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Neighbors want more protection for wildlife at Warner Park

Itâ??s home to a baseball stadium dubbed the “Duck Pond,” a busy community recreation center and a summer fireworks extravaganza that can draw hundreds of thousands of spectators.

But 180-acre Warner Park, at Northport Drive and Sherman Avenue on the cityâ??s north side, also abuts Lake Mendota, envelops a 28-acre lagoon and attracts a surprisingly diverse assortment of wildlife.

….”I had no idea an urban park could have so much wildlife,” says Trish O’Kane, a graduate student in environment and resources at the Gaylord Nelson Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who moved to the neighborhood a few years ago. O’Kane spent some 130 hours in Warner Park in the past 18 months, studying its wildlife.