It’s been another fun year of providing Great Lakes environmental news here at Great Lakes Echo.

And, while we love every story equally, here are the most read stories of 2011.

Welcome to day two of our favorite reader comments from 2011. The Echo staff has spent hours combing through the brilliant, funny and, at times, inane comments on our stories, and narrowed it down to a few of the best. Enjoy!

Whether it’s a regular chiming in or a newbie venting over the latest smoking ban news, our readers add to stories with their comments. This is our first installment of our favorite reader comments of 2011. Don’t see yours? Leave us a comment!

Despite our deference to search engines, we still occasionally have funny or downright weird headlines.

The Echo staff hand-picked (clicked?) the top 15 of 2011.

Enjoy.

Tim Campbell at the Wisconsin Sea Grant has found a way to bring the Great Lakes to your holiday celebrations. Sit around the fireplace and sing The Twelve Days of Aquatic Invasive Species Christmas with all your lake-lovin’ friends and family.
 
On the twelfth day of Christmas, a freighter sent to me
Twelve quaggas clogging
‘Leven gobies gobbling
Ten alewives croaking
Nine eggs in resting
Eight shrimp a’swarming
Seven carp and counting
Six lamprey leaping
Five boat-wash stations!
Four perch on ice
Three clean boat steps
Two red swamp crayfish
And a carp barrier in the city!
Check out the full version for …

A mini-invader that latches onto Great Lakes fish has found its way into Lake Erie.

Scientists aren’t sure what impact they will have, if any, or how the seemingly innocuous little copepods got here.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has removed gray wolves in the western Great Lakes region from the federal endangered species list.
The western Great Lakes region includes Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota and portions of North Dakota, South Dakota, Iowa, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
The delisting takes effect Jan. 27. State departments will manage wolves after the delisting. You can view the Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota wolf management plans here:
State wolf management plans
The core population of the region’s gray wolves live in the northern parts of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. According to the …

Take a break from the eggnog, fuzzy sweaters and family parties to take part in the National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count, a citizen science program that’s been running each winter since 1900.
From Dec. 14 until Jan. 5, help out by counting birds in specified areas and submitting the data to the Audubon Society. The information helps scientists study the long-term health of North American birds.
The count goes beyond monitoring bird health. In the 1980s, the Christmas Bird Count data showed a decline in wintering populations of american black duck, …

Hunters across the Great Lakes region can turn sporting into charity through one of the many programs that connect harvested game to hungry people.

Next time you’re about to scowl at a wasp, think again.
Researchers at the University of Michigan found that paper wasps, Polistes fuscatus, learn each other’s faces the way humans do. The study was published in Science.
Researchers showed the smart little buggers pictures of other paper wasps, caterpillars, shapes and computer-altered pictures. They set up a maze that required the wasps to choose the right image  to find a pathway  through it.
The maze travelers learned the faces of the other paper wasps fastest, even though researchers thought the shapes would be …