30 specialists offer cohesive snapshot of Wisconsin's environment

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Two Midwestern scientists have edited a book that takes a closelook at the ecological changes Wisconsin has experienced over thepast decades.
"The Vanishing Present," published by the University of ChicagoPress and due out this fall, presents a picture of what has beenlost, "how the land has been shifting under our feet in ways thatdon't get much attention," said Donald Waller, a professor ofbotany at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Waller worked on thebook with Thomas Rooney, formerly a scientist at UW-Madison and nowan assistant professor of biological sciences at Wright StateUniversity in Dayton, Ohio.
Specialists in various areas ranging from lichens - tinycombinations of an alga and a fungus that cling to rocks - tocities and birds have written each of the book's 30 chapters.
"What's never been done before is to put all these pieces of thepuzzle together in one place to look at what it tells us in acombined way about ecological change across an area the size ofWisconsin over a period of decades to a couple of centuries,"Waller said.
"The book's essays should give us perspective on changingecological relationships in Wisconsin, and that perspective shouldhelp us make better policy decisions. Wisconsin faces dramaticchanges from global warming, and understanding our past isnecessary for responding to the challenges that we now face," saidNancy Langston, a UW-Madison professor of forest and wildlifeecology.
The book stands out in the comprehensiveness of its effort to etchchanges, said Lee Frelich, the director of the University ofMinnesota's Center for Hardwood Ecology. "I'm not aware of anyother books that looked at the range of topics that this book didfor an area like a state."
The book, Frelich added, provides a benchmark for future studies ofecological change.
Waller took a cue from the Wisconsin-born and educated iconicnaturalist John Muir, who said that when you tug on a single thingin nature, you find it connected to the rest of the universe.
Waller noted how changes in Wisconsin's environment are linkedalmost inexorably to one another.
For instance, he said, many things happen simultaneously. "That'swhat makes management such a challenge in the 21st century. Youdon't just have climate change; you don't just have habitat loss;you don't just have invasion of exotic species. You have all thesethings happening on top of each other."
The decline of songbirds in Wisconsin, he noted, can't be viewed inisolation, but rather as an outcome of a complex web.
Waller explained that predators such as raccoons can find nestlingsbecause deer have munched away vegetation. Furthermore, raccoonsand other predators became more prevalent in the face of decreasednumbers of wolves. Humans also have contributed to raccoonproliferation, by providing garbage as urban areas expand.
"So we've changed the landscape. This has had a cascading effect onthe birds. The birds in turn - and we don't know anything aboutthis - may have less of an effect on (controlling) defoliatinginsects like the tent caterpillar," he says.
In northern Wisconsin, major alterations in the environment couldarise from the human impact that results from the trend of milderwinters that are a result of climate change, said StephenCarpenter, a zoology professor at the UW-Madison Center forLimnology.
With earlier springs, all-terrain vehicles are starting to appearin the woods earlier, said Carpenter, who contributed a chapter tothe book.
Carpenter's studies of a region called the Northern Highland LakeDistrict predict significant changes in the environment. Thedistrict he studied is composed of Vilas, Oneida, Price, Iron andForest counties in Wisconsin, and Gogebic County in Michigan.
"There's all of the social conflict that develops around ATVs, aswell as the habitat damage of ATV trails and the disturbance ofwildlife," he said.
Carpenter has found that lakeshores have been affected by changesin predator and prey relationships. Because of the decline in thenumber of wolves, deer have "become bolder" and will go the edgesof lakes to eat grasses and other vegetation.
"If you go to northern Wisconsin, the vegetation is all gone aroundthe edge of the lakes for several feet. I'm not aware that it'sbeen extensively studied, but I'm sure that it impacts birdcommunities, insect communities," he said.
Deer also have taken a toll on other places, Waller said.
"Brunet Island State Park (a 1,200-acre park on the Chippewa andFisher rivers), in the section of woods that we looked at, lostmore than half its plant species. That's an example of a park wheredeer hunting was banned. We discovered too many deer is a problem,"he says. Deer can now be hunted there, he says. Parks get loved to death
In general, he says, Wisconsin's parks, so prized by many stateresidents and visitors, are being subjected to unwitting damage bythose who wish to enjoy them.
"We're loving the land to death. We've set aside land, as a statepark, but we put in campgrounds and trails. We want to encouragepeople to visit.
And that use of the park has introduced exotic species - garlicmustard along the trail, zebra mussels in the lakes," he said.
The changes documented in the book are in one sense only thebeginning, said Minnesota's Frelich.
"We have started a trajectory of change, which is probably going tomake our landscape and the species that live there almostunrecognizable.
"There are relatively few people among the general public whorealize how big these changes are and how significant they may bein terms of quality of life," he said.
He added that in the next 20 to 30 years, "the rate of change isgoing to go way, way up," driven by climate change and theintroduction of invasive species, including insects such as theemerald ash borer, the Asian long-horned beetle and the mountainpine beetle.
Waller doesn't view the book as a paean to a lost Eden and a desireto return to it. He pointed to comments by Wisconsin's toweringenvironmental figure Aldo Leopold, who recognized how modern lifeaffected the natural environment.
"I realize that every time I turn on an electric light - or pocketan unearned increment of stock - I am 'selling out' to the enemiesof conservation," wrote Leopold.
And, like Leopold, Waller recognizes the value of modern life andalso calls for efforts to preserve the natural environment.
"We have to be practical. We're not going back to a hunting andgathering way of life," Waller said. "What I would hope is thatthose who read the book would understand the deep significance ofhow to make our ways of life more sustainable and reduce our impacton the natural world."