Government

New wildlife council would promote hunting, fishing

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – Fresh from Gov. Rick Snyder’s approval of the first hike in hunting and license fees since 1997, lawmakers now want to establish a way to use the $1-per-license surcharge for media and promotion. Their bill would create a Michigan Wildlife Management Public Education Fund to finance a new wildlife council. The council would develop “a comprehensive media-based public information program to educate this state’s general public about the benefits of wildlife, wildlife management and the important role that licensed hunters, anglers, trappers, sportsmen and sportswomen play in wildlife and wildlife management.”
The state will collect the $1 surcharge, which was included in the new fee structure, on base licenses, combined hunting and fishing licenses, and all-species fishing licenses. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) estimates it will generate $1.6 million the first full year. Under the bill, the DNR director would appoint unpaid council members, including active hunters and anglers and representatives of agriculture and of businesses “substantially impacted” by fishing and hunting.

Environment

Local officials want state to pay for wildfires

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By JUSTINE McGUIRE
Capital News Service
LANSING — Good neighbors pay to put out their fires. That’s why Rep. Bob Genetski, R-Saugatuck, says he introduced a bill that would allow the state to compensate localities for fighting fires on state-owned land through the already-established Forest Development Fund. “This is state land and the state needs to be taking care of it,” he said. “It’s to the point where the state is a terrible neighbor.”

The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) does have fire crews and says on its website that it has the overall responsibility for wildfires. It also receives help from the U.S. Forest Service and local fire departments.

Environment

Crisp Point natural beauty now protected, open to public

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Two miles of pristine Lake Superior shoreline, sand dunes and an 83-acre inland lake are now open to the public as part of a 3,816-acre expansion of state-owned forestland in the central Upper Peninsula. The $6 million parcel is a “public asset,” said Tom Bailey, executive director of the Little Traverse Conservancy, which worked with the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) and U.S. Forest Service to bring the Crisp Point Project to fruition. Crisp Point includes steep bluffs, sand dunes and streams, as well as 2.5 miles of snowmobile trails, according to DNR. Public recreational uses include hunting, kayaking, fishing and wildlife viewing. Existing two-tracks will remain open, and DNR has no plans to build any structures or campgrounds there.

Environment

Ongoing walleye studies help DNR

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By EDITH ZHOU
Capital News Service
LANSING – The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) is in its final sampling year of a tag-and-recapture study of the walleye population in the inland waterways of Northern Michigan. It’s part of ongoing research about the popular species by the Fisheries Division. “The studies have provided data on the exploitation rate of the population, walleye growth rates and the movements between waters,” said Edward Baker, manager of the Marquette Fisheries Research Station. Many of the state’s Great Lakes waters are world-famous for walleye. According to the DNR, the Lake Erie-Detroit River-Lake St.

Environment

Commercial fishing decline hits economies, communities

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By ERIC FREEDMAN
Capital News Service
LANSING – As the number of active state-licensed commercial fishing operations dwindles on the Great Lakes, their downward spiral signals a change in culture as well as economics and environment, according to Laurie Sommers, a folklorist and historic preservation consultant. “A few commercial fishermen still make a good living, but Great Lakes ecosystems are in crisis,” said Sommers, the author of a new book about the Leelanau Peninsula area known as Fishtown. “The fish are disappearing, and with them the commercial fishermen,” she wrote in “Fishtown: Leland, Michigan’s Historic Fishery” (Arbutus Press, $19.95). Lake Michigan, for example, has only seven state-licensed operations left. Among the reasons: “Biologists point to a combination of factors affecting the fish population: habitat, infectious diseases, pollution, global warming and changes in the food web due to invasive species.”

Michigan set a cap of 50 state-issued commercial fishing licenses for the Great Lakes, although only 35 of them are actively used, supporting about 22-23 businesses, said Tom Goniea, a commercial fisheries biologist at the Department of Natural Resources (DNR).

Environment

Turkeys relocated to rebuild Northern Michigan flocks

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By Nick Vanderwall
Capital News Service
LANSING — The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has moved 31 turkeys from Barry County north to repopulate the flock in Lake County. “We’ve seen a decline in the gobblers in northern Michigan for a number of years, so when I heard about the nuisance birds in southern Michigan, the wheels started to turn in my head,” said Jim Maturen, a member of the Michigan Wild Turkey Hunters Association based in Chase. Turkeys become a nuisance when they move into a city as they have been known to do. In Barry County, the birds were scratching and eating silage and leaving their own bit of feces behind. Maturen and several other association members approached state officials in the fall of 2011 about trapping nuisance birds from southern Michigan to release in northern Michigan.

Environment

Some dam projects funded, more rejected

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By JUSTIN ANDERSON
Capital News Service
LANSING — Michigan has more than 2,600 dams, many of which are not maintained and no longer serve a useful purpose, experts say. Many are considered unsafe due to risk of collapse. Unmaintained dams deteriorate, threatening homes, property and people downstream, said Chris Freiburger, a supervisor with the Fisheries Division of the Department of Natural Resources (DNR). “When we look at the number of dams we have and the age that we know of, it becomes a concern,” Freiburger said. “It’s a real infrastructure issue here that needs to be dealt with.”

The state recently targeted six dams — five in the Lower Peninsula and one in the Upper Peninsula —to remove or repair using tax dollars.

Environment

New study questions river sand trap strategy

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By MICHAEL GERSTEIN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Researchers based in Marquette have potentially grave news for Michigan anglers: Hundreds of shallow basins dug into riverbeds to collect trout- and salmon-harming sediment might be more like fish coffins than protectors. After two reportedly successful experiments in the 1980s, sand traps were constructed worldwide in an attempt to save fish populations hurt by excessive sand in freshwater streams. Michigan has more than 250. But now, researchers from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) say they doubt whether these measures have had any benefit. In some cases, sand traps could even harm river ecosystems, experts say. Popular species like salmon and brook trout need coarse riverbeds of gravel or small pebbles.

Environment

Projects protect U.P.'s coaster brook trout

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By CELESTE BOTT
Capital News Service
LANSING – Removing sand from the Salmon Trout River in Marquette County has helped protect the spawning sites of coaster brook trout, according to researchers. A sand collector was installed upstream last spring to intercept sediment before it reached the endangered trout’s spawning habitat, according to a report from the Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Marquette Fisheries Research Station. The machine pumps sand out of the river, preventing it from covering stream-bottom rocks where the majority of coasters spawn. The Salmon Trout River is the last Lake Superior tributary with a natural breeding population of the species, said Casey Huckins, the project leader and professor of biological sciences at Michigan Technological University. “They were once common throughout Lake Superior basin tributaries and nearshore waters, but the populations were wiped out due to over-fishing and habitat degradation,” Huckins said on the project’s fundraising website.

Environment

Spring brings fish stocking, regulation changes

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By EDITH ZHOU
Capital News Service
LANSING – This year’s fishing season is starting on the wheels of stocking trucks, new regulations and programs to attract more participants. The Department of Natural Resources (DNR) said its $9 million program is stocking 19 million fish – 370 tons – including eight trout and salmon species and four cool-water species, including walleye and muskellunge. This year, DNR’s fish-stocking vehicles will travel nearly 138,000 miles to more than 700 spots around the state. Christian LeSage, a biologist at DNR’s Fisheries Division, said that overall, locations and species don’t change much from year to year. However, some locations are not always stocked, and new places are added.