Wisconsin Idea Seminar: Wednesday, May 23

Map of Wisonsin showing Madison, Baraboo, Fond Du Lac, Oshkosh, the Oneida Nation and Door County.

Day three was spent entirely in Door County, learning about the tourism industry and the unique environmental and development issues facing the region. The group met with Natalie and Ned Nedderson, owners of Eagle Harbor Inn in Ephraim, and then visited Whitefish Dunes State Park, where piles of invasive zebra mussel shells covered the shoreline.

Lunch was taken at The Clearing, the folk school founded in 1935 by landscape architect Jens Jensen, before soaking up some of Peninsula State Park’s natural beauty.

The day ended with a Founder’s Day alumni dinner at the Sturgeon Bay Yacht Club and a keynote address by Molly Jahn, dean of the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences and a current bus trip participant.

First-person impressions

Tobias Schwarz

Radiologist, School of Veterinary Medicine

On: Trip to Whitefish Dunes State Park

“Eventually, (the zebra mussel infestation) kind of messes up everything. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to have an answer to battle them — it’s just about making peace with them.”

Listen to Schwarz’s comments (1.6 Mb mp3; 1 min., 51 sec.)

Colin Dewey

Assistant professor of biostatistics and medical informatics

On: Trip to Whitefish Dunes State Park

“We learned that the zebra mussels are filtering a lot of water in the lake and making the water much clearer, actually, which allows the sunlight to go much deeper into the lake and allows the algae to grow much stronger … When things start to die off, we learned that they initially all wash up on the beach in big mats of dead algae and mussels, which creates a really bad stench…”

Listen to Dewey’s comments (1.7 Mb mp3; 1 min., 43 sec.)

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