A recent collaboration between Wisconsin birders and the Oneida Nation demonstrates how the tribe's decades-long habitat

A good success story. Now have to work to keep it habitable for all creatures


A recent collaboration between Wisconsin birders and the Oneida Nation demonstrates how the tribe's decades-long habitat restoration paid off.
https://www.audubon.org/magazine/winter-2021/on-oneida-wetlands-bird-surveys-affirm-tribal


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Words by Xian Chiang-Waren
Senior Associate Editor, Audubon Magazine
Published Winter 2021

Twenty years ago, Tony Kuchma took charge of restoring the Oneida Nation's wetlands in northeastern Wisconsin. The land was marked by old mills and farm operations. The water was polluted. The fields were overrun with non-native plants.

Since then, Kuchma and his team have rehabilitated about 3,000 acres of the reservation. “Large-scale restoration is an accumulation of years of effort,” he says. “We’re looking at the land: Some wants to be prairie, some trees, some wetland. The land tells you what it wants to be again.

Now streams flow where ditches stood, and there's a renewed wildlife presence. “We’ve had eagles come back,” says Randy Cornelius, a cultural representative of the tribe. “I’ve seen ospreys, cormorants, ducks I’ve never seen before.”

Species abundance is a reliable marker of successful restoration, and Kuchma knew that gathering data about birds would inform land-management decisions. But as the pandemic hit, loss of revenue and delayed federal aid led to layoffs at the reservation and seemed sure to affect its conservation work. ...................