By Bruce Ross, Executive Director bross@wisducks.org
This article originally appeared in Wisconsin Waterfowl Association’s October, 2023 Newsletter edition.
We are pleased to welcome Anna to the WWA Wetlands Habitat team with her significant experience in public and private lands restoration through work in the private sector. She fills WWA’s full-time Public Land Ecologist role, and will be working alongside Peter Ziegler and Mark Pfost in both of our public and private land restoration programs. Her focus will be on identifying restoration candidates on DNR properties, then planning and overseeing the restoration itself.
Anna’s background makes her well-suited to this role. She has led numerous private lands restorations, brings prescribed burn experience and training through the National Wildfire Coordinating Group, carries several sawyer training certificates, and has a BA in Environmental Studies. Previous positions include a naturalist position with the WDNR, and coordinating and conducting land management throughout the Driftless Area and Mississippi River Valley with a local environmental restoration company. Her home in Blue Mounds means that she’ll be able to expand our restoration focus to the west of Madison as well.
In her free time, Anna enjoys exploring new public lands across the state, cooking up a good meal, and getting her boots muddy in a nice wetland. These days, her weekends are spent out in the woods, enjoying the fall colors and building up a good supply of firewood for this winter’s maple syruping.
Anna will also be coordinating a new WWA initiative to provide monitoring and maintenance planning for private land wetland easements and CRP alongside the Natural Resource Conservation Service. This program will require yet another WWA ecologist be added to our staff, likely in the spring.
We are excited to have Anna on our team — look for great things from her as she works to identify, plan and restore neglected wetlands on the DNR’s properties.