Posted inColumns

Common Plantain

Here’s a plant you can find growing in your lawn, in vacant lots, even in the strips of grass beside the street. Its broad, oval leaves grow close to the ground in a dark green rosette. The smooth, thick leaves are 4 to 10 inches long with ribbed veins and long leaf stalk that is […]

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Health Care in Riverwest

by Robin Beard If you are like me, not established in your career and hopping from job to job, you have probably found yourself without health insurance at one time or another. In my experience as soon as I found myself uninsured, some mystery ailment would strike. If you ever find yourself in this situation, […]

Posted inNeighborhood News

What is the Urban Ecology Center?

The Urban Ecology Center, founded in 1991, is a nonprofit group funded by private members. Twelve schools within a one-mile radius visit the center on field trips. Besides inviting the public to feed its animals, the center offers many other activities for community members. “Our first goal is education,” Darrell Smith, the Community Program Coordinator, […]

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Feeding Time at the Urban Ecology Center

by DeMisty Bellinger / photos by Neal Delfeld Where can you spend Saturdays walking with painted turtles, feeding snakes mice, and catching a wet frog without getting your shoes dirty? Try the Urban Ecology Center, located at Riverside Park, 2808 N. Bartlett Ave., near Riverside University High School. Saturday afternoons are open to the public […]

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Ask the Naturalist! Nature Questions from Kids

Kids have a way of making us see the world differently–new perspectives, wild ideas, un-thought-of solutions, and a myriad of questions. Kids who visit the Urban Ecology Center ask a constant stream of questions about the native Wisconsin animals that live in our center–questions we may have wondered ourselves but for some reason never asked. […]