Reading Time: 9 minutes During the 2023 harvest season, one of Jake Lieb’s tractors quit working. A week later, his combine stopped working, too. Both were new — and he was locked out from making any repairs himself because of software restrictions embedded in the machines. Instead, a technician from John Deere was dispatched to diagnose and repair the problems. While waiting for the technician to come out, Lieb fired up a 20-year-old tractor he hadn’t used for harvesting in years. Crops are vulnerable to the weather, and had he not, Lieb could have lost at least a day of harvest. Some of the ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes Click here to read highlights from the story This year’s maple sap season began early in Upper Midwestern states for many producers, who experienced shorter seasons. Some credit those shifts to the year’s record warm winter.  Experts say human-caused climate change also is having varied and unpredictable effects on the maple harvest. Farmers and Indigenous communities whose ancestors have tapped trees since time immemorial are altering their practices and planning for an erratic future. The art of maple syrup production flows through generations of Dan Potter’s f ..read more

Reading Time: 4 minutes Anthony Larson describes himself as a hard-core ice fisher. Living in La Crosse, Wisconsin, right next to the Mississippi River, he has the luxury to fulfill that description. Once the river and its backwaters ice over each winter, he aims to fish every day, using his work commute to scope out particular spots he wants to hit. Even if all he can spare at the end of the day is 15 or 20 minutes, he goes for it. This winter was different. The above-average temperatures across the upper Midwest, driven in part by the El Niño climate pattern and in part by human-caused clima ..read more

Reading Time: 2 minutes Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers on Wednesday signed bipartisan bills designed to jump-start creation of an electric vehicle charging network along the state’s interstate system and major highways. The new laws free up nearly $80 million in federal construction aid and make it easier for gas stations, convenience stores and other businesses to operate the electric vehicle charging stations. The measures were backed by businesses and environmentalists alike and cheered as a way for Wisconsin to expand its electric vehicle charging network. The funding is designed to support Lev ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Many people might go their entire lives without seeing a bald eagle, our majestic American emblem, in the wild.  But if you live within driving distance of the upper Mississippi River, that’s not a problem, especially this time of year.  Each winter the upper Mississippi River plays host to hundreds of bald eagles that are migrating to and from their breeding grounds. They join the so-called “resident eagles” that always live along the river to create an impressive sight, particularly at the end of February and beginning of March: Some viewers have reported se ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes The white trailer blends into the winter landscape at SKB Environmental’s landfill in Rosemount, Minnesota, but inside, machinery is working to capture one of the most pervasive environmental pollutants of our time. The landfill is the final stop for industrial waste, incinerator ash and demolition garbage, where all of that material is mixed into massive, lined cells. Like in every landfill, moisture in the trash that’s trucked in mixes with rainfall and collects into a polluted soup known as leachate. SKB is experimenting with filtering PFAS chemicals out of that liqu ..read more

Reading Time: 9 minutes Click here to read highlights from the story Applying manure atop snow or frozen soil heightens the risk of runoff, which can contaminate water, spread pathogens, seed algae blooms and kill fish. Stanford University researchers are using aerial photographs — snapped by satellites orbiting the globe — to teach computers to recognize winter spreading.  Researchers say their model correctly spotted manure in half of the 121 cases that the Department of Natural Resources investigated last winter based upon satellite images researchers sent the DNR’s way.&nbs ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes Wisconsin Watch is a nonprofit and nonpartisan newsroom. Subscribe to our newsletter to get our investigative stories and Friday news roundup. This story is published in partnership with The Associated Press. Environmental regulators can’t unilaterally force polluters to clean up contamination from so-called forever chemicals without going through the Legislature to establish specific limits on the compounds, a state appellate court ruled Wednesday. The 2nd District Court of Appeals’ decision all but eliminates the Department of Natural Resource ..read more

Reading Time: 3 minutes This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox. Unless thunderstorms dump rain on the Midwest in the coming months, there’s little chance of spring flooding on the upper Mississippi River this year, forecasters say. That news is likely to bring re ..read more

Reading Time: 5 minutes This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an editorially independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism in partnership with Report For America and funded by the Walton Family Foundation. Wisconsin Watch is a member of the network. Sign up for our newsletter to get our news straight to your inbox. Zemua Baptista had dreamed his whole life of becoming a farmer. In late 2019, while still in college, he was able to get a contract and a beginning farmer loan to build eight chicken houses to raise ..read more