Lunch & Learn: Measure to Manage
Apart from finding a home for 20 Barred Rock hens and a couple of roosters, a friend’s final request for Professor Tom Hunt was to serve as the land manager for The Prairie Enthusiasts’ Sylvan Road Conservation Area. This 99-acre conservation area is home to more than 365 native plant species, a reference quality wetland complex, oak woodlands, and a confluence of trout streams. Notable species include: Rattlesnake master, Yellow-headed fox sedge, Prairie gray sedge, and Prairie Indian plantain.
Even with significant natural and man-made disturbances, the site still holds patches of intact plant communities, particularly southern sedge meadow. With the help of a WDNR River Planning Grant and a team of science advisors, we set out to help characterize factors contributing to the site’s resilience: hydrology, soils, and vegetation. Disturbance-based communities depend on disturbances, but how much and what kind influence where along the “intactness” gradient a community may lie. Are there disturbance tipping points beyond which recovery becomes irretrievable?
This Lunch and Learn will share findings on characterizing factors of the Sylvan Road ecosystem and elicit discussion on the roles that anthropogenic and natural disturbance factors had in the state of ecological health in that system. By the way, what happened to those chickens?
Speaker: Tom Hunt, University of Wisconsin – Platteville, Professor Emeritus
Host: Southern Wisconsin Land Conservancy
Ticket Cost: $21.95
Featured Lunch Buffet: American Cuisine
Register by: February 15th, 2026
Event Links
Tickets: https://go.evvnt.com/3436298-0
Website: https://go.evvnt.com/3436298-2
