A Wildlife Underpass to Mitigate Turtle Road Mortality along State Highway 66 in Central Wisconsin

Dr. Zani is a professor at UW-Stevens Point. He grew up in eastern Ohio catching frogs, toads, salamanders, and turtles. He used to keep turtles during the summer as pets and was fascinated with herptiles of all kinds. He went to college knowing he wanted to do research on reptiles and have essentially done that for the past 25 years of his life.  In grad school Dr. Zani spent time as a research assistant for a pair of professors who were inventorying the reptiles and amphibians of the Amazon and so traveled with them to Brazil, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Since then, he has become more interested in the temperate zone and understanding how animals cope with extremely seasonal environments, especially winter.  Dr. Zani’s research tends to focus on the implications of climate limitations and how a changing climate might alter those limitations for individuals, populations, and species. His approach combines field work, mostly on side-blotched lizards in the high desert of eastern Oregon, semi-controlled outdoor mesocosm experiments of enclosed cohorts of lizards and controlled-environment laboratory experiments at UWSP.  This talk titled, “A Wildlife Underpass to Mitigate Turtle Road Mortality along State Highway 66 in Central Wisconsin: Not Perfect, but It Works,” will focus on some conservation efforts with our local turtle populations to help them survive.  ALAS programs 2022-23 are FREE and open to the public. The presentation will be offered in a hybrid format. Onsite at the Lincoln Center (1519 Water Street, Stevens Point, WI) or on Zoom at 7pm, Wednesday, September, 21st. By registering, you will receive an email reminder for this talk. For the Zoom Link - Register at:

https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZAvcOigqjwtGNOrKVFUi5YTSrvxMzrhvS2I