Here is his question:
I study landscape architecture not horticulture, so I'm interested in the whole area close to your garden.
Can you write some words about how you in the county take care of the natural fauna? (Regulations-for example in horticulture, conservation, rehabilitation of the natural state-using native species.......)
Are there any National Park or other areas under other kind of protection etc.?
I know that its a big topic, and I would be satisfied if you can post some links where I can find some information.
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The conservation situation in Wisconsin is quite fragmented, just as it is on the National level. The US is a patchwork of overlapping administrative districts: Federal (National), State, County, City, Township. Each has its own set of regulations and there are different rules regarding whose regulations are in force where.
At the State level there are a few protected species of plants and the regulations concerning them are weak on private lands.
Here is a link to one of the State agencies responsible for environmental protection:
http://www.datcp.state.wi.us/core/environment/environment.jsp
Basically the State tells us what we can't have on our property rather than what we must leave on our property. There are a number of invasive species that we are supposed to control, but enforcement is sporadic. See my post "Weeds and more weeds," below.
Many people attempt to rehabilitate native prairie areas, with varying success. We are doing a bit of that in the area around our garden. We plant native species and control invasive and non-native plants, but a project like this is endless. Here's a photo of part of our 'no-mow' area taken on 30 July last year:
It looks a bit 'weedy,' yes? (The resolution of the posted image is poor, so you may have to use your imagination to see the items I'm talking about.) Most of the plants are pasture grasses - orchard grass, perennial rye and brome - that are non-native but well established. Others are native plants that we have planted over the years - the yellow flowers on the left and center right are a form of prairie dock while the orange flowers on the right are called butterfly weed. The bush near the birdbath is a non-native plant that we put in several years ago to provide cover for birds visiting the birdbath. The tall green plant to the right of the birdbath is a native yellow coneflower that blooms in late summer. The nastiest plant in the photo is hard to see. It's in the lower center, to the right of the dead tree and below the orange flowers. It is birdsfoot trefoil, a yellow flowering creeper planted on many highway rights-of-way to control erosion. It can take over a field in a decade, strangling native plants and forming a mat several feet deep. We pull it out when we see it (we must not have been looking very hard in late July!) but the roots are deep. Constant vigilance is the price of prairie restoration (not that we are restoring a prairie here - just putting in nice flowers).
Still, we have made some progress in 10 years - here's a photo of the same area taken in July 1999:
This photo was taken looking in the opposite direction - the house and trees in the background are located were our present deck is now, but the foreground area is almost exactly where the birdbath is located in the photo above. The plants are mostly giant ragweed with some burdock, fleabane daisy, bladderpod and others thrown in.
Part of our property is enrolled in a State of Wisconsin program intended to manage forest lands for timber production, with a (very) secondary goal of plant management. This program is called Managed Forest Law (MFL) and is incredibly complicated (what government program isn't?). Here's a link to the MFL site:
http://dnr.wi.gov/forestry/feeds/faqsFull.asp?s1=ForestTax&s2=MFL&inc=ftax
The MFL program is designed to encourage timber production through property tax abatement. Each MFL project has an associated land use plan, with a (very small) part devoted to faunal protections. Since each MFL project is specific to the landowner and property, there is an incredible patchwork of regulation and practices on different sites.
Regarding parks, there aren't any National Parks in Wisconsin, but the US National Park System (NPS) is perhaps different than the one in Hungary. The big NPS parks are mostly in the American West, with few east of the Rocky Mountains. Here's a link to a US National Park Service website that has an interactive map of the various parks - http://www.nps.gov/
This doesn't mean there aren't any parks in Wisconsin, they are just at a lower administrative level. Wisconsin has State parks and County parks. Here is a map of the State parks in Wisconsin:
It came from this site:http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/findapark.html
The State Park nearest to our farm is Wildcat Mountain, about 16 km away.
http://www.dnr.state.wi.us/org/land/parks/specific/wildcat/
I could talk about this forever, so I will quit while I'm ahead...
wb
