Guide to Significant Wildlife Habitat - Door County Web Map

RENARD SWAMP
LOCATION:
Renard Swamp is located in the Town of Union along the southwestern shoreline of Door County
(T26N, R23E). The area contains approximately 1,570 acres of wetland habitat near the bay of Green
Bay. As this report represents general areas of concern, exact location of boundary lines have not been
designated.
GENERAL SITE DESCRIPTION:
The Renard Swamp area contains three significant habitats: southern hardwood swamp, mesicwet
beach ridges, and Renard Creek. The creek is a portion of the Red River & Sturgeon Bay Priority
Watershed Program. The YMCA owns a small portion of the site.
The Town of Union community has been working to develop a local zoning ordinance. The town
board has been gathering information, conducting community surveys and holding public meetings to
help define a workable ordinance. Adoption of an ordinance is anticipated in 2003. State-mandated
zoning applies to land use along shorelines and navigable streams.
ECOLOGICAL SIGNIFICANCE:
This wetland area is significant in that it represents an intact example of a significant sized stand
of southern hardwood forest, and associated drainage corridor, in a relatively undisturbed condition. The
Renard Creek Corridor is mainly blocks of scenic, mixed upland forest and pineries associated with
several creeks, drainage ways, escarpments, terraces, and shores (Zimmerman 1989). The value of the
hardwood swamp and creek is as a large contiguous block of natural habitat for a variety of plant and
animal species.
NOTEWORTHY CULTURAL AND HISTORICAL FEATURES:
J. P. Schumacher explored the areas around Shoemakers Point and Renard Creek in the early
1900’s in search of Indian village sites and burial places. He found evidence of Potawatomi campsites
and other indications of aboriginal residence (Schumacher 1918). Many of the artifacts he unearthed are
located at the Neville Museum in Green Bay.
The area attracted Belgian immigrants primarily coming from the south central provinces of
Brabant, Hanant and Namur. Extensive mixed forests provided logs for the first structures erected
between 1853 and 1857. Few of these buildings exist today. Most were leveled in early October 1871 by
extensive and intense fires (exactly contemporaneous with, but unrelated to, the Great Chicago Fire),
which destroyed buildings, crops, livestock, timber and took more than 200 lives. The fire partially
cleared thousands of acres, and land was thus more readily available for farming (Laatsch and Calkins
1992).
SITE FEATURES:
Hardwood Swamp
This portion of the site is a large (200 acres) wooded area and contains at least 110 acres of
wetlands, including a significant southern hardwood swamp, with wet-mesic beach ridges. Preliminary
surveys show a high diversity of plant and animal species (SWIS 1992).
• The surrounding land use is primarily woodlots and lesser amounts of cropland, recreational private
and idle farmland.
• Soils underlying the hardwood swamp are poorly drained and nearly level to sloping.
Renard Swamp 39