Wildlife Matters

To rake or not to rake, that is the question.

The Masked Biologist touts the merits of mulching your leaves in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

Do you know who to call about wildlife?

Did you know you have more than one option depending on the topic? In this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist helps lessen the potential confusion about wildlife professionals.

Plastic straws are the latest poster child of environmental concern.

The Masked Biologist examines the current cultural move away from the use of plastic straws in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

Imagine using a trained bird to do your fishing instead of a fishing pole. The Masked Biologist considers an ancient practice, cormorant fishing, in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

Sometimes it can be interesting to read food containers.

The Masked Biologist saw a sentence on a yogurt cup that inspired this week’s Wildlife Matters.

In this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist talks a bit about plastic shopping bags in response to a Curious North question.

When’s the last time you thought about a thistle as beneficial?

In this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist makes a case for loving the thistle.

While we are accustomed to birds nesting in spring, we have one bird species here that is just finishing their nesting season.

The American Goldfinch is the subject of this week’s Wildlife Matters.

Continuing his way through a few of your wildlife-related Curious North questions, the Masked Biologist talks about hand feeding birds – and other related thoughts – in this week’s Wildlife Matters.

In a curious north question from a few months back, Alice asked the question “Does everyone up North feed birds from their hands?”

Getting kids to shift their attention to the outdoors can be a challenge, even on a beautiful summer day.

In this week's episode of Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist talks about his own efforts as a father to help keep children connected to nature.

For this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist tackles another Curious North question, about some of Wisconsin’s largest migratory birds—swans and cranes.

This is another curious north question that captured my interest, so I thought I would spend some time talking about some of our area’s less common migratory birds. Rosemary Resch asked “Do swans, sandhill cranes and whooping cranes summer anywhere in Wisconsin or are they primarily migratory?”

Springtime woodpecker worries are the focus of this week’s Wildlife Matters, as the Masked Biologist tackles another Curious North question from one of our listeners.

I get questions or concerns pretty frequently about woodpeckers hurting or killing trees, so when I saw this Curious North question, I thought I would try to address Jane Trotter’s concerns. She asks “A Hairy Woodpecker is busily working on a Hemlock tree right outside our bedroom window. The Hemlock appears to be alive and well....so far. Will Hairy’s morning percussions hurt the tree?”

In this week’s Wildlife Matters, the Masked Biologist tackles one of WXPR’s Curious North questions.

Emily DiGiorgio from Ironwood, MI, asks: How can we help accommodate wildlife in our backyards without disturbing our home aesthetic?

To answer Emily's question, here's the Masked Biologist.

Local public radio gives your friends and neighbors an opportunity to contribute to something truly special, and you—the listener—are an important component that makes radio work.

This week the Masked Biologist takes a step away from wildlife to talk about the magic of radio and the spoken word on Wildlife Matters.

Tamarack trees, like many of us, could live anywhere in Wisconsin but prefer the Northwoods.

Recently a listener from Harshaw submitted this question to our Curious North series: What's up with the tamarack trees? They seem to be dying. Is it the rising water levels, or something else?

In today’s Wildlife Matters the Masked Biologist sheds some light on what might be causing tamarack tree mortality.