 Welcome to this week's legislative update. I'm Jim Baumgarter, host along with Nanette Boulabouche. And we have, I think, a really interesting program discussed about the Master Naturalist Program that's taking place in Wisconsin. And what's interesting about this, this is a non-profit group promoting the better environmental things that can take place. And training people, training people to do this kind of work, because obviously in our state parks and forests, they aren't hiring many people. And if we want to stress the benefits of our natural resources, this is a program you may want to hear about. We have, this is one of the instructors, Drew Morris, along with Jim Buchholz, who's not here. And welcome to the program. Well, thank you, Jim. Interesting program, and we want to get involved in discussing what it's about, because there may be some viewers that may want to join one of your next instructions. I certainly hope so. Well, we'll try to get a few. Wonderful. Yeah. Before we get into that, if you instruct people on how to become Master Naturalist, you must have a little background. Maybe you want to share that with the viewers before we get into the program. Yeah, it's kind of interesting. My career was in the more technical areas. And when it came time to consider retiring, I said, I have to do something different. And I had the good fortune of running into Rebecca Clark up at Maywood. And she convinced me to be brave enough to get involved in pre-K-12 environmental education of students. And it turned out, we later learned, that she was the daughter of my college classmate, which was quite shocking, because I hadn't seen him in 55 years. And he went on and became a PhD physicist. And I realized my shortcomings and joined the Navy. So it was a fantastic reunion. And it gave me the beginnings of what's now, for the last 10 or 12 years, been a real passion based on the things I was doing and learning at the Maywood environmental programs. I went to Florida and pursued Florida master naturalist certification. And that program was quite rigorous, 120 hours of coursework. And I was doing a lot of interpretive work down in the Everglades and other areas. And at the same time, I'd come here every summer. And I'd have to reacquight myself with the near boreal conditions, having left the near tropical conditions. So it's kept me spry. Well, no alligators here. But obviously, that training was intensive that you had to become an instructor in the program. Yeah, well, here. And did they make you pay besides? Oh, yes. Oh, yes. All of these programs you have to pay for. However, it's fairly reasonable. And if there is hardship in Wisconsin, we have excellent scholarship programs. So when somebody applies for one of our courses, there is an opportunity to also apply at the same time for scholarship money. OK, well, we'll get that at the end of the program. But first of all, I think the viewers need to know a little bit about the master naturalist program in Wisconsin and who runs it and how did that work out that you and Jim Bockels get to train people and how many of you trade will get into all of those things. So the program began recently in the state of Wisconsin. I think it really got off to a start about three or four years ago. So it's new. It's relatively new. And it was brought about when they realized there was going to be less and less funding. At one time, there were naturalists on the payroll of the DNR at most of the state parks. And when I realized that wasn't going to happen, this idea of creating the Wisconsin master naturalist program came about to use citizens to fill the roles that formerly state employees did. And Jim and I decided, well, are we going to complain about the lack of funding or are we going to do something about it? And it's sort of like when you see a bunch of sea stars on a beach, how do you save them all while you do it one at a time? And so we decided to train. We started our program three years ago. And each year, we've had about 15 to 18 people go through the 40-hour program. But you do that 40-hour program with homework in between because it's every Saturday for what, about five weeks? Yeah, six weeks in total. And they are encouraged to study. This happens to be the coursebook. And this coursebook has got sections in it that also reference other material. Now, the beautiful part about this for us older folks are there are no tests. So that keeps a lot more people coming to the program. But you do have to do a project, though. Absolutely, it's a capstone. That's sort of a tip. Yes, indeed. And we encourage groups to get together because everybody has different strengths. And the capstone projects are reviewed the last day. And each group gets up in front of the total group and describes their project. And it's just fascinating. And again, people have different bends for different things. And we've had one person from Warsaw, actually, did a capstone on a segment of the Ice Age Trail. Another one did a segment on, excuse me, did a interpretive science to go into Choleraundry, a very active group of two women who are now spending a lot of time at Maywood as well as at Choleraundry, reactivated the Bluebird Nesting Program and got scout groups to build the Bluebird Nest. And they re-established monitoring programs. It just varies all over the place. It's as unique as the people. So how long does the program start? If I were to apply tomorrow, how long does the application process start? And then how soon can I be a naturalist? It's basically, they're scheduled all around the state. And I just looked this morning to see which ones are left. And different groups have different ideas. Jim and I decided Saturdays was a good deal for us. And the Saturdays leading up to Memorial Day. And so it starts out a little cold, and hopefully it's warm by the time you get there. Well, and we'll also publish the website so that if people can't make the local one, or they're from out of town, they can check and maybe take a course being done at Warsaw. Or they're down in Milwaukee, they're all over the place. Madison, very active. I would encourage it's the wimasternaturalist.org, where it describes a program in detail. It describes all the other requirements. But basically, you sign up for a program. Some do it on a one week, every day basis. Up north, they like to do that. And I think they get vacationing people. But then you're going to get retired people, not so much young people. And one of the things we have liked is we even had a high school student all the way to a retired physician from Chicago, who was living in the southern Sheboygan County and thought he was up north. So once you become a naturalist, that means that you are now qualified to lead school groups, to lead senior citizen groups, to what do they find themselves doing? And you get permission from the state parks to do some of that. Well, if it's a state park, it also can be with any other groups, too. The three areas that we really focus on are training people for education and interpretation, training people for citizen science, and training people for conservation. And there's so many different groups. And that's part of the course material, is where do you find places you can volunteer. And there's literally hundreds of them. And they all need volunteers. Well, like Maywood and Terry, Andrew, Kohler State Park, the Kettle Marine, all use volunteers. Ice Age Trail, the tremendous use. My own other group, Glacier Lakes Conservancy. We have extensive use of volunteers. There's a million opportunities. And there's always opportunities. We're currently running probably 12 graduates doing volunteer programs at Kohler-Ondry. And even if you get a third of them staying active, that is a benefit for the whole community. With this added awareness, they can become much more intelligent voters. And look at what are the issues now that we face in Wisconsin? And how should we handle them? Sure. And not fending our state park with state money may not be the direction they want to go. So they might learn about that. I would hope so. Once you become a master naturalist, you're not done. If you want to stay a master naturalist, next year, what do you have to do? Yep. It's a good thing it's fun, because you have to do 40 hours a year of volunteer service work in one of those three categories. And you have to pursue eight hours of advanced training. Every year. Every year. However, the advanced training, there's so many opportunities for that. There was a falcon, not a falcon of eagles and things, one hour course up at Maywood. And there's another thing on certain plants. Another thing on rocks down at Kohler-Ondry. And I learned more about rocks. I think I know something about geology, but this guy was super. Wasn't he? You can add up those an hour at a time if you want, but it just has to be done in Wisconsin and it has to be live. It can't be a TV show. So this is what I want to ask. So you have already trained several groups of people, and you've been involved since Rebecca Clark talked you into it. What surprised you the most? What have you enjoyed the most about being a naturalist? What do you think most people don't quite appreciate enough? Well, I think my first love is interpretation, taking people outdoors on hikes. And you have to tell me what interpretation means. Well, it's not a show and tell, and this is the key part. It's exposing people to what's in that forest or what's in that marsh. And having them draw out their own conclusions, you're just sort of hoping them get there. That's my version of interpretation. Actually, there's courses about how to do interpretation. But what I love about it is interacting with people. Other people have different bands. They'd rather do citizen science than not interact with so much with people. And that's part of the beauty of the program. So there's room for all kinds of personalities. Absolutely. We're down to two minutes. So one minute we have to close the program, and one minute you can tell people how they can get in contact with you again on how they can find out about the training and maybe sign up. Absolutely. Jim and I are gonna run the basic program again next year. We took this year off because we thought we've kind of used up a lot of the local market. We did run our... Maybe we'll get you a few more. Oh, I hope so. And while I've already got four or five, we wanna sign up for it. Good. And because we ran an advanced training program this year, it was eight hours in one full day slot. All the way from signing in Coal-Odry to visiting with Thumper Dan. They're talking about the sports fishing catch and just wagon river cleanup. And everybody comes away saying, what, I learned so much, you know. So if you're interested in the program, interested in checking, you have a website you can come to. You can always call Terry Andrew Coal Park. They'll provide you with this additional information. We encourage you to go on some of the things that you see advertised at the Coal-Odry Park to see what these semi-professional master naturalists are doing for all of us. So we wanna thank you for coming. Until next week, this has been Legislative Update. Thank you, Drew. Well, thank you. Yeah. Welcome to this week's Legislative Update. I'm Jim Baumgart, your host. Thank you very much for joining us today. I think what we have is going to be an interesting program because as you probably know, our health is the most valuable thing.