Katie Cervenka, Author at Driftless Area Land Conservancy

Welcome, Kyle Adams, DALC’s Events Coordinator!

by Katie Cervenka | Jun 11, 2026 | Events, Staff Updates

Driftless Area Land Conservancy is excited to welcome Kyle Adams to the team as an Events Coordinator. Kyle brings with her a rich background in hospitality, education, preservation, and community connection, along with a deep appreciation for the Driftless Area.

Originally from Rochester, New York, Kyle attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she earned her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature. Over the past twenty years, her work has taken her across the country and through a wide range of roles focused on connecting people with places and experiences.

Her career has included serving as an instructor for the Brooklyn Center for the Urban Environment, educational outreach and tour work with Taliesin Preservation, and volunteering at the Chicago Architecture Center. She also spent many years in the restaurant industry, working her way into event planning while living in Chicago. In 2018, she returned to the Driftless Area to lead Taliesin Preservation’s events program.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Kyle recognized a need for stronger support of Wisconsin’s local food economy and founded Wander Provision, a Wisconsin-focused sandwich deli and specialty grocery celebrating small-scale farmers and producers. After five successful years building a community around local food, Kyle made the difficult decision to close Wander Provisions in March 2026. Around the same time, DALC was searching for an Events Coordinator. Given Kyle’s extensive experience in creating meaningful experiences and bringing people together, the timing felt like a natural fit and an exciting new chapter.

At DALC, Kyle will help bring people together through events and programs at the newly acquired Wintergreen property. Her experience creating welcoming spaces and meaningful experiences will help shape opportunities for people to connect with the land, learn about conservation, and build community. As Wintergreen continues to evolve, Kyle’s creativity, hospitality, and deep appreciation for the Driftless will help make it a place where people can gather, explore, and experience the land. Her experience leading events and managing a business also brings valuable insight as DALC explores ways to grow programming at Wintergreen that is both sustainable and mission-driven. Through her work, Wintergreen will continue to grow as a welcoming destination where people can connect with the land, the Driftless Area, and one another.

Kyle lives in Spring Green with her husband, two dogs, seven chickens, and a duck. Outside of work, she enjoys swimming, reading, thrifting, and cooking. She also serves on the board of Savor the River Valley and chairs its newly formed Community Outreach Committee, reflecting her ongoing commitment to fostering community connections throughout the Driftless Area.

We are so happy to have you as part of the DALC team!

From Aerospace to Oak Savannas

by Katie Cervenka | Jun 1, 2026 | Connect with Nature, Driftless Trail, Volunteer

For most of his professional life, Dan Roth worked in aerospace engineering, focusing primarily on modern rocketry and on creating sophisticated defense products for the free world. Attention to detail was critical. It was demanding work, requiring precision, patience, and the ability to see how many interrelated parts in motion all worked together.

But as retirement approached and family demands increased, Dan pivoted to a full-time faculty role at Northwestern University before being drawn back to something closer to home.

Growing up with family involvement in farming and intrigued by his mother’s love for gardening, he had always carried an appreciation for the natural world. After stepping away from his engineering and academia careers, he decided to follow that interest more intentionally. He completed Master Gardener and Master Naturalist trainings and began learning more about plants, ecosystems, and how people can care for the land. “There was a lot to absorb. Five years ago, I didn’t know how to spell nature,” Dan joked.

He immersed himself in the attraction, gathering knowledge fast. “I took every course, I listened to everybody, and I got every certification I could,” Dan reflected. Slowly, the pieces began to come together.

Dan began to see the landscape as an interconnected system where soil, water, plants, and wildlife all interact. Understanding those relationships became part of the appeal. As a result, Dan became deeply involved in volunteering with multiple conservation organizations, focusing on habitat improvement and ecological restoration.

While searching for diversity in his volunteer activities, he found DALC’s Driftless Trail project through an online search. “The Driftless landscapes and natural areas hooked me. It was the intrigue of the unknown, a place shaped without glaciers.” Dan shared. He began devoting more of his volunteer efforts to support the construction of trails in the Driftless Area and relocated, committed in the belief that “being in nature is the best medicine ever”.

Dan has contributed by helping build and review trail segments, offering feedback, and then following up on trail maintenance. His attention to detail and willingness to help have proven valuable in thinking through how trails move through the landscape and how they will hold up over time.

What keeps him coming back is the experience of being out on the land and the diverse community of people he meets. “The people are amazingly unique. This work draws like-minded individuals. People show up because they value it and genuinely want to be here. I’m especially amazed by the younger people trail building attracts.”

Today, Dan remains deeply engaged in learning and volunteering. His journey from aerospace engineering to land stewardship may seem unlikely, but both require curiosity, patience, and understanding how complex systems work together. Through people like Dan, the beauty of the Driftless Area continues to be cared for, explored, and passed on to future generations. Thank you, Dan, for your generosity, your passion for learning, and your commitment to the Driftless Trail and the landscapes we all cherish!

If you are interested in volunteering with DALC, please click here for more information.

Plan Your Adventure in the Driftless

by Katie Cervenka | May 29, 2026 | Connect with Nature, Driftless Trail, Events, Preserves

There is no better way to celebrate National Trails Day (first Saturday in June) than by getting outside in the Driftless Area. Whether you are looking for a peaceful walk, a prairie overlook, or a longer hike, southwest Wisconsin offers trails that connect people to the land and each other.

At DALC, we believe trails are about more than recreation. They create opportunities for conservation, care, and connection by helping people build lasting relationships with the landscapes that make this region so special. As you plan your National Trails Day adventure, we invite you to explore a few of our favorite places across the Driftless Area.

Explore Erickson Conservation Area

Located in Argyle, WI, Erickson is a true community treasure. This 220-acre preserves features relatively flat trails that wind through wetlands, prairie, and oak savanna. Today, the preserve serves as a place for exploration, restoration, and reflection.

Explore Erickson

Hike Sardeson Forest Preserve

Located near Mineral Point, WI, Sardeson features rocky trails that pass through woodlands, prairie remnants, and sandstone bluffs. Red trail blazes guide visitors along loops ranging from shorter woodland walks to longer hikes that circle the property.

Hike Sardeson

Discover Driftless Trail Segments

The Driftless Trail is a growing vision for connection across the Driftless region. Designed to link communities, natural areas, and outdoor recreation opportunities, each segment offers a unique way to experience the Driftless. Planning your National Trails Day hike is also a great opportunity to explore a new section of trail you haven’t visited before. No matter the hike, every mile offers opportunities for discovery.

Explore the Driftless Trail

Tips for Planning Your National Trails Day Hike

Before heading out, a little preparation can help you make your adventure safe and enjoyable:

Bring lots of water and snacks
Wear sturdy shoes or hiking boots
Plan your hike using DALC’s website guides!
Leave no trace by staying on designated trails and packing out trash
Take time to pause, observe, and appreciate the wonderful land around you!

National Trails Day is also a reminder that access to trails depends on ongoing stewardship, restoration, and conservation efforts. By visiting protected lands and supporting conservation organizations, you help ensure these places remain healthy and accessible for future generations.

This National Trails Day, explore, reflect, and reconnect with nature. Every hike is a chance to experience the Driftless. We’ll see you on the trails!

Activating Your Superpower: Overcoming Challenges Through Partnerships

by Katie Cervenka | May 22, 2026 | Conservation, Land Management

Learn to Burn led by Pheasants Forever on private property in Dane County. Photo by Andy Bingle.

X-Men, The Avengers, The Powerpuff Girls, The Paw Patrol Pups. What do each of these teams have in common? They are a group of individuals working together, each bringing their own skill set and superpowers to overcome a challenge. The key to their success? The diversity of their powers. One may be fast, while the other is strong; one is a quick thinker, and the other is someone who can meditate and change the weather. It is only when their powers combine that they overcome the seemingly impossible feat they face.

I have the good fortune of working with superheroes who have superpowers every day. They don’t shapeshift or control the elements. Instead, they bring relationships, connections, trust, technical expertise, and financial and human resources to make progress on complex conservation challenges. The superhero team I work with is called the Southern Driftless Grasslands (SDG) partnership, and we are a combination of non-profit and governmental agencies that are leveraging our superpowers to maintain and increase grasslands in Southwest Wisconsin.

Like any superhero team, we face evolving challenges. However, instead of facing a giant monster in downtown New York, our partnership experiences challenges in the form of shifting funding sources, limited capacity, changing policies, and unexpected disruptions.

Each time we face a challenge like this, we look across the partnership and ask: whose superpower can we leverage right now?

Here are three challenges we recently overcame as a partnership by leveraging partners’ superpowers.

Challenge 1: Increasing Prescribed Fire on Private Lands

Prescribed fire reduces brush and promotes plant growth that sustains and expands grasslands. In southwest Wisconsin, 95% of the land is privately owned, with most parcels between 40 and 200 acres. Increasing grasslands at a landscape scale, therefore, requires working with hundreds of private landowners to bring prescribed fire to their properties.

However, many landowners face barriers: limited technical skills, lack of social connections, and the high cost and limited availability of contractors. To address this, the SDG partnership pursued a multi-year grant to fund several full-time staff members who could develop an educational program helping landowners burn their own properties with neighbors and volunteers.

But no partner had previously secured a grant of that size for an SDG project. So the partnership asked… “Who has the superpower to apply for, manage, and navigate a complex national grant in the name of an SDG initiative?”

Pheasants Forever raised their hand.

With experience securing and managing large federal grants and the capacity to hire full-time staff with partner support, Pheasants Forever (PF) applied for and received $750,000 from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF).

In 2025 alone, the Prescribed Burn Education program engaged 68 landowners and community members through three full-day trainings and 10 educational community burns, impacting 148 acres. It has also helped launch the exploration of self-sustaining, landowner-led Prescribed Burn Associations – an important step toward expanding prescribed fire on private lands in southwest Wisconsin.

Landowners learn about burn breaks. Photo by Andy Bingle.

Challenge 2: Securing and Managing Funds for Landowners to Manage their Land

After several months of burn training work, PF realized the prescribed fire education team needed additional funding for equipment and meeting expenses – costs not covered by the NFWF grant. The team also identified landowners interested in prescribed fire who lacked adequate burn breaks or had too much brush or trees to burn safely, and who could not afford to hire a contractor.

PF began searching for funding opportunities and identified the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s Land Trust Bird Conservation Initiative grant. However, the grant preferred applications from accredited land trusts, which PF is not, and required an organization able to quickly distribute funds to landowners. So the partnership asked… “Who has the superpower of being an accredited land trust and can administer and pass through funding to landowners to benefit the Prescribed Burn Education program?

The Driftless Area Land Conservancy raised its hand.

Newly protected within the Perry Primrose Bird Conservation Area. Photo by Stephanie Judge.

DALC, an accredited land trust with an already developed process for passing funds through to qualified landowner projects, applied for the grant. The result: DALC received $25,000 to support the SDG Prescribed Burn Education project led by PF staff. Of that amount, $15,000 will be distributed to at least ten landowners to implement management practices that benefit grassland birds in priority areas of southwest Wisconsin.

Challenge 3: Identifying Public Funding Sources for Land Protection

When a property comes on the market or a landowner considers a voluntary conservation easement, funding for the purchase typically comes from public grants. In Wisconsin, one of the most common sources was the state’s Knowles-Nelson Stewardship Program.

However, 2026 marked the first time since the 1980s that the program was not reauthorized, leaving partners without a key source of funding for land protection. At the same time, federal grants for land protection have substantially slowed or stalled outright. So the partnership asked…“Who has the superpower to provide more access to public funding for land protection projects?”

Dane County raised their hand.

In response to different partners communicating the difficulty they are facing with a lack of state and federal funding sources, Dane County increased its Conservation Fund budget for 2026 and increased its possible project funding percentage from 50% to 75%.

Change: The Only Constant

If there is one constant in conservation, it is change. Budgets fluctuate, policies change, and landownership shifts. The systems that continue to make a difference are those resilient to change. And one of the most reliable sources of resilience is strong networks – networks of people and organizations who leverage each other’s superpowers and step forward when the moment calls.

Partners discuss land management strategies. Photo by Andy Bingle.

The provided examples demonstrate how the SDG partnership draws on the strengths of each partner to remain resilient. I see these superpowers in action every day: acting quickly on land purchases, rallying support for a partner pursuing a grant, or turning to someone with technical expertise on how a Regal Fritillary butterfly might respond to changes in vegetation. These contributions happen so often that they sometimes go unnoticed.

But superpowers aren’t limited to agencies, organizations, Avengers, or little dogs in uniforms – we all have them, including you. On your next bird walk or drive to the grocery store, ask yourself: What is my superpower? What role do I play in this system?

When we recognize our place within a larger system – and the strengths others bring – collective action becomes possible. And collective action brings real results in a changing world, whether that means expanding grasslands across a landscape, influencing change in your community, or helping a neighbor care for their land.

So talk with your neighbor. Volunteer. Go for a walk with a group. Most importantly, stay engaged.

To infinity and beyond!

Written by Andy Bingle, SDG Program Manager, for DALC’s 2026 Winter/Spring Newsletter

DALC is the coordinating member of Southern Driftless Grasslands, who actively supports the conservation of grasslands in Southwest Wisconsin to benefit the region’s wildlife, water, farms, and communities.

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A Morning on the Ridge: Celebrating the Welsh Hills Segment

by Katie Cervenka | Apr 20, 2026 | Connect with Nature, Driftless Trail, Monthly Updates, Volunteer

Hikers along the Welsh Hills Segment of the Driftless Trail.

Last Saturday, April 18th, 2026, neighbors, partners, and supporters gathered at the Welsh Hills trailhead to celebrate the official opening of the full Welsh Hills Segment of the Driftless Trail. While parts of this trail have been open, the completion of the full ridge route marks something new, a fully connected experience across a remarkable landscape in the Driftless Area.

It was a simple morning. Attendees pulled on their jackets against the spring breeze and set out along the trail together. Conversation carried easily across the hills. There was a shared sense of appreciation, not just for the trail itself, but for everything it represents.

The Welsh Hills hold stories that stretch far beyond this moment. Named by Frank Lloyd Wright’s grandparents, the name reflects the Welsh roots of the families who settled here in the mid 1800s. Wright himself, wandered there ridgelines as a boy, shaped by the same views that visitors experience today. The land tells an even older story. Rock outcrops reveal layers of sediment laid down by an ancient sea, later carved by meltwater into the valleys that define the Driftless Area.

After decades of care and restoration, these hills support native plants, pollinators, and migrating birds. Life continues to return and to adapt, shaped by both natural processes and the steady commitment of people who care for this place.

To walk this trail is to move through all of these layers at once, human and natural history woven together under your feet. The Welsh Hills segment is part of something much larger taking shape across this region. The Driftless Trail Corridor is the emerging vision for nearly 100 miles of connected conservation land and public access across southwest Wisconsin. Seventeen landowners have stepped forward to host trail segments, adding to 10 miles of continuous protected lands stretching from the Lower Wisconsin River down to Knobs Road. Beginning at Wintergreen, the trail connects people directly to the landscape.

Trails like this do more than guide our footsteps. They connect people to land, offering space to walk, reflect, and experience the beauty of the Driftless Area. They connect habitats, allowing wildlife to move, adapt, and thrive across a changing landscape. They connect communities, bringing together neighbors, conservation partners, and volunteers around a shared vision of care.

In a time that can often feel uncertain, this work offers something steady. Resilience is not built all at once. It grows over time through protected acres, restored habitats, and relationships rooted in trust. It takes shape each time a landowner says yes, each time a trail segment is completed, and each time someone steps onto the land and feels a sense of connection.

The Welsh Hills Trail is a reflection of that shared effort. What began as an idea is now something people can experience firsthand, step by step, along the ridge.

If you have not yet visited, this is an invitation. From the trailhead near the Frank Lloyd Wright Visitor Center, you can explore a 2-mile Unity Chapel Loop, a 2.6-mile Ridge Loop, or a 2.8-mile Perimeter Loop. Along the way, the trail offers sweeping views, restored prairie, wooded ridgelines, and glimpses into both the history and future of this landscape.

As you walk, you become part of that story. This growing network of trails, protected lands, and restored habitats exists because people continue to show up for it. Together, we are caring for this place in a way that will last. Across the Driftless Area, that care is building something enduring, rooted in conservation, connection, and a deep respect for the land we share.

We want to thank Taliesin Preservation and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation for their continued partnership and care in stewarding this landscape and helping make the Welsh Hills Trail possible. We would also like to extend our gratitude to the many partners and volunteers who contributed their time, energy, and expertise to bring this trail to life.

Join Us in the Field: 2026 Evenings Afield Schedule

by Katie Cervenka | Apr 10, 2026 | Connect with Nature, Events, Volunteer

Evenings Afield is all about gathering together outside… learning directly from the land, from experts, and from each other. Once a month, Evenings Afield are held as a chance to connect with fellow landowners and community members, explore different properties, and experience firsthand the practices that help care for this landscape that we all share.

Whether you are a seasoned land steward, a curious neighbor, or just someone who loves being outdoors, Evenings Afield offers something for everyone. Each event provides a chance to connect with experts, ask questions, and gain hands-on insights into topics like habitat restoration, prairie management, wildlife monitoring, and protecting our streams and night skies. More than just learning, these gatherings foster a sense of community and shared purpose, because the work of caring for this landscape is better together.

Join Us in the Field!

Lowery Creek: A Class 1 Trout Stream & Brook Trout Preserve | May 14th, 2026

This evening highlights the remarkable transformation of Lowery Creek into a thriving brook trout stream. You will hear from biologists and a local angler about what it takes to restore and care for cold water systems like this.

Great Wisconsin Bat Count Kick-Off | June 4th, 2026

Take part in hands-on community science where you will help count bats as they emerge at dusk. The data collected will support ongoing conservation and stewardship efforts.

Restoring the East Knob Pine Relict & Savanna | July 16th, 2026

Set out to see how landowners are actively restoring prairie savanna and rare plant communities.

International designations for Taliesin & Lower Wisconsin State Riverway | August 20th, 2026

Learn how our local landscape connects to global recognition and explore what it means to be a World Heritage Site and a Wetland of International Importance.

Restoring the Welsh Hills Prairies | September 10th, 2026

We head to the Welsh Hills at Taliesin to experience a decades-long restoration effort and enjoy a hike along the Driftless Trail.

Protect the Night: Enjoy & Preserve Dark Skies | October 8th, 2026

We close with an evening to slow down and look up to learn how protecting dark skies supports wildlife and human health.

Register Today!

The Lowery Creek Watershed Initiative is a community-driven partnership of residents, farmers, conservation organizations, and local partners working together to protect water quality, support resilient agriculture, and steward the natural and cultural landscape of the valley.

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