This project plans to expand the efforts of bat monitoring from land onto water. Through the involvement of citizens inventory and monitoring data will be collected by following a survey route by boat around the edge of a lake. The collected echolocation calls of bats can then be mapped onto an aerial photo of the lake so you can observe which of the seven Wisconsin bat species are present or absent.

This project will monitor the nesting success of American kestrels on the Buena Vista Wildlife Area in central Wisconsin. This volunteer program has been operating continuously since its inception in 1968 by the late Fran Hamerstrom and is one of the longest running American kestrel nest box studies in the United States. Fifty nine kestrel nest boxes have been erected on the Buena Vista Wildlife Area. They will be checked weekly using a wireless nest cavity camera on a telescoping pole from May 1st until the middle of August when all the kestrel chicks have fledged. The chicks will be banded between the ages of 14 and 21 days. Adult males and females will also be caught and banded using a mechanical great-horned owl, an audio call, and a dho-gaza net.

Our research proposes to use previously collected radio-telemetry locations from northern Wisconsin to construct a predictive model of bobcat habitat selection to determine the distribution of the bobcat population in Wisconsin. The efficacy of the model will be tested with volunteer-run, non-invasive, hair collection surveys. We will train volunteers to perform the surveys in pilot areas in northern and central Wisconsin in winter of 2007/2008. The citizen surveys should allow us to assess the feasibility of the technique for validating the presence of bobcats, as well as investigating the potential of this technique in the future to estimate bobcat population size.

Northland College's Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute proposes to enhance its current LoonWatch Citizen-based Annual Lakes Monitoring Program for common loons and their associated aquatic habitats through a new partnership with the Loon Citizen Science Network, coordinated by Mike Meyers at the WDNR. In 2007 the WDNR implemented a citizen component to their loon population model research. This model provides a matrix to make predictions about future loon populations in Wisconsin based on multiple stressors that may impact breeding success and adult mortality. These partnered programs hope to set a national standard for citizen-based loon monitoring and make coordinated data available to the public for further needs assessments and community education. Integrating our efforts at Sigurd Olson Environmental Institute with those of the WDNR will centralize data gathered over the past twenty-nine years, and we will be able to make these data accessible to citizen scientists, researchers, educators, and others on the World Wide Web. The study area monitored is primarily the North Central Forest ecological landscape.

This project plans to establish a long-term citizen-based monitoring program of both the snakes and turtles in Riverside Park and the surrounding areas. This will include annual snake mark/recapture surveys using plywood cover boards, and tracking individuals of the State-threatened Butler's Gartersnake to determine life history parameters and population trends. The project will also have annual turtle visual basking surveys and mark/recapture surveys using traps, and radio tracking turtles to determine activity ranges within the study area. The study area includes the Milwaukee River from Capitol Drive on the north to the North Avenue Pedestrian Bridge on the south (Milwaukee County). In addition to the river, we will study riparian floodplains and upland grasslands adjacent to the river.

This project will establish a stream monitoring program at Pulaski Community Middle School utilizing the Water Action Volunteers (WAV) program, an introductory stream monitoring program that is part of the Citizen-based Water Monitoring Network. 7th grade science teachers will receive initial training on the Water Action Volunteers and will implement the program in their curriculum. A total of about 300 students will be involved with watershed education, stream monitoring sampling (dissolved oxygen, transparency, stream flow, macroinvertebrate sampling etc.), and citizen action skills. Students will also educate landowners in the community who live along the stream about the importance of water quality and actions they can take to improve water quality. This will be done by students informing landowners of the streams benefits and what they can do to help through flyers and community stream clean-ups. Not only will this project meet the curriculum standards but it will also provide students with an authentic, hands-on data collection, and citizen action skills application learning opportunity.

In 2008, Central Wisconsin Trout Unlimited CWTU teams will continue to monitor as many streams as we have equipment for. Not only will members continue to be trained at Level I and II, but several have actually become active in WAV as trainers. CWTU will continue to provide opportunities to train volunteers at Levels I and II as well providing trainers to help with the WAV training. The data used from this project will be used by DNR staff to decide if management techniques should be implemented to improve stream quality, and if so, what techniques to use. Possible management techniques could include establishing vegetative buffers through projects such as Conservation Reserve Enhancement Program (CREP).

This project will establish an annual volunteer census for Kirtland's Warbler in Wisconsin which will be an extension of the existing yearly program in Michigan and Canada. Volunteers will be trained to survey for the presence of singing males in the Warbler's preferred habitat of 5-20 year-old jack pine on public lands in the Northern, West-Central, and Northeastern Regions of Wisconsin. Census protocol established by the Kirtland's Warbler Recovery Team in Michigan will be followed.

The Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau School District Schools plan to establish a process for monitoring inland streams using a school based and student centric model. The model is designed to provide a win-win for kids, teachers, schools, citizens of Wisconsin and environmental professionals. The project has as its goal to develop a fully exportable model (sampling materials, methods, and results) that can be used across Wisconsin school districts - which are an "untapped" resource for the Citizen-based Monitoring Program.

This project proposes to increase volunteer enrollment with the Wisconsin Loon Citizen Scientist network, initiated Spring 2007, which is designed to assist WDNR Science Services collect the data necessary to improve predictions of loon population dynamics in a region of the state impacted by multiple stressors including mercury exposure, nest habitat alteration, and increasing human disturbance. We will also increase the data quality assessment of information collected by volunteers. Achievement of these goals will allow DNR policy makers to predict the population level benefits of reducing or controlling the impact of these stressors on the Wisconsin loon population, such as mercury emission reductions and improved lake habitat and shoreland protection rules.

The purpose of this project is to determine the impact from communication towers to avian migrants in Dane County, WI. Together with the support of interested local community members and students, in addition to the cooperation of tower owners/managers, we will obtain daily mortality estimates for a minimum of 11 towers during the peak of migration in fall of 2007 and spring of 2008. We will be considering the role of tower height, weather, season, and migration intensity upon observation of mortality events at each tower. We hope to gain a better understanding of tower kill events that can ultimately help guide future tower management and bird conservation.

The Lower Fox River Watershed Monitoring Program (LFRWMP) is a citizen-based monitoring program in which teams of high school students and teachers perform various monitoring activities in selected sub-watersheds of the Lower Fox River. Five watersheds are studied by teams from seven local high schools.

The purpose of this level 3 Network project is to partner the Water Monitoring Network with the MMP to take advantage of existing strengths of each program in order to report on long-term wetland bird, amphibian, aquatic macroinvertebrate community assemblage and water quality data in the Lower Fox River/Green Bay and St. Louis River Areas Of Concern. The data citizens will collect will be contributed to the Marsh Monitoring Program as baseline information to help measure and track the success of Remedial Action Plan restoration and rehabilitation efforts in each of these selected AOCs. Long-term volunteer-collected water quality and aquatic macroinvertebrate community data, in addition to MMP volunteer-collected marsh bird and amphibian monitoring data, collectively serve to directly address four Beneficial Use Impairments (degraded benthic invertebrate populations, degraded fish and wildlife populations, fish and wildlife habitat loss and aquatic eutrophication) by providing important data toward selected Beneficial Use Impairment delisting targets and by tracking the success of AOC Remedial Action Plan restoration and remediation investments.

Friends of Cam-Rock Park is a non-profit environmental group that works within Cam-Rock Park and the local community sponsoring educational booths at fairs and other events, plus sharing our volunteers for Earth Day and other environmental needs. The location of the study area is Koshkonong Creek in eastern Dane County, WI at Cam-Rock Park. This program plans to expand their citizen-based monitoring by purchasing water monitoring equipment and sponsoring Koshkonong Creek Day for kids of all ages on Saturday, June 14, 2008. This event will be educational and include: two training stations: first at Cam-Rock 1 with creek critters, a new rain garden to study the plants and butterfly/insect visitors there plus macroinvertebrate studies of creek creatures. The other training station will be on the creek in the Village of Rockdale learning about the large, 2006 rain garden, its native plants and the birds and butterflies that visit daily in the park.

The study will take place in select locations within the Iron County Forest. Areas to be targeted will be determined by a combination of factors including: tracking surveys, reported observations by local trappers, and monitoring the movements of one already-collared marten. This project is an expansion from a seven year effort that has focused on fisher research.

The purpose of this project is to implement a pilot marshbird monitoring program in Wisconsin. This program will serve as a model for other states as part of an integrated federal survey program. The objectives will be to gather improved information on marshbird distribution and habitat use, while also generating estimates of abundance and population trend for most of the marshbird species. This project will also involve both volunteers (citizens) and professionals alike in successfully conducting marshbird surveys and utilizing that information in future WAP revisions and other conservation planning efforts.

This project will develop pilots for the use of citizen-collected data through the use of bioblitzs on public lands.

This study is a continuation of a project funded by the Citizen-based Partnership Program in 2006. The goal of this project is to provide a better understanding of the size and distribution of Wisconsin's black bear population. This project was initiated in 2006 as a partnership between the University of Wisconsin, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and The Wisconsin Bear Hunters Association. Mark recapture is the method employed for population estimation. The marking in this study relied upon the deployment of tetracycline-laced baits. An estimated 500+ volunteers were involved in the placing and checking of these baits throughout the state. In all 2,235 baits were placed in 29 counties. Of these, 971 were taken by bears. The recapture in this study was accomplished through collection ribs from harvested bears. From the 2,930 bears harvested, 2,592 rib samples were submitted. Analyses of these samples are pending. The study will continue through 2007 with another season of rib collection. The second season of sampling is required to provide a sample size adequate for accurate population estimation.

This water quality improvement project's goal is to provide the education and planning with watershed landowners for overall reduction of sediment and related pollutants that could reach the surface waters and thus be transported to water entering the Horicon Marsh from Fond du Lac County land ownership.

This project is an expansion of the Chicago Botanic Garden's Plants of Concern (POC) monitoring program into SE Wisconsin, and it supports the Chicago Wilderness Biodiversity Recovery Plan. The program trains volunteers to collect population data on state-listed and rare plant species following specific standardized protocols, which allow for scientific data analysis across years such as population viability analysis for the monitored species. This pilot project will develop a long-term POC program for Chiwaukee Prairie located in the Village of Pleasant Prairie in Kenosha County.

Volunteers for the Wisconsin DNR Frog and Toad Survey have collected valuable information on anuran species since 1981. There is no ongoing monitoring program on salamanders in Wisconsin even though studies in other states and herpetologist observations suggest that they are silently disappearing from our landscape. The Wisconsin salamander survey is a new initiative that will bring attention to these secretive creatures and provide useful baseline information needed to alleviate an apparent declining trend. Citizen monitors will survey potential salamander breeding habitats throughout Wisconsin in geographic areas of Audubon chapters and centers, provided they have one or more members wishing to participate.