Fiscal Note
No City appropriation required.
Title
Recognizing the Lake Wingra Loop Community Bike Ride occurring on September 28, 2025, celebrating the special sites surrounding Lake Wingra, and urging city staff to identify and promote policies and practices that promote the health of Lake Wingra. (District 13)
Body
WHEREAS, Lake Wingra is a beloved natural location in Madison, providing visitors to its shores a place, in John Muir’s words, “where Nature may heal and cheer and give strength to body and soul alike;” and,
WHEREAS, Lake Wingra is a historically and culturally important location because of its history as a home for Indigenous peoples across millennia, including members of the Ho-Chunk Nation who lived on its shores until the early 1900s; and,
WHEREAS, Lake Wingra further is a historically and culturally important location because of the presence of natural springs that have great spiritual significance for many Indigenous peoples; and,
WHEREAS, Indigenous people from approximately 700 to 1100 C.E. built dense groupings of effigy mounds around Lake Wingra that are among the most impressive mounds anywhere in the world and have been spiritually significant for generation after generation of the effigy mound builders’ descendants, including the Ho-Chunk Nation; and,
WHEREAS, Lake Wingra has significant ecological and scientific importance as a study site for internationally recognized research, including the International Biological Program and the National Science Foundation’s Long Term Ecological Research project; and,
WHEREAS, Lake Wingra’s shoreline includes the University of Wisconsin Arboretum, another beloved natural location in Madison, which is the globally recognized birthplace of ecological restoration, a site for significant ecological research, and a historic site identified as a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service for its demonstration that humanity can and should take responsibility for healing degraded ecosy...
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