By Madison Goldbeck - Conley Publishing Group

MEQUON — The Mequon Common Council recently approved a special event agreement for the Mequon-Thiensville Sunrise Rotary Club to conduct a project utilizing goats for invasive plant control in Pukaite Woods.

According to city documents, the Mequon-Thiensville Sunrise Rotary Club in partnership with Ozaukee-Washington Land Trust requested the city’s permission to conduct a 2020 demonstration project in Pukaite Woods at Rotary Park. The project will utilize goats to remove buckthorn and honeysuckle.

“Our intent is to demonstrate to large property owners, homeowner associations, the city and neighboring municipalities the value of grazing goats in a highquality woodland to significantly reduce dense infestations of invasive plant species,” the M-T Sunrise Rotary Environmental Sustainability Team wrote to the Mequon Parks & Open Space Board.

The goat-management project will contract with a Wisconsin goat owner or herder experienced in using goats for invasive species control. The club plans to engage Boy Scouts, Rotarians, and volunteer tasks, including additional trail cutting, to direct goats to the prescribed grazing area.

“Prescribed areas in the woods will be temporarily fenced; and goats will be monitored and systematically rotated from space to space to graze after buckthorn and other woody invasive leaf and native ephemeral wildflowers have gone dormant,” the letter reads. “The goats will be monitored to graze for seven to nine days on buckthorn, honeysuckle and other woody brush to defoliate the plants, which weakens them.”

With help from a Rotary Foundation global grant, a group of women in rural Costa Rica are using ecotourism to enrich their families’ futures

by Diana Schoberg Photography by Ricardo Morales Portillo

Drive east from the small city of Turrialba in the mountainous central region of Costa Rica, and after about an hour you will find yourself traveling down a bumpy gravel road. Cross a narrow bridge and you will find the even smaller town of Mollejones, which is where Karen and Evelyn García Fuentes grew up on a coffee farm. The farm belongs to their father, who had inherited the land from his grandfather.

When Karen and Evelyn were in their late teens, they left town and went to college. Moving to the city is the dream of many rural teenagers the world over. But after college, the sisters decided to return to Mollejones. Finding work close to home was difficult, but Karen had heard about a business in Costa Rica that raised butterflies for export. Karen set to work on learning what it would take to launch a similar enterprise. “We wanted our own project,” Evelyn says.

At the beginning, their father didn’t believe in the idea — and the butterflies terrified their mother. But Karen worked hard and focused on the business. Evelyn joined her, and their mother now works with them too. Another sister is handling the marketing and social media, and their father has given over more and more of his coffee farm to the butterflies. “The business has united the family,” Karen says.

The traditional perception of rural farmers is that their kids need to study so they can eventually leave. But the García sisters came back home. “We broke that cycle for our farm and our community,” Karen says.