As Kenosha residents and officials ponder rebuilding downtown structures damaged by recent riots, a hopeful story of restoration completely unassociated with civil unrest has emerged from just north of the city.
Is it any wonder it's closely-connected to nature?
A partnership of the Root-Pike Watershed Initiative Network (WIN) and the Kenosha Sportfishing and Conservation Association (KSFCA) plans to improve the salmon rearing pond and riparian buffer near the mouth of the Pike River.
Announced Friday, the project aims to fortify a stream bank to prevent erosion, repair and enhance the rearing pond structure, replant the river corridor with native vegetation to provide habitat for pollinators and other wildlife and add educational features and improve recreational access to the river.
The work is expected to cost $1 million, said Dave Giordano, WIN executive director. Half of the funding is scheduled to come from the Wisconsin Coastal Management Program with the balance from grants and donations.
The site is just south of Carthage College along the Lake Michigan shore. According to historical accounts, the first humans in the area settled near the fish-rich river mouth.
However over the last century the Pike River has been degraded by the loss of stream buffers, wetlands and deep-rooted vegetation and an increase in runoff pollution and bank erosion.
The area's ecosystem has also been challenged by the introduction of aquatic invasive species. One, the alewife, regularly covered beaches in Kenosha and other Lake Michigan cities with piles of dead and rotting fish in the 1950s and 60s.
The introduction of Pacific Ocean strains of predator fish in the 1960s by the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources and other state agencies greatly reduced the alewife population and spurred a valuable sport fishery.
The Kenosha rearing pond was built in the early 1970s to assist the DNR with stocking of trout and salmon. It sits at the northern edge of Pennoyer Park; the land is owned by the City of Kenosha.
The rearing pond is used to hold and imprint juvenile chinook salmon so that mature fish then return to the Pike River to spawn. The fish are brought as fingerlings to the facility from a DNR hatchery.
The 3- to 4-inch-long salmon are fed and protected by KSFCA members for about a month, said club president Lynn Davis.
While in the rearing pond, the fish are exposed to a mix of Pike River and well water. This occurs during the process known as smoltification which dictates where salmon migrate when mature.
Once they've imprinted, the smolts are released to the river through a pipe. The club typically rears and releases about 40,000 chinook annually.
The fish that survive the next two to three years in Lake Michigan will return to the Pike as adults as the salmon close out their lives on a spawning migration.
Because conditions in the Pike and other Wisconsin tributaries of Lake Michigan are inadequate to support more than residual natural reproduction of salmonids, the DNR perpetuates the lake's salmon and trout fishery by collecting eggs and milt from adult fish at three sites, including the Root River Steelhead Facility in Racine.
The resulting chinook fry are raised until fingerlings at state hatcheries before being distributed and stocked.
While other clubs also work cooperatively with the DNR and supervise net pens in efforts to boost survival of young fish, the KSFCA is unique in its use of the rearing pond. Club members have run the facility each year since 1973.
Sport fishing brings about $2 million to Kenosha due to tourism, charter fishing and entertainment, Davis said.
Plans for the Kenosha project include creating a small outdoor education “patio,” converting turf and removing invasive species to erosion reducing native plants, installing bioswales to reduce water/ice events as well as creating a platform for better fishing opportunities and building a canoe launch.
The work will include a storm water management system to mitigate urban pollutants before they reach the river.
Giordana said fundraising for the match grant will continue through the end of the year; start of construction will be determined at a later date.
"The overall goal is to connect Kenosha residents and visitors to the history, habitat and heritage of the Pike River watershed," Giordana said. "We're really excited about the prospects to enhance active and passive recreation in the area, as well as shine a light on the value of this native asset in Kenosha."
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Kenosha project aims to improve fish rearing pond and Pike River - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
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