The following blog was written by Carol Abrahamzon, Executive Director of Mississippi Valley Conservancy.
A major grant from the Paul E. Stry Foundation will enable Mississippi Valley Conservancy to accept the donation of a rare, ecologically important property on the Kickapoo River, according to Carol Abrahamzon, executive director at the Conservancy.
The 100 acres of woods and sedge meadow, which is being donated to the Conservancy by Eric and Inese Epstein of Norwalk is located on both sides of the Kickapoo near Wilton in Monroe County. The land is especially significant for a hemlock relict, which is considered an ecological gem unique to this area and extremely rare worldwide.
Hemlock trees, some of them 150 to 200 years old, stand above the river, which is flanked by conifer-clad sandstone cliffs, springs and seeps. Abrahamzon said that the $37,024 grant from Stry will help cover the costs of maintaining the property and the expenses for completing the transaction.
Eric said in an interview recently that he and his wife purchased the land some 15 years ago from her brother who was planning to sell it — a sale that would have resulted in extensive logging of the property. “It was an emergency situation,” he said.
Inese said that her brother, who was going through a divorce, told them, “Buy today or the loggers will get it.”
She said they knew the value of the property since Eric had a long career with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources as an ecologist. He retired in 2011. Epstein said he had the opportunity “to poke my nose into every cool corner of the state.” For example, he led a project in the late 1990s to evaluate the coastal wetlands of Lake Superior as part of the Wisconsin Natural Heritage Inventory Program.
The Epsteins said they intended to hold the land, hoping that the state would buy and protect it. Eric said it became apparent to them that, given the state’s political situation, such a plan wasn’t likely to succeed. So they turned to the Conservancy.
Abrahamzon said the generosity of the Epsteins and the Stry Foundation would ensure that the site would be open to the public for hiking, bird watching, nature photography, fishing, canoeing and cross-country skiing. Mississippi Valley Conservancy will use the land for environmental education programs and make it available for researchers and graduate students to study the rare species, some of them state-listed, using the property.
Eric said the property “shows many of the attributes of undisturbed old-growth forest,” making it useful to land management researchers.
What might visitors to the site experience? The Epsteins offered this: A very sensual experience — how light filters through the branches, the smells of humus and duff, and the knowledge that there’s a barred owl watching you though you may never see it.
In addition to the hemlock relict, the property has alder thicket that is considered globally rare and includes a half-mile frontage on both sides of the river.
The property is located within the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Kickapoo River Conservation Opportunity Area of Continental Ecological Significance and has populations of the declining state threatened wood turtle, cerulean warbler, Acadian flycatcher, and eleven other state-protected rare species.
