Wisconsin family’s 2,000 floodplain acres now permanently protected

A Wisconsin family spent years trying to make nearly 2,000 low-lying acres along the Sugar River work as farmland. But the property’s location in a floodplain made farming difficult, and the drainage system could not keep pace with the water.The former Applegate-Bader Farm is now permanently protected after Groundswell Conservancy and Ducks Unlimited completed the purchase of the property, The Good Press reported. The land stretches along more than two miles of the Sugar River in Rock County, about 45 minutes south of Madison. It includes wetlands, floodplain forests, prairies and river frontage.The conservation deal came after years of difficulty for the family. In 2016, Applegate-Bader sued Wisconsin’s Department of Revenue after a rule change excluded permanent conservation easements from the state’s “use-value” farmland tax assessment.