Ecologist Works to Restore Native Environments, Educate Residents

Colin Goyette is a restoration ecologist at the Schlitz Audubon Nature Center in Bayside, Wis. He received a degree in environmental science and natural resource management and conservation from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in 2021. He talked with Alexis Lonzo, a student in JAMS 660 Environment and the Media.

Alexis Lonzo: Can you give me a bit of an overview of the organization you work for in general, I know you guys do a lot of projects regarding animal rehabilitation that I saw on your website, but I was curious about what else you guys worked on.

Colin Goyette: Sure, my job title is restoration ecologist. So, within the guise of restoration ecology is a lot of vegetative management, a lot of assessment of ecosystem services, a lot of volunteer group leading, particularly in invasive removal, native plants, habitat restoration, as well as maintenance of property as well. So, to go a little deeper into what Audubon does, aside from just what you’ve seen about animal rehabilitation and conservation. Our jobs specifically as restoration ecologists, put a lot more time into the plant restoration side of things, because the signification of the quality of plants you have in a landscape will also dignify the quality of animals you have in that landscape. So, we do a lot of flora quality assessments to maximize the quality of vegetation on our property. We do a log of the surveying that goes into that. Some if it is invasive species surveying, some rare plants surveying, like I said before for some quality assessments, as well as ecosystem service assessments. So that’s a little bit of what I do. To speak more to the end of Schlitz Audubon as a whole, it’s an organization dedicated to the environmental education and restoration of the 185 acres of land. Some of the main goals within our conservation plan for the center go to maximizing that first enhancing ecosystem services, protecting and restoring populations of greatest conservation need and supporting our center’s mission of protecting the habitat that we exist on.

Q: Do you guys have some form of tracking the impact from your volunteer projects?

A: So that sort of level of tracking kind of goes down in our day to day work habits. So to give you an example, a lot of our students that we have had coming around in the past couple of months have been doing a lot with the buckthorn. Specifically, removal of buckthorn, which is a really nasty invasive species in Wisconsin. They’re really good at growing in thickets, and they outcompete a lot of native vegetation. They do not hold much value for wildlife, in terms of food or habitats therefore, it offsets the native species that exist in that region. When we see when we’re performing invasive removal, and projects of that sort on our landscapes, we are getting rid of those negative invasive species that are not serving much purpose to the landscape. We’re allowing space to either other plants or to accentuate a species that may already be existing in the area. It’s not that we’re assessing specifically the impact of the volunteers’ projects, but we are assessing the impact of the removal of that vegetation off the landscape. So we’re getting an understanding of okay, if we removed this much buckthorn off this parcel, how much of it is re-sprouting. One big issues with buckthorn is that one cut stump can turn into nine new sprouts. In restoration management, realistically, you want to get rid of 100% of the invasive species on your landscape, but that’s not always possible. So we’ll go out and do assessments and then reassess what the follow up work is. So those assessments kind of goes on our end to get an understanding of how the impacts of the work that we’re planning is being completed.

Q: What are your thoughts on the impact of soil erosion on Wisconsin rivers and the Great Lakes?

A: Erosion can be caused by heavy flows of water, hard rains and high winds. And then on the human side there are impacts and effects from improper killing, overgrazing and development. So, to go beyond that soil erosion is caused by all of those activities, most of them that we are seeing nowadays that are impacting our rivers and the ecology of our rivers are due to human effects. So, developments can cause an increase in the movement of sediment and the movement of nutrients. So, the two nutrients that are most commonly spread through development are phosphorus and nitrogen. Then the nitrogen that can come from farming or from fertilizers. A variety of sources can create the over density of nutrients in the stream bank. So then from there, as that sediment is flowing downstream, which can impact fish that migrate through these streams. So, like trout and salmon, which are introduced species that are now inhabiting our rivers to help maintain populations of lower trophies level fish, they will be impacted, and their habitats may even become completely degraded. And the the amount of dissolved oxygen, which is the oxygen that they require in order to survive and breathe and those habitats, and therefore they will die going on from there. So, sedimentation will then collect in that large lake. And then the eutrophication of lakes is characterized by the increased insurance and a decrease in oxygen. So that increase in nutrients is great for plant life. And that lake plants will use those excess nutrients to grow and to establish those lake beds. But algae will be produced, and when algae dies, the process of decomposition goes the algae will sink to the bottom of that lakebed. And then as it decomposes, it releases the rest of the oxygen, therefore, there is no oxygen persisting in that lakebed. And then the habitats of fish, amphibians of other aquatic dwelling creatures will be gone effectively, they will no longer have any oxygen to breathe and they will die. That will cause those populations of fish and wildlife to die off. And then that will then inherently cause damages up to the trophic level. So, you can see just by one, one increase, or I guess one effect, change to the composition of the stream can completely cause a cascading effect of destroying an entire ecosystem. So, in terms of my opinions, on soil erosion on our Wisconsin rivers, obviously it is detrimental to the ecology and the development of habitats and the upkeep of our species that need these, these sources in order to survive.

Q: How has the process of restoring forestry and grasslands changed more recently in order to mitigate erosion?

A: Sure, I’ll speak to the new rise in the idea of planting native historically in our landscape. I mean, let’s say since the 1800s with European colonization of America European settlers wanted to bring pieces of their home to here to make this landscape feel more like home. Part of that was bringing everything that they could possibly think of under the rainbow from the natural world over to our country and establishing that that has led to the wide understanding of invasive species in our landscape today. For example, most of the plants in our area will have a natural pest, whether that be something that comes in and feeds on it, or something that requires it for a habitat that will allow the populations to stay intact and allow the spread of seeds. When you have a population of species like buckthorn, and most of our native wildlife is not adapted to being able to eat from buckthorn, which means that, that then those, those plants are completely able to overtake a region, because there’s nothing, no natural predator, no natural pest, nothing is keeping the population from overgrowing. So, garlic mustard is another one of our herbaceous, invasive species that is almost in every state of the eastern United States. It takes over natural areas, it’s allelopathic, meaning that it produces its own chemicals in its root system that can prohibit the germination of other plants in the soil, as well as it can, I guess, prohibit the relationship between like arial bacteria and plants that require nitrogen fixation in order to survive. So, over time, we have noticed that bringing these species over from different areas of the world, it’s not feasible to maintaining native habitats. So, for example, native grasslands, those grass species can grow soil systems, root systems, up to six feet in height. Think of how much soil that those plants can hold in place, as compared to say, a dandelion that grows about three inches into the soil. Stabilization of that soil is held together by our native plants that have been adapted to keeping the soil in place. So, when you get rid of that from the landscape, and you bring in all plants that aren’t able, and don’t have the same qualities as those grasses, you’re going to see that erosion take place. So I guess, to tie that all in, a lot of ecologists nowadays are reverting back to native planting, to reinvigorate and heal our degraded lands that are losing both fertility and the structure in general.

Q: What are your opinions on the media coverage of environmental issues, both for the state of Wisconsin and nationally?

A: Sure, I’m going to speak nationally. I think that the world has a hard time discussing environmental issues because one, we have such low awareness and such low education as to the actuality of what the effects are of the causes that we are making. So, for example, with the stream bank erosion, there are visible effects, such as that eutrophication of lakes, the increase in nutrient matter will turn a lake legitimately green. And then you’re like, well, I know that I shouldn’t swim in this because there’s probably a huge outbreak of Cryptosporidium or E. coli bacteria, that is not safe for my health. But you cannot visibly see the impacts that it has on wildlife, unless you’re seeing dead fish floating in the lake. So even at that, and humans only see, okay, there’s death and dying occurring. But you’re not seeing the impacts of that death and dying has on vegetation that it has on the other animals that require those fish to live, it doesn’t show you everything else of the food chain that has been affected. So, a lot of a lot of environmental issues aren’t as plain as one story is going to cover it all a lot. We forget that science is a holistic study, you need to be able to look at all of the parts individually in order to understand the whole. In reality, all of these disciplines are really intertwined. And it’s hard as humans where we require identification, and I guess I should say, the ability to put things into a box, it’s hard to look at the holistic picture behind environmental issues when you don’t really have a full understanding of that full picture. So I think I think media coverage needs to be based in education before it needs to be based on like clickbait or like a one hit wonder sort of thing. For example, coverage on storms, coverage on storms is very like, oh, all of this disaster happened. This three $3 billion in damage and XYZ number of lives to this place, which are absolute atrocities. And it’s horrible to see the effects that this has on humans and the economy. However, these problems are being exacerbated by our activities, by the increase in production of fossil fuels, by the increase in use of fossil fuels, by development, and construction, and all of these things that we see is vital to our day to day upkeep, which are in turn causing storms that are rapidly getting worse and worse because of those activities. So, I guess in my opinion, I’d like to see, both of our statewide and federal media cover a bit more of the education side behind what our impacts are having on these storms, as well as what we can do to lessen that impact.