SOEI 1

SPRING 2014

Dear Friends,

I was delighted to spend the other evening with the Institute’s Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award Committee as they debated, analyzed, and pondered which book would be selected as this year’s award winner for children’s literature. Over the winter they had carefully read forty three books that had been submitted from a survey of almost two hundred publishers, rated each according to strict criteria, and now sought consensus around the one book to earn the prize—a difficult task given the quality and worthiness of so many.

Since 2004, the SOEI has recognized a children’s book of literary nature writing “that captures the spirit of the human relationship with nature and promotes the awareness, preservation,

appreciation, or restoration of the natural world for future generations.” This award is the nation’s first nature writing award for children and young adult books.

I am happy to announce that the Committee selected the 2014 winner: A Place for Turtles written by Melissa Stewart and illustrated by Higgins Bond. The book introduces young readers to the ways human action or inaction can impact turtle populations, opening kids’ minds to a range of environmental issues. The text examines turtles, the ecosystems they require, and human efforts to save them. In ending, Ms. Stewart provides a list of things we can do to protect turtles where we live.

While we often turn to science for understanding, the arts provide a powerful lens for us to

use. Our Institute employs both approaches, somewhat unusual for an environmental institute but in keeping in the tradition of Sigurd Olson who was both scientist and nature writer. We affirm the value in both and will continue to develop programs embracing both arts and science for insights, awareness, and comprehension of our natural world.

So, go out and read a good book! We have a great list to get you started, check out northland.edu/sonwabooks.

Yours in conservation,

Mark Peterson, Executive Director

2 FALL 2013

Save the DateJune 20, 20142014 Northwest Wisconsin Lakes Conference at Drummond High School

In addition to exhibits, educational presentations by experts including LoonWatch’s Erica LeMoine, and networking opportunities, this premier lake conference sponsored by SOEI features keynote speaker Dan Small, the face and voice of the public television program Outdoor Wisconsin and Dan Small Outdoors Radio, Wisconsin’s favorite outdoor radio show. For more information or to register, contact Wisconsin Lakes at 1-800-542-5253 in Wisconsin, (608) 661-4313, or go online at www.wisconsinlakes.org.

July 30–August 3, 2014In the Footsteps of Sigurd Olson: A Summer Workshop

Travel with SOEI this summer for a trip to Sigurd Olson’s cabin at Listening Point on Burntside Lake, Elizabeth Olson’s farmstead in Seely, and Mallard Island near International Falls. Space is limited.

September 5-6, 2014Lake Superior Wilderness Conference

Join us to mark the 50th anniversary of the Wilderness Act signing with a wilderness celebration at Spirit Mountain in Duluth. Wilderness managers, recreationalists, and advocates will come together to discuss wilderness issues in the Lake Superior region.

October 25-26, 2014 North American Loon Symposium

SOEI’s LoonWatch will convene its first North American Loon Symposium at Northland College. Researchers, experts, agencies, non-profits, and loon enthusiasts are all welcome. For more information on these events, watch our website at northland.edu/loonsymposium or call the Institute.

Michael A. Miller, Ph.D.President, Northland College

Mark R. Peterson, Ph.D.Executive Director, Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute

SOEI StaffJean Ayers Administrative Assistant

MaryJo GingrasLakes Program Coordinator

Mathew HudsonWatershed Program Coordinator

Randy Lehr, Ph.D.Bro Professor of Sustainable Regional Development

Erica LeMoineLoonWatch and Citizen Science Program Coordinator

Christopher McNerneyEnvironmental Chemist

Lissa RadkeLake Superior Binational Forum Coordinator

Student Work-StudyDevon Brock MontgomeryChristopher W. EmoryScott HartleParker MatzingerNile MertonDesiree NewinskiMegan McPeakKim OldenborgJordan WelnetzAndrew WeirSamantha Winters

Contact the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute

Phone: 715-682-1223 Email: soei@northland.edu On the web: northland.edu/soei

Congratulations to 2014 Children’s Nature Literature WinnersThe Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award Committee for Children’s Literature is pleased to announce this year’s award will go to author Melissa Stewart for A Place for Turtles. Award Finalists are: Ellie’s Log written by Judith Li, Deer Watch by Pat Lowery Collins, and Jasper’s Song by Jill Robinson and Marc Beckoff. Honorable Mention goes to Look Up by Annette LeBlanc Cate, Inside Outside by Lizi Boyd, and Mr. King’s Castle by Genevieve Cote. Plans are now being made to bring awardee Melissa Stewart to St. Paul and Ashland next fall for the award presentation. We thank all the authors, illustrators, and publishers for creating inspiring and instructive publications and shaping a new generation of stewards.

SOEI 3

Cougars Return to WisconsinCougars were the topic of an Institute presentation on March 25, by Adrian

Wydeven the Wisconsin DNR’s mammalian ecologist and conservation biologist. Wydeven tracked cougar reports across Wisconsin from 1990 through 2013, and continues to assist the WDNR in confirming cougar observations. Despite many years of collecting these reports, it was not until 2008 that a wild cougar was actually confirmed in Wisconsin. That year a cougar was found in southeast Wisconsin that eventually was killed in Chicago. Since the “Chicago Cougar,” an additional seven-to-eight individual cougars have been detected in Wisconsin.

“Although it does appear wild cougars have occasionally started drifting back into the state, there still is no evidence of a breeding population, because all have been males,” Wydeven told the SOEI audience. “No female or cougar kittens have been confirmed in Wisconsin or anywhere else east of the Mississippi River,” he said.

The nearest breeding populations are in the western Dakotas and Nebraska. Because females don’t normally travel far from where they are born, it will probably take a while before cougars recolonize the state. “But we can expect to see cougars occasionally visit the state, and someday we may see them return as regular members of the state wildlife community as has occurred for bears, bobcats, fishers, and wolves,” Wydeven said.

Recently the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute has received significant funding to advance its research, restoration, and programming efforts. We wish to thank these organizations for making possible this critical work and the opportunity to partner with others to achieve success.

Great Lakes Commission $227,318 to coordinate a series of restoration projects aimed at reducing sediment into Fish Creek and Chequamegon Bay. Learn more on page 7.

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency $100,000 to support the Lake Superior Binational Forum. The purpose of the Forum is to further stakeholder consultation about and participation in the restoration and protection of Lake Superior. This grant will promote the outreach goals of the Lake Superior Lake-wide Action and Management Plans (LAMPs).

Wisconsin Sea Grant Program $197,980 to collaborate with other scientists in estimating the potential impacts of climate change on water quality in the Chequamegon Bay and facilitate adaptation to predicted climate scenarios.

SOEI in the News

4 FALL 2013

By Sigurd Olson, 1938. American Forests Magazine (excerpts from the original article)

…While wilderness means escape from the perplexing problems of everyday life and freedom from the tyranny of wires, bells, schedules and pressing responsibility, nevertheless, it may be at first a decided shock and days and even weeks may pass before men are finally aware that the tension is gone. When the realization does come, they experience a peace of mind and relaxation which a short time before would have seemed impossible…

With their new found freedom and release many things become important that were half forgotten – sunsets, the coloring of clouds and leaves, reflections in the water. I can honestly say, that I have heard more laughter in a week out there than in any month in town. Men laugh and sing as naturally as breathing once the strain is gone.

With escape comes perspective…Here where matters of food, shelter, rest and new horizons are all important….Things move more slowly, majestically in the wilds and the coming of the full moon in itself becomes of major importance. Countless natural phenomena begin to show themselves, things long forgotten and needing only the rejuvenating experience of actual contact to bring them back. With this,

Why Wilderness?some of the old primitive philosophy works itself into their thinking, and in their new calm they forget to worry. Their own affairs seem trivial.

Men who have shared campfires together, who have known the pinch of hunger…enjoy a comradeship that others never know. Only at war or on wilderness expeditions can this type of association be found, and I believe that it is this that men miss as much in civilized living as contact with the wild itself…

I do not advocate that the men of whom I speak allow the wilderness idea to claim all of their energy or enthusiasm. I do believe, however, that if for a short time each year it were possible for them to get away…that they would return to their friends and families strengthened and rejuvenated.

Why wilderness? Ask the men who have known it and who have made it part of their lives. They might not be able to explain, but your very question will kindle a light in eyes that have reflected the campfires of a continent, eyes that have known the glory of dawns and sunsets and nights under the stars. Wilderness to them is real and this they know: when the pressure becomes more than they can stand, somewhere back of beyond, where roads and steel and towns are still forgotten, they will find release.

SOEI 5

Support SOEI.

northland.edu/give

Your support makes the work of the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute possible. It provides information for the public, support for research, and valuable hands-on experience for Northland College students —the conservation professionals of the future. Please consider making a sustained gift to the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Even a small monthly gift can make a big difference. For more information or to set up your sustained gift, go to northland.edu/give or call (715) 682-1234.

Reflections: the 50th Anniversary of the Wilderness Act & My Father’s Essay, “Why Wilderness?”

By Robert Olson

I like to think that the 1964 Wilderness Act was like a Wilderness Declaration of Independence. It should be honored and celebrated with parties, parades, music, speeches, and funny hats. It is more than a “scrap of paper” which is what King George III called our Declaration. It is celebrated for fifty years of accomplishment, nationally and internationally, as the global model of wilderness preservation.

It should be celebrated to honor the men who made it possible beginning with Bob Marshall and friends who founded the Wilderness Society in 1935. Marshall sent out invitations to join but specified “no stragglers.” Sig Olson, natural science teacher in Ely, applied to become a charter member. He wrote, “Please enroll me as a member who has never learned to compromise when the question of wilderness has come up.”

He is also remembered to this day for his iconic throw away article, “Why Wilderness?” in 1938. Throw away because it had been rejected by a half dozen of the best magazines until he received an invitation from the editor of American Forests who took it for nothing. “Why Wilderness?” has become a lodestar for wilderness preservation and the hallmark of his life’s work.

I hope that 2014 can launch another fifty-year era of outstanding wilderness meaning, preservation, and growth. Time to saddle up. There is plenty to do.

Author Craig Childs accepted the 2013 Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award (SONWA) in January at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute. Childs presented and read from his winning book “Apocalyptic Planet, Field Guide to the Everending Earth,” and spent a week on and around campus.

6 FALL 2013

On the Trail: Winter Trekking in the Boundary Waters

Alumnus Paul Sveum, class of 2010, and three friends intended to trek for twenty-five to thirty days from mid-February to mid-March through the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Partly inspired by Sigurd Olson, winter trekking through the Boundary Waters is something he has long aspired to do. Sveum shared his story April 2 at the Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute to mark the birthday of its namesake.

The thirty-four-year-old Maine guide teaches bushcraft and wilderness living skills at Jack Mountain in Ashland, Maine for two-thirds of the year. For the winter

season, he returns to the Ashland, Wisconsin region, specifically to his land near Cornucopia, where he teaches with former Northland College instructor Greg Weiss at Lost Creek Adventures.

Sveum started his journey at Saganaga Lake, located at the end of the Gunflint Trail. “I like to start trips at the end of the road literally and figuratively—something like a delineation between the past and now,” he said.

Sveum said he wanted his trip to be “more than just a rad adventure,” so he offered his services to the U.S. Forest Service who asked him to monitor and record where and how many people use the park in the winter along with snowmobile use.

“The idea of giving back or social service is an idea that runs

throughout Northland College and was encouraged by faculty,” Sveum said.

“The BWCAW is a special place and has had a large influence on a lot of people,” Sveum said. “I feel really fortunate to be a paddler with this amazing place in my backyard. To experience it in winter only deepens my appreciation.”

Sveum ended his trip in mid-March by walking into Ely, Minnesota to the back porch at Piragis. “I wanted the end of the trip to be more than just arriving at some arbitrary destination or at the car at the trailhead—I guess it goes back to the hero journey thing, the end needs to compliment the beginning,” he said. “The trip was amazing and a ton of work but we all made it out healthy, happy, and wishing we were still on the trail.”

Northland Alumnus Paul Sveum (left) speaks with students during a cold weather camping workshop at Northland College before departing on his winter trek across the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.

Soil Erosion and Sediment Control for Chequamegon Bay

The Great Lakes Commission Program for Soil Erosion and Sediment Control recently awarded the Institute $227,318 in competitive grant funds. The three-year SOEI project seeks to reduce sedimentation to the Chequamegon Bay of Lake Superior.

“Excess sedimentation is our number one nonpoint pollution concern in the Chequamegon Bay

area,” said SOEI Watershed Program Coordinator Matt Hudson, who will be overseeing the project. “This project will implement some of the solutions over twenty years of research tells us can reduce this problem.”

Hudson will be working with natural resource management agencies and private contractors to carry out the project on behalf of the Chequamegon Bay Area Partnership (CBAP)—a coalition of sixteen local natural resource management partners for which Northland College is the coordinating partner and fiscal agent.

CBAP has identified sediment reduction as the top natural resource priority to improve the region’s water resources. “Fish Creek is the largest contributor of sediment to Chequamegon Bay and we have an incredible dataset that shows us where and how we should focus restoration efforts,” Hudson said.

Elements of the project will include developing and implementing bluff stabilization measures, restoring wetlands, and other practices to reduce surface runoff to Fish Creek.

CHANGE SERVICE REQUESTED

1411 Ellis AvenueAshland, WI 54806-3999

NONPROFIT ORGU.S. POSTAGE

PAIDDULUTH, MN

PERMIT NO. 1003 “To anyone who has spent a winter in the

north and known the depths to which the snow can reach, known the weeks when the mercury stays below zero, the first hint of spring is a major event…. To appreciate it, you must wait for it a long time, hope and dream about it, and go through considerable enduring.”

—Sigurd F. Olson, The Singing Wilderness

CELEBRATING

40YEARS