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Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin, both retired conservation biologists with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, look over a portion of the 730-acre Goose Pond Sanctuary in Arlington, owned by Madison Audubon, where they have served as resident managers since 1979.
Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin walk a portion of the Goose Pond Sanctuary that was burned as part of its management plan. The 730-acre preserve features 12 miles of public hiking trails.
The 730-acre Goose Pond Sanctuary features about 500 acres of restored tall-grass prairie and a pond that attracts thousands of migratory birds each spring and fall.
Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin have worked for more than four decades to protect, restore and share their passion for Wisconsin wildlife.
Both retired conservation biologists for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, the Martins continue to volunteer their services as citizen scientists as part of the longest-running auditory frog and toad survey in North America.
Since 1979 they have been resident managers of Goose Pond Sanctuary, Madison Audubon’s 730-acre nature preserve in Arlington, in Columbia County, where they’ve spearheaded dozens of habitat restoration and public education projects.
Gathering Waters, an alliance of more than 40 Wisconsin land trusts, honored the couple last year with a lifetime achievement award that cited their decades-long “passion and tireless commitment.”
“The Martins’ conservation legacy will last for generations,” the group declared.
Sue, 74, is a self-taught naturalist with degrees in business and marketing who joined the DNR in 1980 as education coordinator at the MacKenzie Environmental Education Center in Poynette. She later moved into conservation, designing endangered species license plates and the Great Wisconsin Birding and Nature Trail, a self-guided driving tour with five regional guidebooks.
“Having a degree in marketing was really a shoo-in for me,” she said. “I was able to jump on these projects that none of the scientists would ever spend two minutes on.”
Mark, 72, grew up in Marshall and studied wildlife management at UW-Stevens Point before going to work for the DNR in 1971.
Though they followed different career paths, both were raised in families that embraced the outdoors — Mark hunting and trapping, Sue birdwatching and fishing.
“Getting out and exploring nature on our own terms, and just learning to be at home in it,” Sue said. “And this is what we loved.”
What is Goose Pond?
Mark Martin: Goose Pond is a prairie wetland in the middle of a former 150,000 acres of mesic prairie. And now it’s owned by Madison Audubon where we are providing wildlife habitat, especially to benefit waterfowl, shorebirds and grassland birds and restore mesic prairie. And it’s a place for the public to come out and appreciate nature.
From a bird standpoint, we’ve got 270 species that have been seen out here, which is a lot of birds.
It was purchased to stop the hunting in the fall on the ducks and so people could come in from Madison and bird watch in the fall as well as in the spring. They didn’t think anything at all about planting prairie for grassland birds.
Audubon didn’t have much money in ’69 and ’68. So they bought the house over there and the farm for $30,000. But since then we’ve got 730 acres and now our big focus is for mesic prairie. It used to be like 800,000 acres in the state. There’s less than 100 (native) acres left in maybe 15 different spots. And we’ve got almost 500 acres restored now. So the people can come out and get a little idea what a treeless prairie looks like.
You mentioned it was part of the Empire Prairie. What is that?
Mark Martin: The topography was fairly rolling. There were few wetlands. And there were not large changes in elevation. So the Native Americans set fires. They just moved across the whole area. So this is basically all treeless prairie we’ve got here.
There were two woods in Dane County in 1830. Two. Maple Bluff on the east side of Lake Mendota. The western winds and the wetlands around there stopped the fires. And then Goose Lake between Marshall and Deerfield. There’s those drumlin fields, high drumlins with wetland in between them and that was a woods because the fires just didn’t get there.
Sue Foote-Martin: So as the settlers came, the fires stopped. They fought the fires, they kept the fires out. And now we have woods everywhere. It changed the landscape.
Located just outside Arlington, a 20-minute drive from Madison, Goose Pond Sanctuary is a 730-acre public nature preserve featuring restored tall-grass prairie and 12 miles of hiking trails. To learn more visit madisonaudubon.org/goose-pond or check out go.madison.com/pondcam to see what’s happening on the high-definition pond cam, which has captured a tree full of pheasants, a snacking bald eagle and even a young hooded merganser narrowly escaping a mink.
How did you end up living at Goose Pond?
Mark Martin: When I was at DNR, Madison Audubon decided to plant prairie — 8 acres. We started pre-planning research. And so we volunteered to help out, get the seeds — they came from the Arboretum in Madison. So that’s how we got familiar with Goose Pond here.
Sue Foote-Martin: We met at a meeting to set up the first sandhill crane count in the state. It must have been 1977. He represented the DNR and I was with Audubon. We sat across the table from each other and discovered that we liked the same things. Mark asked me to go snowshoeing with him on the weekend. He brought me past Goose Pond. He said, “You see that little house down at the end of that dented road on Prairie Lane? I’m going to live there someday.”
There was an opening for the resident manager job (in 1979), and he applied and got it. So when we were married we moved in, and we’ve been here ever since.
What sort of threats are wildlife facing?
Sue Foote-Martin: I’d say climate change, because the land is protected.
Mark Martin: The birds don’t do good if we have droughts. And if we have cold, wet springs, like the pheasant population, if you get cold, they just don’t do very well.
Sue Foote-Martin: It’s also the encroachment of populations. If you’re coming up here on (Highway) 51, you’re getting to DeForest, and that’s all that’s gonna be solid between Madison and DeForest. It’s gonna come all the way through here, and it’s gonna go all the way up to Poynette and then eventually it’ll go up to Portage.
What are your plans for the future?
Sue Foote-Martin: Goose Pond is our legacy. I mean, this is what we do. This is what we’ve been doing for 43 years. And this is what we’re going to continue to do. We’ll just keep going and going. The more you do, the more it matters.
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Covers energy and the environment for the Wisconsin State Journal. Rhymes with Lubbock. Contact him at 608-252-6146.
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For nearly four decades, the couple have spent three evenings a year driving around the marshes of southern Columbia County, listening for spring peepers, leopard frogs and American toads.
Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin, both retired conservation biologists with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, look over a portion of the 730-acre Goose Pond Sanctuary in Arlington, owned by Madison Audubon, where they have served as resident managers since 1979.
Mark Martin and Sue Foote-Martin walk a portion of the Goose Pond Sanctuary that was burned as part of its management plan. The 730-acre preserve features 12 miles of public hiking trails.
The 730-acre Goose Pond Sanctuary features about 500 acres of restored tall-grass prairie and a pond that attracts thousands of migratory birds each spring and fall.
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