By Lela Nargi for the Food and Environment Reporting Network.Broadcast version by Mike Moen for Wisconsin News Connection reporting for the Solutions Journalism Network-Public News Service Collaboration In 2002, Deirdre Birmingham and her husband, John Biondi, bought a 166-acre farm in southwestern Wisconsin’s Driftless region. On a portion of that land — once used to raise cattle and grow feed crops like corn, soybeans, and alfalfa — they planted apple and pear trees to make fermented ciders. On a larger, spring-fed portion, abutting the orchard and en route to meadow and oak forest, they seeded in Indian and June and bluestem grasses, echinacea and bergamot, spiderwort and blazing stars, restoring a portion of the region’s native prairie. .
A federal district judge has ordered an end to a large-scale industrial logging project in Northwest Montana, a critical part of the state s endangered grizzly bear habitat. The section of the Kootenai National Forest has been a center of contention between conservation groups and developers for years. Now, a judge has ruled developers did not do a thorough assessment of the effect a 30-mile-long road would have on 11,000 acres of the habitat for the Cabinet-Yaak grizzly bear population. .
Scientists are gaining ground in the race to understand what is causing the spread of chronic wasting disease, or CWD, in deer and elk. Stuart Lichtenberg - research scientist at the University of Minnesota and co-author of a new University of Wisconsin at Madison-led report - said the team wanted to find out if deer ticks that were found on white tail deer killed by hunters carried prions, the misfolded proteins that spread the disease. "We were actually able to detect what we called transmission relevant doses of CWD prions," said Lichtenberg. " .