Stay tuned for In Our Range on the way next, brought to you by Westgate Nursing Rehabilitation and Assisted Living Center.
Good morning and welcome to In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau.
My guest this morning is Jenna Richardson with the North Lakeland Discovery Center in Manitwish Waters.
The North Lakeland Discovery Center is a 501C3 non-profit organization whose mission is to enrich lives and inspire an ethic of care for Wisconsin's North Woods through the facilitation of connections among people, nature, and community.
They provide lifelong learning for residents and visitors alike, including environmental education programs, monitoring and research projects, drop-in activities,
Jenna is a naturalist at the Discovery Center in Manitwish Waters.
Since 2023, she's been sharing her knowledge and enthusiasm for nature for people of all ages at the Nature Center, local libraries and community centers, and out on the local trails and lakes.
In the past, she worked as a guide in the Boundary Waters in Minnesota and in Yellowstone National Park.
Jenna considers herself a science communicator.
She has a Bachelor's of Science in Communication Studies and a minor in Anthropology.
Good morning Jenna and welcome to In Our Range.
Hi Mike, thanks so much for having me.
Yeah, it's good to have you.
So the North Lakeland Discovery Center is a tremendous treasure here in the North Woods.
How and when did this get started?
So the Discovery Center was established in 1996.
We're actually celebrating 30 years this year.
We got our 501c3 status in 99.
But it started with the local school, North Lakeland School, looking for a place to host their outdoor education curriculum.
And so a group of local community members all got together and kind of had this brain baby idea to try to lease this property from the Wisconsin DNR actually owns the land that we operate on.
And we lease the property from them.
So our campus
is totally operated by the Discovery Center, but the state still has kind of jurisdiction of how our forest is managed and the trails are technically within Northern Highland American Legion State Forest.
Oh, that's an incredible story.
So it started out of the public schools and then moved into this nonprofit partnership with the state.
Yeah, exactly.
Now we still work with Northlakewood School, but we work with a number of different schools across the region.
All these area schools will come to our campus and do their field trips here with us.
They choose the curriculum that's kind of in line with what they're studying at the time, and then we teach some outdoor education programs to their students.
They get to see our nature center, hikes the grounds, and have these fully immersive experiences.
So we're based around school groups, but we do public programming for people of all ages, from age of two years old to 92.
Excellent.
Yeah, I've been promoting some of the events here on The Morning Show and it's everything from, you know, bird identification to native flowers and native plant identification for preservation and tracking purposes.
It's really incredible.
The Discovery Center is really encouraging people to not only just connect with nature, but also work to be a part of preserving the beautiful nature here in the North Woods.
So what can people expect when they come to the Discovery Center?
So when someone comes to visit the Discovery Center they're going to find our main building we call it Discovery Hall where we have a year-round nature center.
It's currently open five days a week and the summer will be open six days a week.
People can come in and visit the nature center and all of the various exhibits as well as the animal ambassadors that live in our nature center.
We have turtles and snakes and
a salamander and a frog.
So we have all sorts of different critters that have come to us in various ways that we use to teach the public about nature.
We can also take those animals out on the road.
We often go to local libraries and community centers across the region.
I know that will be in Ironwood later this summer.
We have some programs booked with the Hurley Library where we will bring some of these animals with us so that we can kind of show kids
and families, those adaptations from firsthand experience.
We also will host programs like art workshops.
Like I know later this summer I'll be teaching a driftwood art, you know, sun catcher workshop for people to come and just make art that's inspired by nature.
So it's not necessarily all as directly educational as it is inspired by nature.
We also have classrooms and then our grounds themselves are open to the public from dawn to dusk.
So we have 12 miles of trail system where we have different ecosystems and habitats.
You can actually visit like our pine forest, we have a music forest, whether it's kind of a mixed deciduous forest with those pines.
We also have a bog habitat.
that people can explore so and all the trails are for the most part easy and there are interpretive signs on some of those where people can kind of learn while they're out on the trails hiking.
Yeah, what an incredible resource.
So you're not just hosting the workshops and engaging people directly, but folks can come to this preserved area and walk 12 miles of trails and get to get up close with a bog ecosystem and you visit something like that daily and you really get to see
how nature moves and works and get into the rhythm of the seasons.
And so you've got some pretty big events coming up this summer.
Would you like to talk about those?
Sure.
The one that's coming up so quick now is our largest fundraiser of the year.
It's called The Big Event.
And it is indeed that.
It's a couple of hours.
It's from 4.30 to 6.30 on June 6th.
And we have this year decided that it's going to be lumberjack themed.
So anyone that wears lumberjack themed attire will actually get put into a special prize drawing.
We also will have raffles throughout the night so people can either play games to get raffle tickets.
The games are lumberjack themed so we'll have lumberjack bowling which is where one would take a wood cookie and then kind of throw it like you're at like the bowling ball kind of like a mix between bowling and ski ball.
Super fun.
We'll do a hatchet throw.
We'll have a
the JAX 5 card draw, and then we also have our live auction and fund needs.
So at the kind of tail end of the evening, we auction off some of our bigger items, which include experiences like a waterfall tour hosted by some of our staff, unique lodging opportunities, a historical pontoon, one of the next
Melissa and I, Lisa Johnson and I will be hosting a forage high tea experience.
We're actually going to forage various things from nature and then do a four part high tea.
We'll also be doing some forage teas to go along with some of the food we'll be eating.
And then we'll share kind of our knowledge about all of the items that went into the food, which will be super fun and kind of unique.
And then each year we have what we call our fund and need initiatives.
And it's where?
We try to procure funds to support specific things.
And this year, it's going to be our seasonal staff because our seasonal staff are growing each year.
So we do conservation efforts.
So although we're educating and a lot of what we do is environmental education, we also do aquatic invasive species removal, land restoration efforts through a within water program.
And that within water program is evolving and has been evolving over the past several years.
so much so that we've been needing more and more staff to help us to to do that aquatic invasive species removal that we're being partnering with local lakes associations in order to complete.
So that being said, that Fund-A-Need is going to help us to fund for more staffing and to support them so that we can give them the adequate monetary support that they might need to work with us for a summer.
And then our other Fund-A-Need initiative is going to be supporting our current year-round core staff to advance their skills.
So each year we pay for first aid certifications, wilderness first aid, water safety trainings, things that we need to do so that we can be safe guides as well as advanced trainings.
So pretty exciting.
It'll be a really fun event.
We'll also have Rustic Roots catering.
Our food and Bernie Thompson will be
playing music.
So it'll be a really fun evening.
We've gotten so much amazing, generous sponsorship from local businesses.
It's a huge shout out to them and all of the local community members and businesses that have donated items to raffle off this year.
It's going to be really exciting what we have to offer.
So we hope that folks can make that on June 6th.
Moving forward in time, each year we do a free family program called Family Play Day.
that falls on the week of July 4th and it is a kind of fun day where people can come and do activities that are inspired by nature and we do like a fish casting contest and canoeing and lawn games and that's supported by the St.
Matthias Thrift Shop.
And then throughout the season, we have all these different programs come up depending on the time of year.
And in the summer, we really can ramp up all the paddles and pontoon trips that we're going to be doing.
And we have some really exciting new pontoon and paddling trips ahead.
And then in August, we actually are going to be celebrating what we have decided to call it foraging month, where we are going to have foraging focused programming throughout the month.
Lots of exciting things ahead.
We do have all that information on discoverycenter.net in our calendar of events.
All the summer is added now, but we will kind of, as we go through summer, probably add on some new things as we get more staff to join us this summer as seasonals that might want to do some other new things.
Wow.
So yeah, so the big event happening on June 6th, which is at Discovery Hall.
That will kick off a whole fundraising season to fund not just year-round activities, but also the invasive species removal program and trainings and teaching as well as furthering education for the staff there at the Discovery Center and Sounds like a wonderful time of year like very busy.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's a it's a whirlwind But it's wonderful.
I mean it really kicks off at these school groups and then we kind of
fall into this fast pace.
I mean, we all in the Northwoods are kind of used to that, right?
We get into May and June and, you know, fishing season opener and suddenly we're in the throes of it.
It feels like summer again, but all of that brings some really beautiful things and some wonderful connections.
So I'm grateful to be a part of it.
And I hope I can see some new faces at some of these upcoming events.
That sounds great.
Jenna, thank you so much for joining us this morning.
Is there anything else you'd like to share this morning before we head on out?
Please check out our website discoverycenter.net to find out about some of these exciting things.
that we have ahead this summer are all of our events and programs that we have.
I mean, if you ever want to become a member, we are a membership-based 501c3, so we do not take any funding from the state, so we actually receive funding through grants and membership and donations from our local community members.
If you ever want to learn about our membership drives, feel free to reach out to us and you can always find out that information on our website.
Excellent.
Jenna, thank you so much for joining us on In Our Range this morning.
Appreciate you being here.
Thank you.
I appreciate it, Mike.
My guest this morning was Jenna Richardson, naturalist with the North Lakeland Discovery Center in Manitowish Waters.
We discussed the history of the Discovery Center as well as their year-round events with schools and
outreach in the community, as well as their many summer programs happening.
They do have their big event fundraiser coming up on June 6th.
You can go to discoverycenter.net to learn more about that.
Thank you for joining us this morning on In Our Range.
I'm your host, Mike LeBeau, and we will see you next week.
