3 results for author: Dr William Van Lopik

Wisconsin Legislators Introduce Rights of Nature Bills

  *photo credit: Rep. Vincent Miresse   Wisconsin Legislators Introduce Rights of Nature Bills   Wisconsin legislators celebrated Indigenous Peoples Day by introducing a package of bills at the State Capital that will go a long way to protecting our fragile and deteriorating environment in Wisconsin. Anahkwet (Guy Reiter) who is from the Menominee Nation and one of the leaders in the Rights of Nature movement in Wisconsin spoke at the news conference. He said “Let me be real with you: the laws that are supposed to protect our communities and the natural world are designed to regulate destruction, not stop it. They ...

The Backyard Incident

  Every year a pair of robins take up residence on a back porch light outside our family back door. I am not sure why they chose this spot since it is precariously close to our comings and goings. They get upset at us every time a family member goes in or out the door. I figure they may like the security the location affords them against predators for when their chicks hatch. This year we noticed three hatchlings in the nest. Their mother and father would diligently feed them, and we saw them grow quickly in their first 10 days of life. We were excited with anticipation for the day they would leave the security of their nest.  We knew ...

WE NEED THE AIR OF THE TREES

This past October I had the opportunity to tour the Menominee Tribal Enterprise sawmill located in Neopit, Wisconsin on the Menominee Indian Reservation. The logs that come into the sawmill are harvested from the 220,000 acre Menominee Forest. They have been harvested in a sustained-yield manner. Since 1854 two and one-half billion board feet of lumber has been cut, that is the equivalent of cutting down all the standing timber on the reservation almost twice over. However, the volume of standing timber now is greater than when they started in 1854. The forest can easily be seen from outer space in that it resembles a forest island among the agricul...