MADISON - With spring break just around the corner, the Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection wants students to share their travel plans with family members.
This is to avoid becoming victims of the grandparent scam. The FTC says more than 25,000 older Americans nationwide- reported losing a combined $110 million through this scam in 2011 alone.
Grandparent scams always involve a request for cash tied to a story about an emergency a grandchild is facing. The scammer poses as the grandchild asking for money to fix a car, get out of jail or leave a foreign country. The grandparent is asked by the “grandchild” not to tell anyone else about the situation.
By sharing spring break travel plans with family members, students can prepare their relatives in case someone tries to scam them.
Families should also establish a backup contact in case a worried grandparent cannot reach the grandchild after receiving one of these troubling calls.
MERRILL - Farmers in Lincoln and Langlade Counties may need to make a longer drive or call a different office for USDA services.
The Merrill Service Center will be temporarily split up between Rhinelander, Wausau, and Medford.
The Farm Service Agency will move to the Wausau Service Center and the Natural Resources Conservation Service will be relocated to the Rhinelander and Medford Centers.
MINOCQUA - These plants may look pretty but they're taking over our rivers and lakes. Michele Sadauskas is Oneida County's Aquatic Invasive Species Coordinator. She is working to map and control the yellow iris, the plant you see here. She and two other conservation workers spent the day weeding Stacks Bay.
"They invade our wetlands. They're a really robust, aggressive plant. What they do is they crowd out our native species and make actually the wetland a lot less diverse," says Michele Sadauskas, Oneida County AIS Coordinator.
Removing yellow iris is a slow process. It takes three hours of work just to properly map and control 20 feet of shoreline.
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