Welcome to the Annual Midwest Crane Count!


The Annual Midwest Crane Count is a tradition dating back to 1976. It is one of the largest citizen-based inventories in the world. One of the primary purposes of the Crane Count is to allow ICF to monitor the abundance and distribution of cranes in the Upper-Midwest. In the 1930's, an estimated 25 pairs of Sandhill Cranes resided in Wisconsin. The year 2000 Count tallied more than 13,000 Sandhill Cranes.

Each year, the Count involves over 3,000 volunteer participants that spread over 100 counties in five states.

We invite you to find out more about Crane Count, and hope you will participate! If you have been a counter for years, you'll also want to explore our Crane Count website.

Reminder: The next whole group meeting for Sustainable Dunn will be held on Monday, April 7. It is at 7:00 p.m. in the UCC Parlor. Our guest speaker will be Ed Todahl who is the heating plant manager at Stout. He will discuss the burning of coal in the facility and any other questions you may have.

Raina Clark, the Sustainability Coordinator for UW-Stout is planning to come also. You may know that Stout is working on an extensive plan to address environmental concerns at the university. You may want to ask her about some of the plans that are being discussed or worked on.

This is an important meeting. We need to have a good turnout when we invite speakers for your benefit. Plan to come, and bring a friend.

Hope to see you there.

Authoritative listing of farm and local food producers in this part of the state.

I've seen some discussion lately and have had some conversations with people revolving around the question - If this is the "tech corridor" of Wisconsin, why don't we have the kinds of web interactions and tech events that tech areas usually have?"

You'll ask yourself - what the heck does he mean by that?

I'm a web developer, and I build interactive web sites as a freelancer, mostly for nonprofits. This site is actually a pretty good example of what I do. Almost all of my clients are from outside of the area - in fact, one of the reasons I built this site was to try to have a local client - myself. I get clients on the coasts, clients in the Twin Cities, but in the Chippewa Valley, the general response I get is a blank stare. I'm beginning to believe that the Chippewa Valley isn't ready for Web 2.0.

This site is a good example. When I approach local businesses, they often think that this is a great idea, but they don't seem very much interested in participating, despite the fact that it's a great source of free publicity. Nonprofits that I approach in the area seem very wary of building a web presence that lets their constituents talk back to them. The idea that the Internet is inherently interactive seems to be lost on most people here, and I don't know why. I long for kindred tech geek spirits, and I'd love to meet you. I know you're out there.

UW Eau Claire Web Site