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Photo: Chris Winters Annual Report ® September 2013 - August 2014 1 A Letter from our Executive Director Greetings Friends and Supporters, You gave, and hundreds of thousands benefited. Through your commitment to our three strong branches in Milwaukee, you transformed parks into revitalized outdoor green space, and you created more nature-based educational opportunities for children. Your outstanding dedication allowed our continued work in hosting over 28,000 student visits on educational field trips, planting thousands of trees and shrubs, welcoming over 206,000 visitors to our branches, collaborating with 3,797 volunteers, and lending out quality outdoor equipment over 2,540 times to local explorers. This year, our goals included an increase in the services at our Washington Park branch, opening the Milwaukee Rotary Centennial Arboretum, securing the Riverland property along the Milwaukee River and continuing to enhance the infrastructure to support the organization’s mission. In addition to these wonderful results from the current year, the Center is also positioning itself for continued stability and growth in years to come. The Center’s executive leadership, along with guidance from the Board and its committees, maintained a keen focus on the adequacy of cash and overall reserve levels, the positive ratio of assets to liabilities, and a robust fundraising pipeline to ensure a solid financial foundation from which to cultivate future growth. Our success was made possible with your help. We are so excited to reach all of these milestones together, and we’re grateful to the many foundations, corporations, contributing members and volunteers whose support during the 2013-2014 fiscal year made these milestones possible. Because of you, the Urban Ecology Center can continue providing outdoor opportunities, education and outlets to increase our community’s environmental literacy and overall well-being. From all of us at the Urban Ecology Center, we thank you for another amazing year. Ken Leinbach Executive Director 2 Menomonee Valley Branch We couldn’t be more excited to see the growth of the Three Bridges Park and how community members have engaged with this natural space. With the addition of community gardens, the over 10,300 herbaceous plants, shrubs and trees planted, and the increasing number of visitors, Three Bridges Park has become a meaningful part of the landscape and community. We also expanded our Neighborhood Environmental Education Project (NEEP) to work with 11 partnering schools, thereby engaging more students and adults with nature. As we deepen our roots in the community, we look forward to improving our programming as we learn more about community assets and needs. We continued to grow attendance with kids and young adults in the Young Scientists Club and High School Outdoor Leader two-year paid internship, who are dreaming big, build- ing confidence, and experiencing the wonders of adventure. Washington Park Branch We rang in the New Year by expanding our use of the Washington Park Pavilion. Where we were previously only using a third of the space, we are now occupying the entire facility! This year we were able to extend our operating hours, offer additional youth, family and adult programming, and redecorate the building for a more welcoming entrance, all allowing us to engage with more visitors than ever before. These new opportunities brought new possibilities, for example: we hosted several community meetings over the course of the year to engage the neighbors and public in planning sessions to see how to best use the facility, and we’re excited to continue engaging with the community to move forward on these expansion efforts. Photo: Willie Karidis Special shout-out to all Community Program staff and community members who donated empty milk cartons and helped build the spectacular stained glass igloo at our 2014 Win- terfest. It was a real crowd-pleaser! 3 3 Riverside Park Branch & the Riverland Property Riverside Park was humming with activity with the tremendous help of volunteers who logged over 4,048 hours engaging on the land. This fiscal year, over 13,745 trees, 4,045 shrubs and 11,000 herbaceous plants were planted in Riverside Park to beautify and grow the land. In December 2013, we had the amazing opportunity to purchase and protect a critical 4.5 acre piece of land once owned by the late Pieter Godfrey, located in the middle of the Milwaukee Rotary Centennial Arboretum. Just a few short months later, in August 2014, after searching for an opportunity to sell and recycle the materials found in this newly acquired Riverland property, we met distinguished artist Theaster Gates, who offered to preserve the collection by incorporating the materials into various community endeavors based largely in Chicago. We are eager to continue the progression of what we now call the Riverland property in the coming year. Photo: Matthew Gnas Our annual Summer Solstice event was a great success this past June due to the lively group of donors and supporters, who helped raise over $250,000 for the Center’s mission. We surely wouldn’t exist without all of you! 4 4 Environmental Education Since the Neighborhood Environmental Education Project’s (NEEP) inception, this program has grown from serving 11 schools out of a double-wide trailer to serving 53 schools at our three branch locations in the 2013- 2014 school year. The Center hosted over 28,000 student visits on educational field trips through NEEP this past year. Our educators worked to align the NEEP program with the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) and continued to enhance student engagement through the increased integration of free, unstructured play - an approach that teachers and kids love. NEEP is complemented by our Summer Camps, and this year we connected 617 campers in 54 camps to urban nature through hands-on, inquiry-based activities every day of these week-long camps!We are eager to continue the progression of what we now call the Riverland property in the coming year. In the absence of an Environmental Program Manager for a few months this year, the NEEP team built cross- departmental camaraderie that created a fun opportunity to teach at different Center locations with different educators and community program staff. NEEP focuses on serving urban youth within a 2-mile radius of each of our Centers, giving access to hands-on environmental education to populations that normally would not have such exposure. Photo: Chris Winters 5 5 Land Stewardship The dedicated help of thousands of volunteers allowed us to enhance natural spaces and make urban land more vibrant. Over 9,500 trees were planted in Riverside Park and the Arboretum to turn the river flats area from an invasive reed canary grass monoculture into a healthy, diverse riparian forest; about 10,300 herbaceous plants and shrubs were planted in Three Bridges Park in the Menomonee Valley; and over 4,500 new plantings helped expand the prairie and woodland habitat areas in Washington Park. These important areas of urban natural spaces are now protected for generations to come. We look forward to continued progress on a comprehensive Land Management and Monitoring Plan, in partnership with Milwaukee County Parks, for restoration portions of Washington Park. This plan was created to further improve key community areas where the Center actively engages the public on the land. Photo: Matthew Gnas We conducted two prescribed burns at the end of April, one in Washington Park and the other in Riverside Park, that helped knock back invasive species and allowed a more di- verse range of native species to emerge. Volunteer Programs We are so proud of the 3,797 dedicated volunteers who worked 21,674 hours with us this past year to expand our reach into the community, participate in our mission, learn alongside us, and contribute to our organizational knowledge. Volunteers of all ages and from all over our city gave their time and talents to ensure our programs and daily operations ran smoothly. Our adventurous volunteers helped conduct research with wildlife like bats and snakes, got their hands dirty while restoring the land, assisted kids during our environmental education field trips, lent a hand at our community festivals by leading nature walks and working face painting stations, and offered smiling faces to visitors while working at our reception desks. Our leadership too is made up of a dedicated volunteer Board, who oversees an active and effective committee structure in which we engage even more volunteers. We are so grateful for the participation, support and enthusiasm you all bring to the Center! 6 6 Research & Citizen Science Our researchers and Citizen Scientists are studying and monitoring the vast array of insects, amphibians and mammals living in our local urban setting. For example, our volunteers helped us document 367 animal species in our parks, including 136 different bird species, and found significant changes in the timing of arrival and departure of several migratory species in Riverside Park over the past decade! With all the great work from our community Citizen Scientists, we presented research findings at conferences such as the Midwest Bird Conservation and Monitoring Workshop in Port Washington, Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Bird Conservation Initiative in Oshkosh. A highlight of the season was the formation of the volunteer-driven invertebrate enthusiast group entitled CRIKT (Citizens Researching Invertebrate Kritters Together). This group of 30 people worked diligently to create a terrestrial invertebrate citizen science monitoring plan for all three of our branches. It is also one of the first examples in the country of a community-driven adaptive management plan. The story of how this group formed is so significant that we were asked to present it at the first conference of the newly formed Citizen Science Association in San Jose, California! Equipment Lending Our visitor services staff and reception volunteers had a great time interacting with the community, fostering relationships, and providing equipment and resources to nature explorers.

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