An oak savannah in southern Dane County that the Badgerland Foundation is working to conserve using Knowles-Nelson Stewardship funds (Photo by Henry Redman/Wisconsin Examiner)
The looming shutdown of Wisconsin’s decades old Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Grant program has put conservation projects across Wisconsin at risk as land trusts attempt to muddle on without the program that has protected more than 700,000 acres of land in the state.
Without the stewardship fund, projects to conserve 1,300 acres of Northwoods forest near the headwaters of the Wisconsin River in Vilas County, hundreds of acres of “ecologically significant” wetlands in Door County and dozens of acres of prairie and grassland in Dane County could go unfinished…