The Arborists Behind Our Wisconsin Coverage: Tree Wise Men LLC
Meet the Janesville-based ISA Certified crew answering homeowner questions, reviewing our guides, and taking on southern Wisconsin's toughest tree work.
A website can tell you that oak wilt spreads through fresh pruning cuts between April and July. It takes an arborist standing in your yard to tell you whether the storm-cracked limb over your garage can wait until November — or can't.
That's the gap Tree Wise Men LLC fills for us in southern Wisconsin, and it's worth explaining what they actually do, because a lot of what you read on TreeIssues has their fingerprints on it.
Who they are
Tree Wise Men is a Janesville-based tree care company built around four ISA Certified Arborists: Jason James, the company's president and founder (WI-1418A); Andrew Christl, who runs operations (WI-1463A); Andrew Liebetrau, who leads client consultations and removal assessments (WI-1674A); and Mark Tyler Schrader (WI-327440A), who operates the grapple saw and crane that make their most technical removals possible.
That last part matters more than it might sound. Plenty of outfits will drop a tree in an open field. Taking a 70-foot oak down in pieces over a house, in a tight lot, without touching the roof — that's rigging and crane work, and it's the kind of job Tree Wise Men has made a specialty. Alongside the heavy work, they handle long-term tree health planning and have a particular interest in Wisconsin's native species — the bur oaks, sugar maples, and hackberries that define the region's older neighborhoods.
They work out of Janesville and cover Rock County and the surrounding area, including Madison and Dane County.
What they do on TreeIssues
They answer your questions. When a homeowner on our Ask an Arborist board wants to know whether brown, wilting July leaves mean oak wilt, or what the D-shaped holes in an ash trunk mean, the answers marked "ISA Certified Arborist" from Jason James are exactly what they claim to be — a working Wisconsin arborist writing from experience with the same trees, the same pests, and the same seasons.
They keep our guidance honest. TreeIssues tracks pests and diseases across the country from federal and university sources, but data isn't judgment. Having certified arborists review what we publish — especially on high-stakes topics like emerald ash borer treatment windows and oak wilt pruning rules — is the difference between a site that aggregates information and one you can act on.
They show up. Consultation requests that come through our directory go to real crews with real calendars. In southern Wisconsin, that's often Tree Wise Men — assessing a leaning tree after a thunderstorm, quoting an ash removal, or walking a property owner through whether a hollow maple is actually a hazard.
Why this matters right now
Southern Wisconsin is a hard place to be a tree. Emerald ash borer has torn through the region's ash — Rock and Dane counties included — and every summer forces the same triage: treat the healthy ash, remove the failing ones before they turn brittle. Oak wilt is established across the area, which is why you'll see us repeat the same warning every spring: no pruning oaks between April and October. Add the derecho-style winds that roll through most summers, and there's no shortage of urgent work.
Platforms like ours can flag what's active in your county and when — our seasonal forecast exists for precisely that. But the last mile of tree care is physical, local, and skilled. It's a person with a climbing rope, a crane operator who knows what a compromised trunk can and can't hold, an assessor who has seen a thousand Wisconsin oaks and knows which ones are telling the truth.
The model we're building
The partnership runs both directions. TreeIssues gives homeowners the information to ask better questions; arborists like Tree Wise Men supply the answers — and the chainsaws. If you're in Rock or Dane County, you can find them through their directory profile, our Janesville and Madison pages, or at treewisemenllc.com.
And if you're an ISA Certified Arborist elsewhere in the country doing this kind of work in your own backyard, we'd like to list you too. This site works best when every state has a Tree Wise Men.