Before you discard your Christmas tree to the curb, please consider donating it to the animals at the MacKenzie Center. Christmas trees are a favorite enrichment item for most of the animals here at MacKenzie. It gives them an opportunity to explore new smells, observe a new item, play with them, or use them as a shelter where they can hide next to or under.
If you do decide to donate your Christmas tree, please make sure that all of your ornaments and their hanging wire hooks, and strings are off to prevent any injury to the animals. Also, some of our animals may consider tasting the trees, so please no trees that have being sprayed with fire retardant chemicals or any other hazardous materials.
You can drop off the trees by the back entrance of the wildlife area and our wildlife technicians will pick them up and bring them up to the animals.
Thank you!
Attached a few photos of our two foxes playing around a donated Christmas from previous years.
Memberships in the Friends of MacKenzie come up for renewal each January, so now is a great time to take care of that. You can use the form at the end of this post or find one in our brochure. Even though many of you contribute many volunteer hours (which makes a huge difference in keeping the Center running and enabling the friends to do so many things), you might also wish to become a member.
The dues help fund scholarships for schools and other groups when they come to MacKenzie for day and over night trips (often used for transportation costs). It also is used directly for materials for projects like replacing the roof on the log cabin museum, safety improvements for our hay wagon, purchasing bird feeding supplies, improvements to the wildlife area, and so much more. Please consider renewing or becoming a new member today.
Here’s the great group we have representing the Friends of MacKenzie Center.
The end date of their term is in parentheses.
President, Carl Bujanowski (2026);
Vice President, Chris Devine (2027);
Treasurer, Lila Waldman (2026);
Secretary, Susan Hill (2027); and
board members:
Paul Alexander (2025),
Don Lucke (2025),
Wayne Tourdot (2025),
Roger Wanek (2025),
Tony Schwarz (2026),
Kim Sperry Frazier (2027), and
Karen Dishno Voss (2027).
Thanks to this dedicated and hard working group of volunteers.
At the annual banquet on Jan 16th, there will be an election to fill 4 positions. Think about joining the wonderful group of people!
Despite some less-than-ideal weather which forced us to make the tough decision to cancel Maple Fest in 2023, we still had a successful maple program. From the end of February through the end of March, we welcomed over 1000 students (mainly 4th graders) as well as numerous teachers, parents, and other chaperones to learn about all aspects of maple — identifying and tapping trees, the history of making maple sugar and maple syrup (focusing on indigenous peoples and European settlers), and some related biological and ecological concepts. Groups got to try their hand at tapping a tree and everyone had a chance to taste our delicious MacKenzie Gold maple syrup at the end of their tour. Many volunteers are needed to make this program successful. If you haven’t helped in the past, you might want to consider it next season!
On Sunday, April 16, 2023, Friends of MacKenzie Center members were able to learn a great deal about raptors and got to see four live birds at a presentation by Dianne Moller, director of Hoo’s Woods Raptor Center in Milton, WI. The center is a non-profit organization dedicated to the rehabilitation of raptor species (eagles, hawks, owls, falcons and vultures) founded in 1998. It also focuses on education and uses birds which are unable to be returned to the wild (usually due to injuries) as teaching ambassadors. We got to see a Saw Whet Owl, Broadwinged Hawk, Snowy Owl and Bald Eagle. The program was originally scheduled as part of our Friends of MacKenzie annual meeting in January, but had to be postponed due to weather. Programs like these are a great reason to join the Friends of MacKenzie!
This letter is for maple program volunteers, but the information about how the program went in 2022 may be of interest to others.
Dear Maple Volunteers,
Maple season has come to a close, and we cannot thank you enough for all of your time, energy, enthusiasm, and guidance through the first Maple Education season since COVID. For most of our staff, this was our first Maple Season, and we could not have put this together without the guidance and leadership of the Friends of MacKenzie and our dedicated volunteers. So, from all of us, THANK YOU!!! We had so much fun putting this together, and are so glad that we got to be a part of this program.
To show our appreciation, we are excited to announce a Volunteer Thank You Barbecue, on Saturday, May 21st, 2022. We did not get the chance to thank you with food on clean-up day, but we’d love to see you in May for a day of fun and food! This event is possible thanks to the Friends of MacKenzie’s hard work and funds!
This year’s Maple Program exceeded our expectations in every way. With the bussing troubles, new variants, and general hesitation for field trips this year, we were not sure what to expect! But, after calling all of you, and on our Maple Call-In Day, we were blown away, and the season continued to surprise us. Maple 2022 brought in more students than many of our staff have seen since starting here! We also met so many people who care so much for MacKenzie and about Environmental Education, and are so grateful to everyone who made Maple so amazing. For those of you who like to see numbers, here are our stats from Maple 2022:
1,013 students came to Maple this year!
Maple Fest drew 838 people!
54 Volunteers came together to make this happen!
Those 54 Volunteers gave 2,095 hours total to the maple program, for an average of 38 hours per person!
The volunteer with the most time, volunteered 99.25 hours of their time this year!
In total, our students and guides tapped 102 trees, and a total of 113 trees were tapped this year!
Over the season, over 1,800 gallons of sap were collected!
The average sugar content of the sap was 4.0 % Brix, with a high of 4.7% on March 30th!
337 Pints of MacKenzie Gold, in total, were produced.
Again, thank you all for such a wonderful season. Please save the date for May 21st, when we will host our Volunteer Thank You Breakfast!
Sincerely,
The MacKenzie Center Staff and the Friends of MacKenzie
Broadwinged Hawk
