Land Trust, who's done the Fragmites treatment in the estuary. And Melissa, who's with Stantec Consulting Services, who's done the upland invasive species control in honeysuckle, buckthorn, and lots of others. But to get us in the mood, we're going to start with a little bit of a video. So hopefully that provided you with kind of a nice overview of the project area to get us started here. My name is Kendra Kelling. I'm the director of programming with Lakes for Natural Resource Partnership, and I'm just going to really briefly give you an overview of our organization, and then I'll be turning it over to Christine and Melissa, who will get into some of the details about the project itself. So, excuse me, Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership, or LNRP. Our mission is cultivating community and stewardship from the ledge to the Lakeshore. So when we say the ledge, that's the Niagara escarpment that runs through Wisconsin, and then over to the Lakeshore of Lake Michigan, we also operate from Ozaki County all the way up to Door County. So the work that we do is really guided by some principles that we call the 5C. The first of those is common ground. This is really essential to all of the work that we do, building common ground, bringing together diverse stakeholders that might not normally come together for a project like this, and all of the work that we do. We seek out those stakeholders, find that common ground, despite our differences, and bring them together. The second C that we focus on is competency-based learning. So that's providing really truly meaningful learning experiences for youth and adults alike. The third is community-based learning. So providing individuals with an opportunity to really connect with those special places in their community and learn by experiencing those places that allows them to really connect with the environment and have a meaningful reason to protect and restore it. Number four is cultivating stewardship. So we really help to build stewards in the individual communities that we work with. And part of that I'll get into in a little bit is working with our partner groups. So our individual partners in each of these areas are really essential to building that on-the-ground support, recognizing the project areas and the people that should get involved and cultivating that stewardship through on-the-ground experiences. And number five is cultivating community. We help these local partners to seek out the community members that really need to be on board to make these projects happen and build those relationships. And just like in this photo here, right here at Maywood, bringing those people literally to the table to have those conversations to make things happen. I mentioned some of our partners. These are all of our partners that we have. Partner groups from, again, from Ozaki County all the way up to Dork County. You'll recognize that there are quite a few from here in the Sheboygan area. In a moment, I'm going to be talking a little bit specifically about the Sheboygan River Basin Partnership. It's a local watershed partner that cares for the waters here in the Sheboygan area. But we also have friends of North Point, roots or restoration of our tree Sheboygan, of Waterland and Sky, and friends of Peace Park Sheboygan. Those are all of our groups right here in Sheboygan, in addition to our other groups throughout the region. Some of our projects that we focus on, building a sense of place, our Restore the Shore projects, and we also have a Stewardship Investment Fund that we provide funding and kind of funnel it through to different projects throughout the region and throughout our area here in Sheboygan as well. One of our mottoes is we all live on the water. It's very important for us to keep that in mind and all that we do. If you're interested in learning more about Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership as an organization or providing support, you can visit LNRP.org. And this is just a really nice picture and a quote that reminds us the value and the importance of water that kind of connects us all and is really essential to all of the work that we do. A little bit briefly about Sheboygan River Basin Partnership. This is our mission here working in the Sheboygan River Basin. This organization has been active for over 20 years, but really kind of doing a lot of behind-the-scenes work and some restoration projects. And right now they're really focusing on a lot of people who have never heard of Sheboygan River Basin Partnership or SRBP. We're working on really building that community presence so that we're able to say yes, we've been doing all this great stuff in our community and really getting out there, out in the open and getting to know people more. I've had the benefit of working before I was a staff member with Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership. I was a board member for the Sheboygan River Basin Partnership, so it's been really great to be able to work with them. And I still continue to work closely in this region since the Sheboygan area is my hometown. So one of the exciting things that Sheboygan River Basin Partnership is doing in partnership with the Lakeshore Natural Resource Partnership is the Sheboygan River Water Trail. And this is a project that the County of Sheboygan has helped us with immensely putting together this map. You can actually access it through this website here, through this link, or if you go onto the Sheboygan County website and look at the different maps that they have for different recreational trails and different maps, you can find this as well. And we're really excited to be able to present this. This is a way to connect people to the river. Basically what the map is is on the Water Recreational Trail. For those people who have maybe they purchased a canoe or a kayak, but they aren't really sure what to do with it now, where to get in and out and what things to be aware of and avoid. So this map really helps with that. And we're really excited to help get more people to understand and appreciate the river. So that's one of our major projects right now. Invasive Species Management, just as Dave started with our introduction, it's really a big part of what we do now. A big part of any restoration project is starting off and managing those invasive species. And SRBP in partnership with LNRP really does a lot of this throughout the area. One of those projects is the Sheboygan County, the county-wide Frigmites control project. And another is, I mentioned restoration of our trees Sheboygan or roots. And this next slide tells a little bit about that. The emerald ash borer is one of the most destructive invasive species that we're dealing with right now. And roots was formed in partnership with the Sheboygan Rotary Club to help to mitigate the impact of this invasive species on our area here and on our tree canopy. So this is just a bit of a visual. I know a lot of you in this room are probably a little bit familiar with the emerald ash borer. And I'm not going to talk too much about it, but you can find out more on our website. But just, it's really devastating. Here's a before and after picture of some of our beautiful tree-lined streets. And it's really having a profound impact. So we're really working on that. That's one of our major, major projects right now. And the other thing I want to mention is our beach cleanups. We do beach cleanups in spring and in fall. We also do an annual river cleanup as well. The beach cleanups are really important and really dear to my heart because it's an example of really how that grassroots community building is really essential to the work that we do. We've done a beach cleanup for a number of years, but they've really grown a lot recently just based on the involvement of neighborhood groups and organizations like Friends of North Point. They really care for their own neighborhood. And they've got a really great passion and are really good at getting volunteers involved and out there cleaning up litter and really showing the rest of the community why it's so important to care for the lakefront and our beaches and our waters. So with that, that's just a little bit about Lakeshore Natural Reef Source Partnership and our local watershed group, the Shipwagon River Basin Partnership. I'm going to turn it back over to Jim to lead us into more about the Pigeon River Corridor project. We got together probably about three years ago with a number of different stakeholders, but this project has actually been on the shelf for almost 10 years. I know John Gumta, who is now the president of the Shipwagon River Basin Partnership, had this project kind of on his radar literally for the last decade. And so the timing was right with GLRI funding, that's Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funding, as well as some other funding from the Shipwagon County Stewardship Fund. And so we brought these stakeholders together, including the city, Stantec, Ozaki Washington Land Trust, Maywood, and then a number of other funding organizations to literally come together and provide a vision for this river corridor in terms of restoration and providing both enhanced habitat as well as better public access to what is really a wonderful community asset. And as David said, we're literally working from the estuary at the lakefront all the way up to through Maywood to I-43. But I live in Cleveland and the Pigeon River literally starts just west of me. And so we're also working with the Manawak County Land and Water Conservation Department on literally looking at water quality improvements throughout the entire watershed. And so with that, I am going to turn it over to Christine from Ozaki Washington Land Trust. All right. Hello, everybody. As Jim said, my name is Christine. I work for the Ozaki Washington Land Trust, just out of curiosity, how many of you have heard of that Ozaki Washington Land Trust before? All right. You are the minority in the room. So the Land Trust is a non-profit environmental organization based out of those two counties, Ozaki and Washington counties. So currently we have 32 nature preserves spread out through the counties that are free and open to the public. On top of that, we have 50 plus conservation easements, which are, these easements are on private land. So they're legal agreements between the Land Trust and the landowner that protect the land in perpetuity. So this agreement gets passed on from landowner to landowner protecting the unique qualities of the land, whether that be preventing development, taking down the forest, things like that. Our mission is preserving the water resources, natural areas, and working lands of Ozaki and Washington counties. So you might be wondering, okay, Ozaki, Washington County, what are you doing up in Sheboygan? So these invasive plants don't stop at the county lines. And so either do we. And like Jim was saying, there was already a group of partners working, had the idea of doing this Pigeon River project. And in 2016, the Land Trust received funding through a program administered from the Environmental Protection Agency called the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. So the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative was the largest investment in the Great Lakes in over two decades, the purpose of the initiative to improve the health of the Great Lakes. There are five categories that received funding under this initiative. And the funding category that we're talking about today is controlling invasive plants. The main focus along the Pigeon River for us is a plant called non-native frag mites. How many of you have heard of non-native frag mites before? Okay, so non-native frag mites is an invasive grass that came over from Europe. It can grow up to 15 feet tall and it forms really dense, what we call monotypic stands, which basically means it can crowd out any other vegetation around it and becomes the dominant in a system. So you go from a system that has a lot of different plants that all serve different functions, whether that be for different wildlife or maybe water retention services, to just having this one plant. And unfortunately, not a lot of our wildlife uses this plant in ways to benefit or survive. How does it spread? So this grass can spread both via rhizomes, which are underground roots, and that's what allows it to form this big colony, but it also can spread via seed. So as this picture shows, that's how the plant, these populations, can spread to new areas. So you're both growing laterally and to new areas, which allows this plant to be extremely successful in terms of growth, reproduction, and dominance. So with this funding that we received from the EPA, the Land Trust wanted to survey a large area, the shoreline of Lake Michigan in Sheboygan and Ozaki counties, and then five tributaries up here in Sheboygan County, including the Pigeon River. We focused on these waterways because they're conducive to the spread of this species. So the first step in our project was to find out where the plant was. We didn't want to just go in and start treating stuff without trying to understand as best we can how far this plant's distribution was within our project area. To do so, we hired a contractor to fly an airplane and use remote sensing technology to create maps of the distribution of this plant along our focus area. Once we got that data, the next step was, this step is really something important throughout the whole project, education and outreach, talking to the landowners in which the species was present on their properties and making sure they understood the problem and why we were doing what it was we were doing. Then comes treatment and monitoring of priority sites, follow-up treatment, continued monitoring, and as appropriate, revegetation, so introducing some diversity back into the system. So these are the results of our inventory efforts, that remote sensing. On the left, we have Sheboygan County. So starting at the Manitowoc Sheboygan County line in the north and moving downwards. And on the right, we have Ozaki County. So this is southern Ozaki County moving up toward Sheboygan. As you can see, so these red patches are the frag mites that was detected through this inventory. As we move up the shoreline, it's pretty scattered and fairly low density. Then we get into Sheboygan County and we see where the real issue is. Up there on those coastal bluffs, northern Sheboygan County. And then we see that big red patch right there. Does anybody know where we are there? Right here. That's the estuary. That's where the Pigeon River meets Lake Michigan. So we knew that was going to be an important area to focus. That was a big source population. And really, it was about this time when we had just gotten this inventory that I kind of got pulled on to, or the Land Trust got pulled on to this Pigeon River crew that was already meeting and wanting to do something. And we actually used this data to receive additional funding from the Department of Natural Resources, the Wisconsin DNR, because with our EPA funding, we couldn't treat all of this. And what we wanted to start with was these low density populations that were going to be easier to treat. So that's what we used the EPA funds for and then used that to gain more funding to go after this Pigeon River project area. Just to give you an idea, if you're not familiar with invasive plant control, where do you start? We decided to start in high quality natural areas that maybe were still in really good shape, had a lot to protect. We wanted to keep those areas good. Next, clean up those small pioneer infestations that were going to be relatively easy to treat. Protect previous investments if somebody had been fighting the plant in the past or there was current projects. We wanted to make sure those were successful. Next, moving into areas where we got long term commitment from landowners and also landowner cooperation. If there was a population spanning four different properties and we could only get participation from two of them, they moved to the bottom of the list because unfortunately it decreases the value of the treatment if you're not able to treat everything that's there. Then get after those large source populations. This is a different kind of graphic of our Pigeon River project area. The project area is outlined in blue. We have Lake Michigan here and the far boundary is I-43. Then the orange depicts the distribution of the invasive frag mites. In partnership with LNRP and STAN Tech and a few different organizations, we started holding gatherings like this to talk with landowners and members of the community about this issue and gain a little bit of support. We also do annual mailings to gain permissions from landowners with the invasive frag mites on their properties asking permission to allow us to come in and treat. Now I'm going to show you guys a few pictures of the treatments a little bit before and a little bit after to give you an idea of what it looked like in the estuary. In this picture, you can see the boat that they were using to treat some of the populations in the estuary. It's kind of hard to see the frag mites in this picture, but that taller grass in the background is what we're looking at here. This is one of those big populations in the middle of the estuary. As you can see, the plant has successfully taken over and there is absolutely nothing else growing in there. Again, so it's kind of nice. You can see here, these are some really nice lake sedges. Then in the background, the frag mites is moving in. Again, this kind of gives you a height visual. It's tall, it's dense. A little bit more. You get into some of the afters. This is a large patch. After first year of treatments, you can see that browning. That's the dead frag mites. The first treatments were in 2017. Correct? 2017. Then we treated again in 2018 and again this season. With that strong root system, it's not a one and done thing. Unfortunately, this is a long-term project. It took a while to get established and it's going to take a while for us to really recover and restore these systems. We're treating it with a chemical herbicide. It's an aquatic-approved glyphosate. The chemical? Yeah. You can see visual symptoms of it dying in a couple weeks and it will die that season. Yeah. It's kind of hard to see, but in the background, you can see some of the dead stocks. Here we got a nice diverse community of sedges and other species. We're focusing on the Pigeon River today. Like I said, we did also do that inventory of the shoreline. This is a nice before picture and then an after. There's the lake. We are monitoring these populations to keep an eye on how things are going and make sure that our treatment is effective. Just to give you an idea of what that looks like, this is percent cover in year one. Most of those are 75% to 95% cover. Then you can see how most of them have moved into those lower percent cover classes after a year of treatment. A figure to depict that. The blue is before treatments, the distribution of percent cover class, of distinct fragmites populations. After treatment, almost all of those have shifted to the lower percent covers. I think it's safe to say we anticipate about a 90% kill after one treatment. After treating, there are some instances where it's necessary to re-vegetate, whether that be spreading seed or planting trees depending on the habitat that the fragmites had invaded. We do these projects that we manage, normally always have a component for re-vegetation. This spring, we'll be planting trees in some of our areas where treatment has been successful. As David put the plug in, it should be around Earth Day. Yet this fall, we're going to be spreading seed in some of the wetter areas in the estuary. These are two of the landowners I've worked with along the shoreline. You can see some of the dead fragmite stocks from the previous year's treatment. I really like this photo. Any questions? All the sediment? That's a good question. I'm not sure if anyone's doing anything about that. All of the groups that are up here today definitely pay attention and have different projects to improve water quality in the lake. I don't know that I can answer that exactly. That's a great question. We aim for late in the summer or early fall. You want to catch the plant when it's starting to send energy down to its roots because it's going to go dormant for the winter. It stores that chemical also and you get a good kill. The caveat to the seed production is a low percentage of the seed on an individual plant is actually viable. I think I've heard numbers around 3%. So with those huge populations to try to prevent seed sets sometimes is just not worth it. We know we're coming back the next year so rather we go for the kill and as the populations maybe get smaller and less dense we get more worried about the seed. Is that fair to say? Might as well take a nuisance in Europe where it came from as it is here and if it's not? As far as I've never been but as far as I know it behaves in Europe so what makes it such a big problem over here is lack of predation. So the plant came over but a lot of the maybe herbivores or pathogens that feed on it in Europe didn't come with it. So the plant gets here and instead of having to use energy on chemical defenses against these herbivores and pathogens it can put more energy into growth and reproduction and the population slowly gets more and more aggressive. Also it tolerates a lot of different habitats and disturbance so it'll take over disturbed areas quite quickly and growth and reproduction That's a lot more robust. Does that answer your question? So actually some of our native plants are invasive over in Europe. Kind of flip-flop. All right. What? I just wonder, I don't know if you know Jim or something but about 20 years ago happened to be when I came back to Shevoiden there was a woman whose name I'm forgetting she was a big volunteer at Maywood and she did her master's degree on the Pigeon River and she went into certain selected areas and did a grid and inventoried all the plants and the animals and the spiders and just in that you're aware of that? I don't know, is that a good before and after contrast? She didn't do the whole watershed but just selected wetland areas It was along the river corridor and thank goodness that David was part of our stakeholder team we actually have a copy of her it was a master's thesis and so yeah, it's a great benchmark of the kind of vegetation in the river corridor so yep, we've used it None. 20 years ago, 20 years The other question I had again when I came back to Shevoiden and went to several huge events along the Shevoiden River that was put on by the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers from Washington DC and the locals and stuff they were sending helicopters up into the air to measure I don't know, the rain fall or the clouds formation they just said they had a research vessel and that research project funded by many different sources was intended to go from Port Washington up through I'm forgetting, Shevoiden or Manitowoc and then our lovely Governor, former Governor Walker, thank God just took it off the books all by himself just sacked it away I've heard that there is a word to bring it back but that's all I've heard at all is there any prognosis or possibility of bringing that back so that's the NOAA National Marine Sanctuary and NOAA's still got it on the shelf but I'm going to switch if you want to talk about that later because it's really off topic but it's still a pending proposal it requires a Governor's signature and I know it's on Evers desk so when he gets to it though that's to be determined but NOAA did not bury it it's still an active proposal but with that we're going to move into the uplands and I'll bring Melissa I was hoping we had a pointer because I wanted to show some things about this photo but thank you for the opportunity to come here and speak with you again my name is Melissa Curran I work with a private consulting firm called Stantec Consulting Services it's actually an international company but we've got three offices here in Wisconsin in Green Bay, Macquan and I help LNRP a lot with developing these projects helping to write grant applications but then also implementing the project so on OWLT's Fragmites project we did a lot of the treatment in at least the Pigeon River corridor and we're doing the site restoration in the upland areas as well so this is actually a photo that was taken by OWLT when they did their remote sense mapping from the airplane so they flew the entire shoreline and this is a really great view of the Pigeon River estuary and this is pre-Fragmites control so what I wanted to point out is that sort of blue-green polygons that are sort of kind of they look like their old river channels so they kind of flow in kind of the arching nature there so those are dense monocultures of Fragmites so you can see just how dense it was historically now with the lake levels where they're at thank you okay so these are the historic Fragmites polygons right here I hope you guys can see the difference in color it's a little more blue-green we've got scattered populations here, here and then here, here and here and along this shoreline as well that's a big patch right there one thing that's also really helped is now the lake is I think this photo was taken in either 2016 and and so lake levels have gone up at least a couple feet now so really if you were to go to this estuary now you would see this as just a big lake so in addition to all the treatments it's now several feet higher which also helps to get rid of the Fragmites and keep it in check because Fragmites when it's been treated does have a harder time regrowing in deep water so that's a benefit the work that I'd actually like to talk to you about is about a 9 acre upland area I'm going to show a different figure I just wanted to show you roughly where it is there's kind of a big hill back in here it's a little more kind of old field upland hill and then there's a lower about 5 acre area here that was historically pretty dense with honeysuckle so this area right here is sort of the topic of my discussion we've mentioned all these partners already but what I'd like everyone to understand is these projects don't happen unless we form really great partnerships we need the funders we need the landowner in this case the city of Sheboygan we need the fiscal agent which is LNRP and then other partners that can help facilitate this project so OWLT was a great partner because they were able to secure a large amount of money from DNR for the Fragmites control and we were able to use that as match for some of the grants that we secured for the upland re-vegetation so partnerships is really really key to getting these projects moving forward so I mentioned roughly 9 acre area so this is just kind of a different view the orange again as Christine was talking about that's all the Fragmites that we treated so when we were looking at the airplane view the airplane was kind of here looking down the estuary and again this is about a 9 acre area where we are focusing our upland restoration on and why here why at this place well it's a the really great thing about the entire 3.5 mile river corridor is about 60 to 70% of it is actually owned by the city of Sheboygan so it's public park property and we thought it was important to invest in your park property because of its disturbed condition it has high value for restoration so we can get a lot of functional lift we can control the invasive species and hopefully replant with native vegetation for the benefit of human use wildlife we're hoping to improve the aesthetics of the place and I'm going to show you some pictures in a little bit on just how disturbed some of these conditions were improve access that's really important again I'll show you some pictures on how access was really limited because of the density of invasive species provides great opportunities for education and improve water quality and some of these sites we will be planting trees trees are really great in infiltrating and infiltrating and water infiltrating storm water, rain water, polluted water so trees do really great wonders for improving water quality go ahead so this is a before picture of just how bad some of that some of those conditions were so has anyone can I see a show of hands of people that have actually walked back in the estuary and have a sense of okay so not many people that's too bad I think everyone knew like the before and after because it actually looks really great now but for those of you that didn't go back in there it's a really interesting property some great aesthetic views but this is before January of this year when we were doing the clearing this is what it looked like there were really these trails were maintained by just people that a lot of people walk their dogs there so people would come and just clear these very narrow trails you'd have to kind of walk through there like this so you could get through the trails but really you couldn't see the estuary you couldn't see really beyond beyond a couple feet so these are small ash trees that have grown up they are probably dead or dying from impacts from emerald ash borer but long term they won't be a long term component of this community but this photo was taken probably in April or March of last year 2018 and everything that you see that is greening up right now is invasive honeysuckle so there are very, very few native shrubs in this community so you can just see how dense that invasive shrub cover was go for it so this is I mentioned there is a little kind of upland hill area so it wasn't quite as dense with honeysuckle but you can see into the really dense area right here so we had to do two different control techniques in the more upland area versus the area that was a little more dense so this is our control efforts that we started in January February of this year of 2019 so in the really dense area again this is all that honeysuckle species we got in there with a forestry mower and just mowed everything down and so this is our equipment fun fact there was it was so dense that we actually came upon a little homestead in there so there was somebody living there for three years were told living had a little homestead a little campsite in this dense area in the middle of the city of Sheboygan that's just how bad it was and how limited the access was so we spent at least a week forestry mulching all of the non native species the non native shrubs down and what we do is we'll come back then induce spot treatments when the shrubs regrow so just clearing it out and then we'll come back during the growing season and that's what we did two times this year to treat any sort of resprouts go ahead and in that upland area it was dense with honeysuckle along the perimeter and so that because of the steep topography we went and hand cleared that area and when we do the hand clearing we'll cut the brush pile it and burn it and then we treat the stumps so that typically doesn't require a big level of effort to come back during the growing season to do any sort of spot treatments because hopefully we've killed it when we do the treatment on the spot in winter but this is essentially what the clearing operation looks like so somebody's cutting the shrubbery and then someone walks around with herbicide and we just dab the cut stump with herbicide and so I'm going to show you some before and after so one thing to note is here is that this is on the northeast side of our project area and you can see the estuary is sort of right here this is a trail that's on the perimeter of the upland area if you go ahead so this is post clearing so as I mentioned this is kind of this was always a little more open here this big hill area and the side slopes were really dense with honeysuckle so now there's a great view of the estuary so if you haven't been back there I encourage you to go take a look put some knee boots on because it's a little or waiters there's actually part of the project long term is we do want to improve access trail access in this area there is a northern route that's a little hard to to find but you can weave your way around without getting your feet too wet but you can make it back here it's really stunning views of the estuary in my opinion and we're hoping you long term improve it so again in these areas and throughout the more dense area we came back two times this year during the growing season to do spot treatments of woody species that re sprouted and any other sort of non-native species that we found as well go ahead so is that county wrote LS that the parking lot so I don't know Joe do you have a better way to describe where that is okay so it's it's there's a big parking area right where LS crosses the pigeon river and so you park there and then there's a gate that you can walk through and you just really head towards the lake and like I said there's sort of a northern route that gets you around some of the wet areas it's amazing how frequently that water level changes with the with the lake level so when lake levels levels are higher we have a big seashore something that came in you can easily need hip waiters to get back into this area that I'm talking about so this is an area again before and after where it was dense almost impenetrable honeysuckle we did the forest remulchering we left a lot of the ash trees just because our forest remulcher really you know it's there's a certain size class where it just gets more difficult to mow down plus they provide good wildlife habitat they will die that's okay they'll still provide good wildlife habitat but we also wanted to be a little aware of the amount of mulch that we were contributing to this area because we didn't necessarily want to shade out all the vegetation because there actually are some really good natives sedges and other forbs that are coming back in this area that we forest remulch so for that reason we we left some of them that we will interplant trees within there go ahead so the intent is historically the estuary was part of what we would call the maple beach basswood complex so these forested hardwood communities that were along this portion of the shoreline the dominant species were oak basswood peach sugar maple so we knew historically that this was a forested community so the ultimate intent is to reforest the area with native vegetation and we wanted to make sure that we had good control of the non-native species before we invest in any sort of tree planting so like I said this winter this past winter we cleared out the invasive shrubs came back two times this growing season to do spot treatments and then we will plant trees likely next spring so we have some opportunities to plant trees around the Earth Day activity but this is a tree planting that we did this spring so this was in May of this year at Sheboygan County has a park called Amsterdam Dunes in the southern portion of the county we planted about 5,600 trees this spring and so this is what it looks like every place where you see a stake is a tree some of them are tall you know we try to get anywhere from all the way up to 8 feet so there's a variety of heights some are a little smaller than others lots of oaks sugar maple birch and we'll likely do the same thing at the estuary park as well so this is what you can expect the area to look like next spring and ultimately this is the intended community it's going to take a while to get there it'll take some effort and some continued management but really we want to establish a diverse forested community so this is a lot of the natives that we do see so this is an actual picture of the estuary area this spring so you can see some native vegetation coming in we'll be planting seeds as Christine mentioned we in addition to the fragmites treatment areas that we will be putting seed we'll also be putting seed in this area as well we did target music forest seed mix so that'll be sort of on the hand clearing area on the hill on the north slope we'll put a music forest seed mix there and in this area here in the larger area that we forest remult will probably put a wet meadow sedge mix down go for it and really the intent is to improve the habitat for human use but also for wildlife there was very limited wildlife habitat available with the density of a non-native shrub cover that we had at the estuary park and these estuary habitats because of their location along the Lake Michigan shoreline are so important for migratory birds and butterflies so it's really important that we maintain and preserve and protect a lot of these places and you've seen this already so this is actually a kiosk that we worked on and we put at estuary park so you'll know you're there when you see this see this sign and that just talks a little bit about what we've been doing educational opportunities so I participate in events like this all the time to really get the public engaged and understand what we're doing we put up the educational signs we may ultimately put up some additional signage once we think about what a trail system might look like we are working on potentially a river wide master plan that really incorporates design features and provides restoration goals for the entire 3.4 mile river corridor so not just maywood but includes maywood, evergreen quarry park and estuary park and really think about what we want this entire corridor to look like and hopefully eventually it will include additional park amenities I know the city was talking about maybe a dog park there at some point so things like that are in discussion about ways to improve amenities for the public volunteers yes so lots of volunteer opportunities no shortage of site stewardship if you want to get involved in monitoring invasive species controlling invasive species certainly keeping an eye on watering needs for the trees when we establish them next spring pollinator plantings you can participate in the shrub and tree planting certainly litter control and invasive monitoring so lots of opportunities should you want to get involved and I think maywood would be a really great kind of place where you can come and get more information about that might be it yep any questions yes how long is the river yeah how long the whole pigeon river corridor yeah is it like a hundred and a hundred or does that seem too too long from the 43 corridor to the estuary so our project area that we've been talking about today is about 3.4 miles yep another question is it possible to get to the lake Michigan shore excellent question so right now the city only owns about half of the estuary the rest of the estuary the portion that's really under water at this point is privately owned so you could get to the lake through private property but it's not open to the public right now sure up on the top of a high slope though and I walk my dogs back in there on the north side of the river for many years so I could also flesh out a little of the history when I came back to Sheboygan in about 2000 I joined maywood right away and was an active volunteer and I would well maywood on earth they would have various cleanups throughout the area anyway I used to lead groups back into the pigeon river corridor where two homeless guys were living in a tent and they've been living there a long time more than the three years that we mentioned oh yeah this is back in the early 2000s so we go back in there now the problem was they used to eat very well because they didn't have to pay any rent for anything and unfortunately they brought in a lot of meat and all kinds of plastic stuff and they just piled it up in these huge piles and never took it out then they did another thing one day I came back to take care of my mother I was hearing a buzz saw wondering who the heck is using a buzz saw on the opposite side of the river well guess what they were cutting down some of the willow trees the big natural willow trees along the shoreline that prevented erosion with their roots so I yelled down to them hey what the heck are you doing you've got to stop this well they did stop it so I called up I think the sheriff of Chavoine County and I said hey this is going on in there and you've got to get these guys out of there and do you know what he said or whoever I talked to there he said oh no we're not going back in there so I don't know if it's probably different guys now but pigeon river and in the days when I was growing up when I was younger in the fifties I mean that was a real river it was full it had bat eddies where there were all kinds of breeding ducks not just mallards but just everything great hornowls now I call it kind of a puddle or at least the last time I was back there it's like one puddle and then another puddle among in Chavoigin used to go back there to fish a lot the problem was that they'd fish with little golden nugget candy you know those candy by in the grocery store can corn and that's what they'd breed their hooks with and then when they were finished they would just throw the can over their shoulders and sometimes they'd camp down there overnight with their whole family so that needed a little work and I was when I walked and I was always very respectful you know always very respectful say we don't litter like this you need to carry that out but that's just some of the background of these very fascinating river and thank you so much for your work yeah thank you it really is in my opinion a jam of a park property I know it's been underutilized there isn't a lot of cities it's hard to maybe find your way through there but we're hoping to change that so I encourage you to take some time to walk down there so you can really kind of see this restoration in progress because I think there's more great things to come go ahead is there a way for a property owner or whoever to go after a very very small block of freight lines sure so the challenge with landowners taking it on themselves is depending on where it's growing in a wetland environment you'll need a permit through the DNR to apply herbicides in a wetland environment so it's hard to know if it qualifies or not for needing the permit plus you need to make sure you're using an aquatic approved herbicide if it indeed is in a wetland environment so it's sometimes a little tricky for landowners you can skirt around some of the permitting if you wick the plants so you don't broadcast spray any herbicide but you maybe put herbicide on like a glove or something and just kind of touch the leaves of the plant you can get away then without needing some of those permitting requirements but it is definitely with herbicides that's the only way yeah if it's a really small population we are this fall and winter going to explore we've got some organic farms in Sheboygan County that are interested in us using herbicide in their property so we are going to explore tarping the population so if it's not a terribly large population you could tarp it and probably leave that tarp or use some sort of landscape material landscape fabric you probably need to leave that in place for a couple years though but I think that's an option as well and so if you're a landowner and have frag mites you should know through LNRP we've got a county-wide control program so consider participating if you need help with your frag mites control can you tell us how Pitch and River got its name no I can't I'll just tell you briefly Pitch and River got its name of which we have a big display case here of two and that's really unusual to have it I think somebody donated to Maywood but you all remember the passenger pigeons who they were so numerous that they could fly overhead and darken the skies for three or four days and believe it or not there was actually a passenger pigeon roosting site on Pitch and River I'm not sure where it was and then as you know well we have a wonderful culture of over-harvesting everything so the passenger pigeons were harvest they were so numerous you could just take a big club and hit them off the trees and on the branches and on the ground and they were sent mostly I think to the east coast where they fed the metro areas New York Boston in the day if you drive up Highway 94 there's a wonderful wayside with a parking lot and a bathroom and stuff that celebrates and talks about the last living passenger pigeon which died in, I forget when yeah Thank you for that I pulled this up it is 110 miles long one question, good job and 79 square miles in terms of the watershed well we are out of time so I really thank everybody for coming and we can stick around if you want to come back for some questions just come on over thanks again