This year, the Milwaukee Public Museum is excited to partner with the Wehr Nature Center for its annual Bioblitz on Friday, June 12- Saturday June 13th.

If you’re new to the Milwaukee Public Museum’s Bioblitz, every year MPM partners with a different park, natural area, or nature preserve, and a team of volunteer surveyors (that’s you!) to count as many species as we can in 24 hours.  As always, the event starts at 3pm on Friday and goes to 3 pm on Saturday, when we will report our finds. Surveyors are welcome to join us for as much or as little of the 24-hour survey period as they would like. There will be space to camp if you are planning to stay overnight. Meals, snacks, and T-shirts will be provided.  There will be free activities for the public on Saturday from 10-3. 

The sign-up link is here ( Bioblitz 2026-Wehr Nature Center, Franklin WI June 12-13 – Fill out form)  but if you’re signing up a group, forms aren’t your speed, or have other questions, please don’t hesitate to email Julia at colby@mpm.edu. Feel free to share the link with friends or colleagues that might be interested!

Hope to see you this summer at Wehr!

In spite of the wicked weather the day (and week) before, we had fantastic participation for an Earth Day week Grant Park Beach cleanup this year. 76 adults and 26 kids stuffed bags full of cigarette butts, plastic and glass bottles, food wrappers and aluminum cans, along with some shotgun wadding washed up on the beach. Weirdest thing collected was a soggy sofa cushion. Yuk!

Q. What item takes 450 or more years to decompose in the landfill?

A. Plastic bottles never truly disappear, they break down to smaller and smaller pieces, eventually becoming microplastics, which can enter the drinking water supply.

We reduced our plastic bag purchases for this event by reusing large plastic bag trash from 25# bags of bird seed, potting soil and salt; and we recycled glass bottles and aluminum cans. And we offered drinking water to participants from a reusable stainless steel jug. Earth day should be every day!