A story from the 2025 Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup
It’s a strange thing to search for what others have left behind. Stranger still to do it alongside people you’ve never met.
But that’s how the day began. Gloves on, heads down, eyes scanning the edges of parks and shoreline trails. Little by little, the land began to change.
By day’s end, the bags were full. Cigarette butts. Rusted cans. A broken baby doll. Glass. Sneakers. A negative pregnancy test. A car bumper. Seven mismatched bowls. A ton of tires. One table. An animal trap.
All pulled from parks, riversides, and stormwater outfalls across 70 cleanup locations stretching from Fond du Lac to Green Bay.
This is the Fox-Wolf Watershed Cleanup. Every spring, nearly 1,800 people take part. Some are longtime volunteers. Others show up for the first time. But behind every bag is a reason.
Personal, local, and lasting.
“We had a lot of fun. We found a message in a bottle and a pregnancy test. It was my first year leading, and I’m definitely coming back next year.”
Katie joined a special on-the-water crew. Their kayaks let them reach parts of the river others couldn’t. The finds were strange. The impact was clear.
“A lot has stayed the same, but the event keeps growing. There are so many returning faces now.”
A site leader since her teens, Vea helped collect 137 pounds of trash this year. Her crew included walk-up volunteers who hadn’t planned to join but decided to step in.
“It was a great time to help the community and spend time together outside of work. We’re the ones putting this stuff out there. It matters that we come back and clean it up.”
Madison helped organize her coworkers at Memorial and Lindenberg Trails. They found tires, a table, and plenty of reminders of how much trash gets left behind.
“You just wonder why people leave certain things out there.”
David was struck by the randomness of what they pulled from the grass. A duffel bag. Cans. Fragments of things no one claimed.
“We found a giant bolt. And my mom found a baby doll without a hand. It’s kind of creepy, but it’s good we got it.”
For Zachary, the cleanup counted toward a school service project. But it turned into something more. A way to understand what it means to care for a place.
“We make the mess. But we can pick it up.”
Angie’s group pulled over 100 pounds from a ravine, including a rusted animal trap and a metal barrel cover. She’s been a site leader before. This time, she came simply to help.
“It was really life changing. Getting to do something for the environment, it was actually fun. We’d do it again.”
Annalise and Gamu, both visiting from South Africa, and Ola, from Poland, joined the cleanup as part of a cultural exchange program. For them, it wasn’t just a new experience. It was a new connection to place.
Each year, the cleanup grows. More sites. More hands. More stories like these. It doesn’t happen on its own. It comes from steady effort by people who believe the water deserves our care.
Some return each spring. Others are just discovering what it means to show up. All of them are part of something.
It’s not glamorous work. But it matters.
One bag at a time.