Fall in love with Fair Meadows

Located along the shores of Lake Koshkonong in Rock County, Fair Meadows Sanctuary and State Natural Area is a beautifully restored landscape teeming with wildlife. This special place creates a safe haven for birds, rare plants, insects, mammals, and all wildlife to find refuge or raise young in an increasingly developed landscape.

We’re sorry, due to the sensitive nature of this State Natural Area, Fair Meadows is not open to the regular visitation offered at our other properties. However, we offer lots of ways to visit by reaching out to receive permission, or through the many scheduled opportunities we provide such as field trips, events, and regular monthly birding days.

Fair Meadows: a safe haven for biodiversity

Fair Meadows became Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (formerly Madison Audubon)’s newest sanctuary in summer 2023. The 374.24 acre property, designated a State Natural Area in 2005, has been in active restoration since 1985. The sanctuary features diverse habitats including woodlands, savannas, prairies, sedge meadows, wetlands, and natural springs. Because of this, these rolling hills create space for a variety of birds, plants, and insects to find refuge.

Here, birds like Virginia Rails, Sandhill Cranes, and Green Herons can soak up the rich resources in the wetlands. Great Crested Flycatchers, Baltimore Orioles, and Tennessee Warblers can enjoy the oaks and hickories in Fair Meadows’ extensive woodlands. Savannah Sparrows, Eastern Bluebirds, and American Kestrels can find food and refuge in the vibrant prairies. Birds and all other types of wildlife benefit from the thoughtful care and hard work it’s taken to create this sanctuary.

History of the property

In 1984, Penny and Gary Shackelford began searching for property in the Lake Koshkonong area to pursue their birding and photography interests during their trips to Penny’s family home nearby. They found a 180-acre property in nearby Rock County close to the southern shores of Lake Koshkonong. It was a little bit more that the 10 to 15 acre retirement farm they had in mind, but the mosaic of apple orchards, wet meadows, and oak-hickory woods proved to be irresistible, and they purchased it in 1985.

In 1992, Penny and Gary purchased an additional 200 acres of wetland from a neighbor, which had been managed for duck hunting. It was an excellent home not only for ducks but also for rails, cranes, Marsh Wrens, bitterns, and Black Terns. This expanded the property, now called Fair Meadows, to 380 acres. The inspiration for the name came from a hymn that Penny had learned in childhood:

“Fair are the meadows, fairer still the woodlands, robed in the blooming garb of spring”.

The Shackelfords partnered with many organizations and individuals through the years to achieve their conservation goals, including: DNR forestry, the DNR Bureau of Endangered Resources (now the Bureau of Natural Heritage Conservation), the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), The Prairie Enthusiasts, Wisconsin Woodland Owners Association, Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS), Department of Agriculture and Consumer Protection (DATCP), Wisconsin Wetlands Association, and Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance (then called Madison Audubon). Many of those partnerships continue today.

Decades of Restoration

Penny and Gary’s vision and goal became “restoration of native habitats.” In 1990, they planted their first prairie, and have spent the years since expanding the prairie, coordinating prescribed burns, restoring woodlands through invasive species removal and planting seedlings, creating wetland scrapes, erecting nesting platforms, and managing their property for the multiple threatened and rare species.

The rows of apple trees were replaced by prairies with scattered oaks. Dense woods choked with buckthorn and honeysuckle morphed into open woods with an understory of ferns, sedges, forbs, nannyberries, dogwoods, gooseberries, and blackberries. In the wetlands, a native mix of sedges, bullrushes, bluejoint grass, and cordgrass emerged from where they eradicated clones of reed canary grass, clumps of purple loosestrife, and hybrid cattails. Instead of straight, defined fence rows, the habitats now merge gradually and unevenly.

The bird list for Fair Meadows stands at 196 species including nesting Bald Eagles, Osprey, Sandhill Cranes, Pileated Woodpeckers, Field Sparrows, Sedge Wrens, Marsh Wrens, and many more.

Becoming a Sanctuary

In 2005, The WDNR designated Fair Meadows as a State Natural Area. To be a State Natural Area, a property must have outstanding natural communities, a critical habitat for rare species, be an ecological benchmark reference area, and/or is an exceptional site for natural area research and education. Fair Meadows checks all of those boxes!

In addition, in 2023 Penny and Gary donated the 374.24 acres of Fair Meadows State Natural Area to Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance to become its newest sanctuary, with the vision of protecting birds (and all wildlife) through restoration and preservation of habitats, research, and education. As a nationally accredited land trust, Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance has the honor of stewarding this land into perpetuity.

Thank you to Penny and Gary Shackelford for their vision, leadership, and generosity!

Banner photo: Beautiful Fair Meadows in summer. Photo by Joshua Mayer