After surviving years of encroaching development, a colony of great blue herons will finally be on its way out unless artificial nesting platforms are erected north of Capitol Drive, experts say.
A September storm with hurricane-force winds snapped and felled the few remaining, dying Dutch elm trees the herons made their home northwest of the Soerens Ford dealership at Capitol Drive and Brookfield Road.
The birds will have nowhere to return next spring and likely would fly on to a new nesting area.
But naturalists with the state Department of Natural Resources have a plan to save the rookery, with the help of the city, a town landowner and two utility companies.
The idea is to install power poles with wooden nesting platforms amid remaining trees. The poles would be donated by We Energies and the American Transmission Co.
The DNR would craft and attach the platforms to the poles, and American Transmission would go into the wetlands to install them. The city would notify neighbors and oversee the poles' placement.
There would be minimal cost to the city, and the utilities would donate the materials and labor.
The proposed project will be reviewed by the city Plan Commission on Monday and must have a public hearing because it involves erecting permanent structures in the wetlands. The work would be done in February.
Joan Kozisek, American Transmission's environmental project manager, said, "We as a company do recognize the value of working with nature and preserving the natural environment where appropriate.
"This also gives the DNR a good opportunity to educate the public about herons and their nesting areas."
Herons declining
The blue-gray birds with wings spanning 6 feet and long beaks for spearing frogs and fish have been declining in numbers, though they are located in every county in the state, said Bill Volkert, a DNR wildlife educator at the Horicon Marsh.
The herons are listed as a species of special concern - not endangered or threatened but in need of monitoring.
The Brookfield rookery has suffered from dying trees that also have been damaged by gnawing beavers. But rather than fleeing the area, the herons about five years ago began retreating a little deeper into the wetlands in Brookfield and established a second rookery with nests atop a few large cottonwoods and smaller green ash and maples, DNR officials said.
Volkert said he wants to save both nesting sites by adding 10 power poles at each site with up to 40 or 60 platforms attached.
"This colony, because it is in the middle of Brookfield, if those birds should ever abandon it, I don't think they'll ever come back," he said. "It's a great opportunity for people to see these birds. And you've got to give them credit for surviving this long (near a developing area)."
Volkert said there is no guarantee that if the artificial nesting areas are erected that the herons will return and use them. "But if you don't, you'll lose the colony," he said.
The platforms have worked for herons at Horicon Marsh and for herons and cormorants at the Mead Wildlife Area and at a site in Green Bay, Volkert said.
Beavers leave the area
Last year, there was talk about trapping and killing beavers to save the birds.
But the city worked with local Boy Scouts to wrap the trees to thwart the large rodents' munching. City crews cleaned out a culvert that was clogged with a beaver dam.
And since then, the beavers have moved on, apparently not happy with the type of trees in the wetlands and wanting better food, said Volkert and Bill Kolstad, the city's director of park, recreation and forestry.
Kolstad said the city is interested in keeping the rookeries.
"I think people enjoy seeing the nests and seeing the birds," he said.
The two rookeries are located on wetlands owned by the city and a town land owner, Clarence Steinacker, who has given the DNR approval to install the poles.
Steinacker, whose family has long owned 20 acres of town wetlands there that cannot be developed, said he enjoys watching and listening to the herons when he occasionally walks through his land.
"I guess it's kind of a rare thing," said Steinacker, of Milwaukee. "It's really so close to an urban area. That always amazes me that it's within one-quarter mile of one of the most heavily traveled roads in the area (Capitol Drive).
"A lot of those trees that they built those nests in have died, and they're not going to stand too long on their own."Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
