2026 Friends Annual Meeting

By Anita Weier and Sheila Leary

About 35 people braved one of the coldest days in one of the coldest recent winters to attend the annual meeting of the Friends of Cherokee Marsh on Jan. 24 at the Warner Park Community Recreation Center.

They learned that 169 children from four schools and MSCR programs visited the marsh in the 2024–2025 school year and that the Friends membership increased and donations doubled. Donations from members helped support three Eagle Scout projects.

The Friends received a $2500 grant from the Steve Stricker/American Family Foundation in late 2025, which will be matched by $5000 in Friends donations to purchase three large interpretive habitat signs for the North Unit. These will be installed in 2026, and the Friends board hopes to pursue a similar initiative for the South Unit if this one goes well. Donations of $1000 by Friends members will also support a new bench in the South Unit in memory of Russ Hefty, to be installed in 2026.

Steve Ackerman, Sheila Leary, Linda Malkin, Jim Mand, Paul Noeldner, and Russell Schwalbe were elected to 2-year terms on the Friends board of directors.

Hannah Quinlan of Madison Parks reported on the recently updated five-year habitat management plans for the North and South Units and Meadow Ridge/Mendota Unit. Invasive shrubs were removed from the North Unit to promote growth of young oak trees, and buckthorn was removed from Cherry Island. Woody debris was reduced in the Hornung Woods area. Prescribed burns were conducted, and a firebreak is being created.

Quinlan encourages park users to document species of all kinds in the parks using apps such as e-Bird and iNaturalist. Parks staff have been able to make good use of verified information from these community-sourced databases.

A tree survey conducted by Friends volunteer and board member Ed Snyder at Mendota/Meadow Ridge provided the Madison Parks conservation management team with valuable data for woodland management.

Lars Higdon of Dane County Parks gave an overview of the county’s conservation activities. A highlight was that volunteers and staff collected 1,700 pounds of seeds of 173 native species that will be sown in the parks. A program with multiple partners to map and battle invasive phragmites grasses along the Yahara River is continuing. The use of flying drones to map and control invasives in hard-to-reach wetland areas is proving helpful.

Justin Sargent of the Friends of the Yahara River Headwaters shared news of their continuing cleanup of upper reaches of the river, resulting in its classification by the Wisconsin DNR as a trout stream. He also provided an update on advocacy efforts regarding the QTS data center proposed in the headwaters area.

Becca Dymzarov of the Rock River Coalition (RRC) was the featured guest speaker. RRC’s mission is to educate and provide opportunities for people of diverse interests to work together to improve environmental, recreational, cultural and economic resources of the Rock River Basin, which includes the entire Yahara River watershed. You can download a PDF the entire slide deck of her presentation.

Dymzarov spoke about RRC’s many programs, including volunteer stream monitoring, aquatic invasive species projects, outreach & education efforts, waterside native plantings, urban forestry projects, resources for visualizing environmental data, and projects specifically within the Yahara River watershed.

Although much data on water quality in the upper Yahara River and Cherokee Marsh has been collected by volunteer water monitors over more than ten years, it is difficult to draw definite conclusions because of variability in data collection over that time. However, Dymzarov does see a small but steady increase in phosphorus in the waters, a situation that would be far worse without the many efforts of conservation agencies, organizations, and volunteers.

All photos by Wendy Murkve