There are natural communities in the plant world working to heal and bring balance to the land and all living things. The way the plant world does this will be the subject of a walk-and-talk presentation at the May 9 meeting of the Friends of the Black River (FBR). Weather permitting, the meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. in the park shelter at Al Young Park. Al Young Park is at the southern end of Second Street in Black River Falls (near Cormican Landing). If the weather is rainy or threatening, the meeting and presentation will be held in the lower level community room of the Co-op Credit Union. The walk along the Foundation Trail will follow a brief business meeting.

April Meeting - Karl Green of UW-Extension will speak on sand mining in western Wisconsin. The place of the April 11 meeting has changed to Jackson County Bank's lower level meeting room. The meeting will begin at 6:30 p.m. The public is welcome to attend.
 
Earth Day Clean-up - Saturday, April 21, from 8 a.m. - noon. Meet in the log cabin parking lot at Castle Mound State Park to be assigned to a group and a section to work on. The state park will provide a lunch at noon for volunteers. To sign up, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or contact John Elliott at 715-284-1507.
 
Spring paddles - Sunday, April 22 on the Black River from the Hatfield dam to Cormican Landing at Black River Falls beginning at 10 a.m.
Sunday, May 20 on the Black River from Hall's Landing to Cormican Landing beginning at 10 a.m. Paddlers can take out at any landing they choose if they don't want to paddle the whole distance. Contact Jeff Polzin at 715-896-5534 for more information about the paddles.

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The stream monitoring coordinator for the Black River area is looking for a few dedicated volunteers. Quinn Robinson, the new Water Action Volunteer (WAV) coordinator invites local citizens interested in helping gather data on the condition of area streams to attend an informational meeting Tuesday, April 17.
The meeting will be held at the Black River Area Green School (BRAGS) beginning at 6:30 p.m.  The BRAGS building is located just north of Forrest Street Early Learning Center on Forrest Street, Black River Falls, in the portable classroom building.
Volunteers participating in the WAV program will receive training for collecting data on the  temperature, dissolved oxygen, stream flow, transparency, stream side habitat and macroinvertebrate (insects and other small animals) composition of the stream they choose to monitor.  Volunteers will be paired up and the team will go out to collect the data about once a month from April through October. The data collected will be entered into an online database that is then used for baseline data of water quality.
An in-depth description of WAV can be found at http://watermonitoring.uwex.edu/wav/.
Food and beverage will be provided at the informational meeting. Those interested are asked to RSVP to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or by calling 715-896-9544.

Mining sand for the oil drilling industry has created much discussion in the Black River watershed as well as throughout western Wisconsin. The issue of sand mining will be the topic of the April meeting of the Friends of the Black River (FBR).

Karl Green, Community Natural Resource Economic Development agent from La Crosse County, will give a presentation on sand mining at the Wednesday, April 11 meeting. The meeting will start at 6:30 p.m. in the community room of the Jackson County Bank.

Green’s presentation will give a geologic overview of where the sands are mined in the Coulee Region for the hydrofracking (fracing) industry, as well as the issues local citizens and government officials face when a sand-mine site is proposed in their communities.

Green has been speaking at a number of other forums and meetings around the regtion, providing information about the economical and environmental impacts of sand mining. His presentation describes what frac sand is, where frac sand is located in western Wisconsin, how it is used, what market forces affect frac sand mining, the advantages and disadvantages of frac sand mining, the process of hydrofracking and what chemicals are involved at oil drilling sites and how citizens can address with the issues surrounding the mining.

There is no admission charged and public is encouraged to attend Green’s presentation.

For more information about the program or FBR, e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

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