Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
Coulee Region Audubon Society member Dan Jackson in December 2018 wanders through a grove of red pine trees Saturday at Goose Island County Park looking for owls that often roost during daytime hours in the conifers.
Do you have any conifers or other needle-bearing trees on your property? The Department of Natural Resources wants you to check them for heterobasidion root disease.
A seedling infected with heterobasidion root disease fruit body at base is shown.
HRD is described by the DNR as “a severe fungal infection that kills pines, spruces and other conifers in Wisconsin.” The disease has already been identified twice on the west end of Racine County, in Waterford and in the Town of Burlington immediately west of the Bong State Recreational Area in Kenosha County.
To check trees for HRD, the DNR said in a notice earlier this week, “This fall, watch for new, bright white growths on conifer bases, stumps, seedlings and saplings. To find the fungi, you may need to scrape away needles and other debris ... Please report suspected cases to your local forest health specialist.”
Stringy yellow decay caused by HRD is shown.
The disease can spread through roots below ground and can kill groups of trees that are seemingly dying one by one. According to the DNR: “HRD is a rot fungus that decays the wood of the roots and lower stem, so infected trees may have stringy yellow rot that causes the stems to break off.”
Go to dnr.wisconsin.gov/topic/foresthealth/annosumrootrot to learn more about HRD and related diseases.
The DNR has an online interactive map (bit.ly/3e7xjBh) showing where HRD has been found in the state, and most of the southern half of Wisconsin is covered as either having positively identified cases of HRD or being at risk of it.
A bald eagle flies over the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac, Wis., Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL
A pair of bald eagles fly over the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac last week. The river attracts hundreds of eagles from around the state who use the open water to feed.
Pete Schlicht, left, and Jeb Barzen watch for bald eagles at Black Hawk Bluff, an eagle roosting site just outside of Prairie du Sac.
This is the form used by volunteers when counting eagles. It includes spaces to document weather conditions and if eagles are mature or not. Volunteers monitor roosts from the Prairie du Sac dam south to Spring Green.
Pete Schlicht, a volunteer with the Ferry Bluff Eagle Council, watches for bald eagles at Black Hawk Bluff, an eagle roosting site near Prairie du Sac. Armed with binoculars and clipboards, volunteers like Schlicht document eagles at multiple roosting sites near and along the Wisconsin River.
Pete Schlicht, left, and Jeb Barzen straddle Highway 60 to observe and count bald eagles coming in to roost on Black Hawk Bluff. The counts, which have been ongoing since 1988, provide "invaluable information" used by the Ferry Bluff Eagle Council to document not only the numbers and location of the majestic birds but to provide data to local governments, landowners and others interested in eagle conservation.
A pair of bald eagles fly over the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac, Wis., Wednesday, Jan. 12, 2022. AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL
A bald eagle perched above the Wisconsin River near Muscoda. The Lower Wisconsin State Riverway draws more than 140 species of birds.
Marge Gibson, founder and executive director of the Raptor Education Group, says some words to a rehabilitated female bald eagle before she is released at the VFW Park in Prairie du Sac on Jan. 12. The eagle was found at Rib Lake with lead poisoning and a broken wing. AMBER ARNOLD
David Stokes of Hales Corners looks through a spotting scope during Saturday's eagle release event. Stokes, an educator, naturalist and humorist, will perform at Bald Eagle Watching Days Friday and Saturday in Prairie du Sac.
Marge Gibson, founder and executive director of the Raptor Education Group, brings a rehabilitated female bald eagle onto a bus so residents, including Mack McCluskey, 93, left, from The Pines Senior Living in Prairie du Sac can get an up-close view prior to its release.
Marge Gibson, founder and executive director of the Raptor Education Group, releases a rehabilitated female bald eagle at the VFW Memorial Park in Prairie du Sac on Saturday. The eagle was found at Rib Lake with lead poisoning and a broken wing but was nursed back to health at Gibson's Antigo facility.
Gibson shows off a rehabilitated immature male bald eagle, which was found injured and emaciated at a wastewater treatment plant in Merrill in early 2018. The eagle injured itself Saturday after being released and had to be recaptured for rehabilitation.
A rehabilitated adult female bald eagle, who was found near Antigo and had lead poisoning, exits an animal carrier to be released back into the wild at the VFW Memorial Park along the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac.
Cameras from the crowd who came to watch four eagles be released in Prairie du Sac on Saturday are pointed at a rehabilitated male juvenile bald eagle that had just been released after months of recovery at Raptor Education Group in Antigo. This eagle had lead poisoning and was found near St. Germain in Vilas County.
A bald eagle perches at the top of a tree on the Wisconsin River near the dam in Prairie du Sac, Wis., Friday, January 15, 2016.
A Bald Eagle soars over the Wisconsin River near the dam in Prairie du Sac, Wis., Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL
Jennifer Tice, front, and Edwin Cornell, both of Milwaukee, take photos of Bald Eagles at Ferry Bluff Eagle Council Overlook along the Wisconsin River in Prairie du Sac, Wis., Friday, Jan. 13, 2017. AMBER ARNOLD, STATE JOURNAL
Andrea Hoffman, collections manager at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum, points to the feathers used for a DNA analysis testing the gender of the Civil War mascot "Old Abe." The results showed determined the bird was in fact a male bald eagle.
Jesse Dabney, a postdoctoral researcher with the Molecular Archaeology Group at UW-Madison, speaks about the results of a DNA analysis testing the gender of the Civil War mascot "Old Abe" at the Wisconsin Veterans Museum on Thursday. The results showed that "Old Abe" was in fact a male bald eagle.
A photo of Old Abe from 1876 that was considered "autographed" after he pecked a hole in it.
Subscribe to our Daily Headlines newsletter.
Residents of a suburban Racine area neighborhood are breathing a collective (but nervous) sigh of relief following the removal of a “vicious” dog from its owner’s home after it bit a 78-year-old woman and the woman who went to protect her. The situation has only gotten more complex from there.
Two people died and six more were injured when the van they were in rolled over and caught fire on an onramp in Milwaukee Wednesday morning. The passengers in the vehicle were replacement workers on their way to the Case factory in Mount Pleasant, where local unionized employees have been on strike since May 2. Dozens of passenger vans have been arriving and leaving the factory daily for most of the five months of the strike so far as negotiations remain stalled between CNHi and United Auto Workers.
Half a dozen tornadoes possibly occurred in southeastern Wisconsin Wednesday.
An 85-year-old man "inadvertently operated his vehicle forward in the driveway when he thought he was operating in reverse," the Racine Police Department reported.
A 17-year-old Racine County Jail inmate allegedly assaulted another inmate in the shower and struck him multiple times with a broom.
WATCH NOW: Employees at this McDonald's could hardly believe what they were seeing after a drive-through customer offered to 'pay it foward' for the next person in line — setting off a chain reaction of good karma.
The suspect claimed he does not do any drugs other than smoking marijuana; he claimed a person named "Rio" pays him to deliver the shaving bag to people, according to charges.
Not even two years after it opened, the Caledonia location of Paparazzi Ice Cream Shop is permanently closed. The owners ceased operations mainly because of a move to Columbus, Georgia. Warmer weather, staffing shortages and higher success rates of Black-owned businesses in the South were other reasons.
It was the second lockdown at Case in as many weeks.
Two Racine County stops are scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 8.
A seedling infected with heterobasidion root disease fruit body at base is shown.
Stringy yellow decay caused by HRD is shown.
Coulee Region Audubon Society member Dan Jackson in December 2018 wanders through a grove of red pine trees Saturday at Goose Island County Park looking for owls that often roost during daytime hours in the conifers.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.