Department Of Motor Vehicles Wisconsin

Trumpeter swans banded for protection

The one-lane road cut in the middle of a cornfield. People were standing around wearing sunglasses and sunshades holding life vests and paddles, a few were even holding nets.

Overhead, a lone plane buzzed in a circle.

“OK,” began a woman with light nylon pants and river shoes. Her gray hair was partially contained under a baseball cap as she stuffed a handheld radio in a waterproof bag.

“There are two adults and six cygnets down at the pond,” she told the group. “We’ll divide in half: some on the north side and some on the south.”

Pat Manthey, conservation biologist with the Bureau of Endangered Resources of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, has been rounding up trumpeter swans for banding since 1996.

“I must have banded between 1,200-1,300 swans,” she estimated.

“Banding” means that they capture the young swans — cygnets — measure and weigh them, put leg and collar bands on them for future identification and release them back into the wild.

Manthey said that they had done an aerial survey the previous week to see how big the cygnets were. She said it was important that they be a good size for the bands, but not so developed that they could fly.

On Tuesday, Aug. 23, the group stationed itself around the Lundy Waterfowl Production Area — approximately 300 acres of public land between New Richmond and Roberts.

Accessing the water was not easy, as the weeds and grasses leading up to it were more than three feet tall. Those with durable vehicles drove the dozen kayaks down to the shore; the rest made their way on foot. As the kayaks were launched into the water, Manthey set up her “banding station,” a blue tarp, a net with a handheld scale and individual plastic ID kits for each bird.

There were 24 radios for the group to use so they could keep in touch with Manthey and the pilot’s view of the birds. The pond had a lot of marshland, so the group had to rely on the pilot for the birds’ whereabouts.

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Republican officials have launched an unprecedented, centrally coordinated campaign to suppress the elements of the Democratic vote that elected Barack Obama in 2008. Just as Dixiecrats once used poll taxes and literacy tests to bar black Southerners from voting, a new crop of GOP governors and state legislators has passed a series of seemingly disconnected measures that could prevent millions of students, minorities, immigrants, ex-convicts and the elderly from casting ballots. "What has happened this year is the most significant setback to voting rights in this country in a century," says Judith Browne-Dianis, who monitors barriers to voting as co-director of the Advancement Project, a civil rights organization based in Washington, D.C. Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short ... there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements (in Wisconsin, Republicans have legislated photo IDs while simultaneously shutting Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) offices in Democratic constituencies while at the same time lengthening the hours of operation of DMV offices in GOP constituencies); by narrowing registration periods; and by residency requirements that may disenfranchise university students. This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration.

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