Raptor Resurgence
	Volunteers in the Valley
	Editorial
	Wisconsin Favorites Velkommen to Little Norway!

Achieving speeds of more than 250 miles per hour as they dive, the Peregrine falcon is the fastest animal known to man. Yet a scant two decades ago, no one in Wisconsin could marvel at the aerial antics of the sleek bird of prey.
Their populations decimated by human pesticide use, no Peregrines could be found nesting east of the Mississippi River. As had occurred with other bird species, ingestion of the pesticide DDT through the food chain caused the birds’ eggs to be so frail that they were crushed under the weight of nesting adults.
Regulations to curb DDT use took effect beginning in 1971, but the lingering effects of the pesticide saw the falcons placed on the Wisconsin Threatened and Endangered Species List in 1975. By the early 1980s, Midwestern efforts to restore the Peregrine began with captive production and release of young birds, but it ultimately took the interest of a Wisconsin cooperative utility to successfully establish a nest from which new falcon chicks could be produced.

Utility Interest Grows

As of 1999, the Peregrines are no longer on the endangered species list, thanks to increasing numbers of birds hatched in man-made nesting boxes attached hundreds of feet up power-plant smokestacks.
Utility involvement in the restoration began in 1989 when an employee of a Minnesota power plant operated by Northern States Power Company (now Excel Energy) noticed falcons perched atop a coal unloader. Company officials contacted Bob Anderson, executive director of the Iowa-based Raptor Resource Project, a nonprofit group working to restore populations of predatory birds known collectively as “raptors.” Anderson helped install a wooden nesting box on one of the plant’s smokestack platforms, and a breeding pair of falcons immediately took up residence and successfully raised their young.
Anderson knew that the Peregrines migrated through Western Wisconsin, but they were not establishing nesting sites at their traditional locations on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi. A few years after the success at the Minnesota generating plant, Anderson contacted Dairyland Power Cooperative of La Crosse to see if there was interest in replicating that recovery effort on the Mississippi’s eastern shore. Dairyland officials enthusiastically agreed to place a nest box on one of the tall stacks at its coal-fired plant at Alma, on the river about 40 miles north of La Crosse. Anderson had observed falcons landing on the stacks, and he surmised that the location—between the bluffs and the river—could be ideal for a nest.
Dairyland staff worked with Anderson to install the first nest box at a spot 450 feet up an Alma stack in March of 1994. High school students at Eden Prairie, Minnesota, constructed the box as part of a science project.

Setting Up Residence

It took several years for falcons to establish residence, but on Earth Day 1997, a pair of birds was spotted at the nest box. The two, named Alma and Nelson, produced three healthy offspring that year—the first successful hatch of wild Peregrines in Western Wisconsin in more than 25 years.
Over the protests of their parents, the three chicks—named Clara, Florence, and Harriet—were brought down from their lofty home to have U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service bands affixed to their legs and to have blood samples taken to verify their good health. Later that summer, the three flew from the nest and learned to hunt on their own near the plant site. (When a bird is raised until it can fly, it is said to have “fledged.”)
On the strength of the success at Alma, another next box was attached to a smokestack, this time at Dairyland’s Genoa, Wisconsin, generating station, on the river about 20 miles south of La Crosse. By 1998, another nesting pair had moved in and more fledglings were duly documented. Fiercely territorial, the parent birds continued to return to the nest boxes in subsequent years.
To date, 39 healthy chicks have been born at the Alma and Genoa sites. As this issue of Wisconsin Energy Cooperative News goes to press, seven new chicks—three at Genoa, four at Alma—were being banded and tested by Raptor Resource Project and Dairyland staff.

Spreading Their Wings

Dairyland Environmental Biologist John Thiel, who has been involved with the recovery effort since its beginnings at Alma, said the most exciting new information coming from tracking records and transmitters attached to birds is that fledglings from Dairyland plant stacks have been nesting in far-flung locations across the Midwest.
“We’ve got them from Fargo, North Dakota, to a place in Indiana,” said Thiel. “Offshoots of the Alma and Genoa families are also now nesting in the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi.” Undaunted by the proximity of humans—or perhaps used to people due to their power-plant origins—birds from Dairyland plants are even nesting under a high bridge in Minneapolis, according to Thiel.
Also encouraging is a recent study conducted by the California-based Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) that shows the falcons run no additional health risks by living and raising their young on the exhaust stacks of power plants.
Tested for the presence of elements customarily contained in stack emissions, the birds’ blood was found not to have elevated levels of selenium, mercury, arsenic, nickel, or chromium. Researchers compared the stack residents with birds living on the Raptor Resource Project site in Iowa.

Detailed Health Screening

“We tested birds from five different locations over a three-year period: those nesting at fossil-fuel plants, birds nesting at nuclear power plants, urban nesting falcons, immature arctic falcons, and control falcons at the Raptor Resource Project site,” Anderson explained. “We compared blood test results from all five groups and, when possible, we tested both the adults and the chicks. We were assured by the results that the Peregrines were healthy even though they were living so close to large industrial facilities.”
Anderson also noted that falcons nesting on power plants are the most successful in terms of the number of young fledged. “More utility falcon chicks successfully leave the nest than do falcons hatched on buildings, cliffs, and bridges,” he observed.
EPRI researchers say the next step in the study will be to develop “how to” manuals to guide other organizations in installing Peregrine falcon nest boxes on suitable structures.

Bird Cam

The annual cycle of nesting, laying, hatching, and fledging is being shared with more than just excited biologists and staff at Dairyland Power. The co-op has installed remote cameras on the nest boxes and fed images of falcon activity to the Dairyland web site, providing all who are interested with immediate visual updates on the birds. Go to www.dairynet.com and click on either the G-3 (Genoa) or Alma Bird Cam. There is also additional information on the birds and the ongoing restoration project.—Perry Baird

Temperatures Rise in Heating/Cooling Dispute
by Perry Baird, Editor

Okay, so you come up with an idea of how to do something more efficiently, but all you get from people to whom you try to sell the idea is every reason under the sun why your plan won’t work. And if you get past that point, how many times have you encountered this maddening rationale: “But we’ve always done it this other way.”
We seem to be at odds along those lines with the state agency responsible for designing and approving plans for a new visitor center at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve (see feature story on page 14).
The controversy surrounding the new facility has to do with the type of heating/cooling system to be used, and it pits advocates of renewable energy against the Wisconsin Department of Administration (DOA).

Taking Sides

Vernon Electric Cooperative, which provides the reserve with electric service, and Dairyland Power Cooperative (Vernon’s wholesale power supplier) have both urged the state to consider a geothermal heating and cooling system for the new visitor center. In addition, citizen members of the Kickapoo Valley Reserve's own board of directors have backed the heat-pump installation, saying such a unit would eliminate the need for propane tanks at the new facility. The department, however, contends that the geothermal heat pump will be too expensive to operate and will require significant maintenance costs.
A ground-source unit of the type proposed uses a series of coolant-filled, sealed pipes buried in the ground to both heat and cool the structure. The coolant, a material such as ethylene glycol, is a heat-transfer agent that pulls cooling capacity from the ground in the summertime, and it takes advantage of the 50-to-55-degree year-round temperature of groundwater to raise the temperature of the building in the wintertime.
Confronted with the compelling argument that such geothermal heat pumps constitute a renewable-energy technology that should be embraced, DOA disputes that the units fall into the renewable category. The agency’s stance, according to Wisconsin Electric Cooperative Association Manager David Jenkins, is simply not supportable.
"While geothermal heat pumps are indeed conventional technology, they are clearly a renewable-assisted form. Up to 75 percent of the heating and cooling capacity of a geothermal heat pump comes from renewable energy,” said Jenkins. “Just about every authority in the country—including the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Defense Department, and many environmental groups—agree on that. The Wisconsin Department of Administration is just plain wrong when it argues it isn't."

Evidence Builds

Jenkins noted that some of the department’s own studies have findings that are not in synch with its opposition. For example, a recent DOA-funded project called Focus on Energy reported that the new Fond du Lac High School building will save $290,000 annually by using a geothermal heat pump system rather than conventional technology.
"The United States Army and Air Force have recognized the benefits of this technology by using it on a number of military bases. So have 400,000 schools, businesses, homeowners, and others in this country. Eventually, our state building planners may come to recognize it, too," Jenkins observed. He said he expects the dispute to be settled soon and he commended State Senator Mark Meyer for the role the lawmaker has played in facilitating meetings between the parties in the controversy.
If the state relents and allows the geothermal system to be incorporated in the visitor center, it would be the first ground-source heat pump used in a state building in Wisconsin.
And that, obviously, wouldn’t be the way they’ve always done it.

Velkommen to Little Norway!

Longing to visit Norway, but can't afford the time or money? How does a Norwegian tour for a few dollars and a few hours sound? That's all you'll have to invest for a trip to Little Norway, located near Blue Mounds.
Costumed guides—many of them of Norwegian ancestry themselves—guide visitors through the homestead of an early Norwegian immigrant to the region. As trolls mark your progress around the spacious grounds, you'll tour two early dwellings—a vacation home, or cottage, and a two-story family home. Each is furnished with authentic Norse furniture, arts, crafts, and household objects of the pioneer generation. Also nestled in the wooded valley are several outbuildings typical of a Norwegian farm in the early days. One such outbuilding is the picturesque stabbur, or storage house. Its raised-platform foundation is designed to keep food away from rodents and moisture.
An important addition to the original homestead is the Norway Building, exhibited at the Chicago Columbian Exposition of 1893. Originally built in Trondheim, Norway, then dismantled and moved to Chicago, the building was patterned after a 12th-century Stavekirke, or Christian Norwegian Church. At the end of the fair, the building was moved to a Lake Geneva estate. In 1935, Isak Dahle, Little Norway's founder, had the building dismantled for the third time and moved to its present site. It houses an impressive collection of folk objects from Scandinavia.
Little Norway may be visited from May 1 through the last Sunday in October. In July and August, the site has extended hours, 9 a.m. through 7 p.m., with the last tour beginning at 6:15. During other months of operation, the hours are 9-5.—Linda Hilton

Little Norway is 20 miles west of Madison on Cty. Hwy. JG, off State Hwys. 18-151. Exit at Cave of the Mounds Road between Mt. Horeb and Blue Mounds; follow signs for Little Norway. For more information, call 608/437-8211.