SWTU is partnering with several organizations to host two free landowner dinners. The purpose of both is to inform landowners along trout streams about easement programs that can provide them with a fair and substantial purchase price for easements which allow the public to fish and the streams to be restored if that is necessary. 

On March 13, the DNR, the Pecatonica Pride Watershed Association, and SWTU will sponsor such a dinner in Blanchardville for landowners in the Gordon, Kittleson, Upper East Branch of the Pecatonica, Sawmill, and Erickson watersheds. Last year such a dinner led to at least two big, new DNR easements with at least one more in the works. While we’ll welcome landowners from all those streams again this year, our friends at Pecatonica Pride are working extra hard to invite landowners from Sawmill and Erickson. We have enough volunteers for this dinner but if you’d like to help, contact Pat Hasbrugh, Jim Hess or Topf Wells.

The second dinner is a new effort. We are working with the Dane County Land and Water Resources Department, which runs Dane County’s trout stream easement program, and the DNR, to sponsor a dinner for landowners along the Sugar River, the West Branch, the Primrose Branch, and Badger Mill Creek. Badger Fly Fishers are a very generous sponsor of this dinner. It will be held on April 16 at the Verona Public Library from 6-830 pm.