Students wade into nature
Park ponds monitored for aquatic life
Nikki Pederson lifted a small cylinder-shaped trap out of a shallow pond at Franklin Park to find a predator — a giant water bug — staring back at her with its pincers open and ready to grab its next meal.
An hour earlier, she was introduced to two crayfish inside a trap pulled out of a pond at Rainbow Airport Park.
Pederson, a Franklin High School senior, was among a crew of students visiting the two Milwaukee County parks last week to monitor aquatic life in ephemeral ponds. They found wildlife is plentiful in the temporary ponds of spring but you have to wade into the water to see it.
Repeated “cree-ee-ee-eek” calls of chorus frogs greeted them at each wetland.
Rebecca Biggs, a fellow senior, checked water temperature and noted trap contents before the creatures were returned to the pond.
A plastic tub is used to scoop up water. This reveals pill bugs, scuds, tiny crayfish and assorted insect larvae.
The monitors that day also observed several masses of eggs from leopard frogs floating at the surface of the ponds, and egg masses from blue-spotted salamanders attached to plant stalks in the water.
And a snapping turtle. Julia Robson, assistant natural areas coordinator for the Milwaukee County Parks Department, reached into the pond at Rainbow Airport and did not hesitate to pull out the hard-shell reptile. She lifted with one hand on its tail and the other hand placed under its body for support so the turtle would not be injured.
But this male didn’t show any appreciation for the care given to the lift, as it snapped its jaws and repeatedly hissed its displeasure.
The day’s efforts were the latest round of wetland monitoring by members of the high school’s Environmental, Conservation and Outdoors Club, said Pat Gain, club adviser and environmental science teacher. Some club members are county volunteers, trained to survey the distribution of amphibians, reptiles and crayfish.
Gain said he “cuts them loose” to wade into the ponds, and hovers around in case there are questions about the creatures and egg masses they find or the birds and frogs they hear.
Ephemeral ponds appear in depressions on the landscape after snow melt in late winter, and are sustained by spring rains before drying up in late June or early July, Robson said.
Since 2009, county employees and volunteers have verified around 400 recurring temporary ponds in parks and parkways across Milwaukee County. The wet-dry cycle is important, especially for frogs and salamanders, because fish are not present to prey on eggs, Robson said.
Naturalists have documented 20 species of herptiles — amphibians and reptiles — in county parks. This group includes four types of frogs, American toad and American bullfrog, three salamander species, five different snakes and six turtles. There are also seven species of crayfish in park waterways.
This is the first spring that school groups, as well as individuals and families, have been trained as wetland monitors and assigned one or more ponds to watch.
The Franklin High School’s E.C.O. Club, as it is known, regularly surveys ponds in three parks, Gain said. In addition to Franklin and Rainbow Airport, the group checks ponds at Grobschmidt Park.