A destructive summer thunderstorm swept through Madison, Wisc., recently, and early the next morning you could hear the roar of chainsaws all over the neighborhood as people cleaned up their yards. It was amazing to see the progress.

By late afternoon, huge brush piles lined the streets and even shredded green leaves were raked up. The city was almost back to normal. Such pride in homes and property is great to see, but it doesn't do well when applied to where fish and wildlife live.
Picture a wilderness lake in your mind and what do you see? Numerous logs lie along the shore with their craggy limbs all green and mossy. Huge cedar trees lean way out over the water, defying gravity and casting a shadow on the water. Along the shore grows a bed of bulrush, their pencil-sized stems marching right up to the shore. Lily pads grow nearby and under the surface lie unseen beds of aquatic vegetation, their bright green swirls hiding the soft muck bottom.

The whole scene fairly reeks of fish--a large northern pike lives under the log near the cedar. A school of perch dart under the lily pads. Farther up near the bank, about 400 newly-hatched crappies, about one inch long, live in less than three inches of water among the bulrush. A pack of six-inch largemouth bass lurks nearly waiting for one of the nearly-transparent fingerlings to venture out beyond the cover of the bulrush.
All these places where fish live are called habitat. The logs, the shady spot under the cedar, the bulrush and the underwater weeds and a thousand other places in the lake, provide food and hiding spots for two dozen different species of fish, several species of frogs and numerous kinds of aquatic insects.

Now let's take a look at many of our lake's here in Wisconsin. All the logs have been pulled out long ago because they might damage a propeller on an outboard motor. The leaning cedars are gone and replaced with a white dock. The aquatic vegetation has been pulled out and the mucky bottom covered with sand to make a beach. Very little of anything can live on, or in, sand. The bulrush is gone and a concrete wall extends two feet out in the lake. No crappies live here because they can't hide from the bass--the bass are gone, too.

The lakeshore looks nice and neat, just like our pretty Wisconsin cities--but nature has suffered fiercely. Many of these lakes have a serious lack of habitat needed by fish during the first few weeks of their life. Just as city wildlife needs a refuge or park to hide in, many of our lakes could use some "wild shoreline" where limbs and logs lie in the water, where mucky bottoms grow dragonfly nymphs and where calm, shallow water only inches deep warms quickly in the sunshine, providing a safe sanctuary for all kinds of fragile creatures.

This is what fish managers mean by good habitat. Please think about that the next time you have an urge to clear the aquatic vegetation or alter the shoreline in front of your lakeshore home. And, when the next tree falls in the lake off your property, maybe you could leave the chainsaw in the garage?