Biocore Prairie turns 20 years celebration – May 14

Along with the Biocore program’s 50th anniversary, the Biocore Prairie turned 20 this year! On May 14, a grand birthday celebration marked the anniversary on site at the prairie. Visitors were greeted with celebratory soft music and root beer floats. The community of students, alumni, faculty, administrators, and friends enjoyed walking tours with the knowledgeable team of Biocore Prairie interns. There were informal presentations by current Biocore director Janet Batzli, former director Ann Burgess, who in 1997 first envisioned the transformation from abandoned agricultural, weedy field to prairie, Curt Caslavska who tireless worked at this amazing restoration project with scores of students, paid workers, and volunteers, and Seth McGee, current Lab manager of the Biocore program and supervisor the Biocore summer interns.  

Today, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Biology Core Curriculum is an award-winning intercollege honors program and the Biocore Prairie is a central field site for two Biocore lab courses and for summer independent research projects, service learning, and collaborative research and teaching efforts with many other UW-Madison programs.
 
There were six exhibits along the birthday celebration path, including two exhibits by the Biocore courses 382 and 486 students, the UW Lakeshore Nature Preserve with Bryn Scriver, Laura Wyatt and Adam Gundlach the Biocore Bird Observatory with Jackie Sandberg and volunteers, the Citizen Science projects of the Biocore Purple Martin house and Bluebird trail sponsored by the Friends of the Preserve, with Gisela Kutzbach, Paul Noeldner, and Janis Cooper, and the undergraduate Bat research project with Thomas Guerin, sponsored by the Friends and supervised by Seth McGee. Visitors included one of the earliest graduates of the program, Bob Majeska who graduated in 1971, scores of enthusiastic students and visitors of the Madison community. With the late spring this year, visitors could still enjoy Shooting Stars in bloom and budding Golden Alexanders. Plan to visit this special place this summer or with Friends field trips on July 14 and 29, and August 4 and 11.