video/audio - video
Narrator:The dells of the Eau Claire River in Marathon County on a winter day in February full of motion, light and change, as water, ice and time work to shape this place.
Water and time work the landscape. Over 100 miles to the south, in Adams County another place carved by water by the glacier thousands of years ago.
Reporter:
A fantastic place.
Tom Meyer:
I love this place. You look that way, you can't see anything but natural
land. I can't see a road. I can't see a city. I don't see a cell tower. I don't see a house. There aren't too many places that you can do that. That's what makes this place wild, and special, I think.
Narrator:
It's one of largest State Natural Areas. Quincy Bluff and Wetlands.
Meyer:
What's special about this place is it's big. Quincy Bluff and Wetlands Natural Area spans about four miles. The project boundary includes almost 10,000 acres of land. Well, I'll tell you a story. The majority of those wetlands out there were this close to being a cranberry farm. And the Nature Conservancy worked very closely with the owner of the property to buy it. And I think negotiations went on for at least a couple of years before we finally tipped the scale. We could be looking over developed cranberry beds
with a large flowage because you need all that water to supply the
cranberry beds. This place would not be here. It would not be a natural
area. We were that close to losing it.
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