Resources for Landowners Series at Crossroads

By Coggin Heeringa, Interpretive Naturalist, Crossroads at Big Creek, Inc.

Crossroads is excited to welcome Tim Dahl and Jason Miller from Door County Soil & Water and the Door County Invasive Species Team (DCIST) on Thursday, August 8 at 5:30pm to discuss resources available to all as part of the Resources for Landowners Series.

The first European settlers at Crossroads, the Hans and Bertha Hanson family, were from Norway and apparently many of the men who lived in the boarding house on what now is our Ida Bay Preserve were Scandinavian immigrants. 

We celebrate our pioneer heritage. But we also must acknowledge that when people from other lands came to Door County, the land was forever changed.

My friend Eric Hemenway, a member of the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, explained,  “The Native People of the Great Lakes adapt our lives to fit the environment. The settlers adapted the environment to fit their lives.”

From the time of European settlement until  the present, humans have altered the land and water. Many of those efforts, which often were done with the best of intentions, degraded the environment. People from other lands have, over the centuries, introduced non-native plants. 

Crossroads and other environmental organizations, aware of  the role humans have on the landscape,  have learned from past blunders including the introduction of non-native plants and their impact to the environment. Tim and Jason will be helping to connect resources for current residents to help address these non-native plants and reestablish native species.

Agricultural plants made it possible for us to feed humans and domestic animals. We need to have agriculture, but according to writer/professor Dr. Douglas Tallamy,  “If you were to add up the amount of land in various types of built landscapes that is not dedicated to agriculture—suburban developments, urban parks, golf courses, mine reclamation sites, and so forth—it would total 603 million acres, a full 33% of our lower 48 states. We have not targeted these places for conservation in the past, but that was back when our conservation model was based on the notion that humans and their tailings were here and nature was someplace else.”

Door County has open land which could be restored and there are landowners willing to attempt this significant ecological work. The Crossroads  Resources for Landowners lecture series will introduce the programs of the Door County Soil and Water and DCIST.

The speakers will discuss the ways they can help land owners with the inevitable problem of invasive species. The program is free and open to the public, but it will be recorded, and after processing, will be posted on the Crossroads website.