As I walked through a local prairie last week, looking for content for Nature Net’s “Wildlife Wednesday” post, I kept a special eye on every milkweed, hoping to spot the unusually colored Monarch caterpillar. Whenever the end of August rolls around, I hope to spot these special creatures, remembering back to summer 2002 of my childhood when I first came across a Monarch caterpillar. I remember walking the hot sand of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northern Michigan ...Continue Reading →

  With 2024 on track to be the hottest year on record, climate change and solutions to mitigate it are at the forefront of many minds. Last year, the Wisconsin Office of Sustainability and Clean Energy released a plan for the state to be 100% carbon-free by 2050. With only 11% of Wisconsin’s in-state net energy generation coming from renewable sources as of 2022, there is still a long way to go. As more renewable energy proposals are pushed through, ...Continue Reading →

As we approach the height of summer and soak up time outdoors, we are reminded of the familiar buzz and subsequent itch brought by the dreaded mosquito. Aside from the nuisance of their itchy bites, the mosquito is a well-known vector of disease to humans. With scientists working to control mosquito populations in unprecedented ways, the question remains, is there more to the mosquito than their pestilential manner? In this month’s Nature Net News, we will see what lies beneath ...Continue Reading →

The arrival of summer in the midwest this year aligns with the much anticipated emergence of the notorious, and celebrated, 17-year cicada. While this large, vociferous insect’s arrival is always significant due to its infrequency, this year in parts of America’s Midwest two of the overlapping broods will emerge  at once. While some dread the cicada’s arrival for their hungry, buzzing ways, others laud the synchronicity of their short-lived stay above ground and their important contribution to local ecosystems.  The ...Continue Reading →

In just a couple short weeks, a swath of North America stretching from Mexico to Canada will experience a total solar eclipse. While there is a solar eclipse once every year and a half or so, this one, on April 8th, will be the last time one passes through North America until 2044–accepting a small portion of northern Alaska in 2033 and parts of Greenland in 2026. This month’s Nature Net News will break down the why of solar eclipses, ...Continue Reading →

Last week, while leading a field trip on seasonal discovery, I heard a familiar sound far above my head: the coarse squawk of sandhill cranes. A pair was flying over the prairie, a first for the year, and a signal of the migration season ahead. The arrival of sandhill cranes in Wisconsin is usually reserved for March, however with the warming climate, migrators will likely be returning earlier each year. This phenological event served as the inspiration for this month’s ...Continue Reading →

Many of us are beginning the new year by evaluating our lives and identifying changes we want to make in the coming year. There’s a certain humanness in deciding that our clean slate starts at this relatively random point in time, but that doesn’t exclude nature from being included in our fresh start. I want to use this month’s Nature Net News to dig into ways we as individuals can incorporate more climate hope and solutions into our lives. Individual ...Continue Reading →

As the year winds down, so does the amount of daylight we have. Each day is getting progressively shorter until we reach the winter solstice, December 21st. If we humans are being completely honest with ourselves, it’s a dark time of year in more ways than one. We are preparing for the long winter ahead and reflecting on our successes but also failures of the year that was. In all of that, it’s hard to find light spots. Fortunately for ...Continue Reading →

As our trees are dropping their leaves and the landscape is feeling more bare by the day, there’s a different natural feature whose mark is more visible on our landscape. While overshadowed by towering oaks and dense greenery in the spring and summer months, or blanketed in snow through the winter, Wisconsin red granite, our state rock, stands out in the grays and browns of November. But what exactly is granite and what gives Wisconsin red granite its namesake shade? ...Continue Reading →

On a fine June evening, my pre-teen son and I ventured out at sunset to watch the sun go down over Lake Mendota. We found a grassy hill-top view from the iconic Observatory Hill on UW-Madison’s campus and awaited the golden hour. If you regularly track Wisconsin phenology, you might know what happened next. Slowly and quietly the field below us filled with a glittering array of duty-bound fireflies. My son, who moments before was too cool to be seen ...Continue Reading →