MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin wildlife officials want to give the state’s invasive species list its first overhaul, proposing to relax efforts to eliminate the emerald ash borer but get tougher on nearly 90 other plants and animals.
The revisions would lift a requirement that anyone who discovers the ash borer on their property take steps to contain or destroy it. The move amounts to an acknowledgment that the pest has become too widespread to eradicate. The beetle, which has killed tens of millions of ash trees since it was discovered near Detroit in 2002, has been found in 19 Wisconsin counties so far.
“It’s not a reduction in concern in any way,” said Andrea Diss-Torrance, the Department of Natural Resources’ invasive forest pest specialist. “We just have to focus on managing it because we can’t get it booted out of the state.”
But the changes also would include restrictions on dozens of other organisms to prevent them from gaining a similar foothold in the state, including popular landscaping plants that have been expanding into wild forests. The DNR’s board is set to vote on the package Wednesday.
The DNR established the state’s invasive species list in 2009. It includes about 100 organisms, including the ash borer, zebra mussels, Asian carp and garlic mustard, and divides them into prohibited or restricted status. People can’t sell, possess or transport prohibited species and generally must destroy them if they find them on their property. No one can sell or transport restricted species, but they can possess them and aren’t required to destroy them.
The DNR and the state invasive species council have been working to update the list since 2012. One prong of the revisions calls for downgrading the ash borer from prohibited to restricted status. Most Wisconsin municipalities grappling with the ash borer have already moved from eradication to management, cutting down ash trees or inoculating them against the pest, Diss-Torrance said.
Patricia Morton, a member of the invasive species council and the Mukwonago River watershed project director for the Nature Conservancy, was resigned to the down-listing.
___
FOND DU LAC, Wis. (AP) - Fond du Lac deputies investigating the 1990 homicide of an 18-year-old woman said they may have evidence that incriminates a Kenosha man.
The abduction and death of Berit Beck has confounded authorities for years. But the Fond du Lac County sheriff’s office says a new analysis suggests the man was inside Beck’s van, The Reporter Media reported.
“We have tangible, physical evidence to put a prime suspect … intimately in the interior of the van,” Fond du Lac County Sheriff Mick Fink told the newspaper.
The man was not in custody Sunday, and Fink declined to elaborate. But his office has scheduled a news conference Monday morning to discuss the case.
Investigators gathered evidence from the man, including photographs of his hands, according to a search warrant. The photographs are now being analyzed against other evidence related to Beck’s van.
Beck, an 18-year-old Sturtevant woman, was found slain in a ditch in western Fond du Lac County. She had disappeared while on her way to Appleton for a computer seminar.
Her van was found in a store parking lot two days after she was reported missing, with 462 extra miles on the odometer. Her body was found six weeks later, and autopsy reports concluded that strangulation and suffocation were the likely causes of death.
___
RACINE, Wis. (AP) - Authorities in southeastern Wisconsin may have solved a cold-case mystery involving an Illinois teen whose battered body was found in a Racine County marsh 17 years ago.
Racine County deputies arrested a 36-year-old Illinois man Saturday in connection with Amber Creek’s death in 1997, Sheriff Christopher Schmaling told The Journal Times of Racine (https://bit.ly/1huS5jdhttps://bit.ly/1huS5jd ). He said he couldn’t be more proud of his investigative team.
Schmaling said authorities had “solid, clear and overwhelming evidence” that the man, whose name hasn’t been released, was responsible for the slaying. His deputies sifted through thousands of reports, and spent thousands of hours over the years trying to crack the case, he said.
“(Saturday) by far was the best moment for my investigative team as we informed Amber’s dad that we caught her killer,” Schmaling told the newspaper in an email. “It was an emotional exchange for everyone in the room.”
The sheriff said he plans to release more information, including details of the arrest and the suspect’s name, at a news conference Monday afternoon. He said the Creek family has asked the news media to respect its privacy.
Creek, a 14-year-old from Palatine, Ill., ran away from a state-run juvenile shelter in Chicago on Jan. 23, 1997. She then attended a party at a motel in Rolling Meadows, Ill., the week of her death. She was last seen leaving the party and getting into a luxury car that had a placard reading “mayor” and was driven by a white man in his 30s.
Two weeks later a pair of hunters found her corpse in a marsh in the Town of Burlington. She’d been beaten, sexually assaulted and suffocated with a plastic bag,
___
MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Republican Assemblyman who promised during his 2010 campaign to never claim any per diem payments received more than $10,000 in reimbursed living expenses last year.
Rep. Scott Krug of Nekoosa told the Wisconsin State Journal (https://bit.ly/1mQYwCchttps://bit.ly/1mQYwCc ) he didn’t intend the promise to extend beyond his first term.
Krug had told the newspaper in 2010 he wanted to see legislative per diems cut. Per diems cover food and lodging costs while legislators are doing state business in Madison.
“My first spending cut is promising not to collect one cent of (legislative) per diem money ever,” he said at the time. He kept the promise in 2011 and 2012.
But he said last year he spent a lot more time in the Capitol, meeting with lawmakers, negotiating with trade groups and running the Assembly’s Children and Families Committee.
“It might have been a slip to say ’ever,’ but my intention was to help out in a tough budget time,” Krug said last week. “I try to help people understand I’m not getting extra salary - it’s reimbursements for travel.”
Nearly all state lawmakers collect per diems. Last year the average claimed per Assembly district was $8,672, while state senators collected an average of $9,230.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.