Great Lakes Echo (http://greatlakesecho.org/tag/endangered-wildlife/page/8/)
(MI) Petosky News-Review – The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service recently announced $590,190 in federal funding for fish and wildlife restoration projects in the Great Lakes Basin. The projects will be matched by $309,949 in partner contributions and will focus on the rehabilitation of sustainable populations of native fish and wildlife and their habitats. More
(NY) New York Times – Not everyone was happy when the gray wolf population in the Northern Rockies, near extinction in the mid-1970’s, staged a remarkable comeback under the protections of the Endangered Species Act. By the end of last year there were about 1,650 in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming. Ranchers complained that the wolves were killing their sheep and cattle; hunters complained that they were devastating big game, mainly elk. So when protections were lifted earlier this year in Idaho and Montana the states immediately approved wolf hunting seasons. But what seemed to be an ordinary big-game hunt, with licenses and duly apportioned quotas (75 in Montana, 220 in Idaho), now looks like the opening of a new front in the age-old war on wolves.
(MI) Detroit Free Press – When people act oddly, they’re sometimes described as having bats in their belfry. Yet if you live in Michigan, one of America’s bat havens, there’s a good chance you really have bats in the belfry, or at least in the attic. Joe Willis, a partner in Bat Removal Specialists of Michigan, works in the metro area getting bats and other unwanted critters out of homes and commercial buildings and keeping them out. More
(MI) MLive.com – The Michigan Department of Natural Resources says a Wisconsin man illegally killed a wolf in Iron County earlier this month. DNR conservation officers found the animal dumped at the edge of a field south of Iron River on Nov. 17. Evidence at the scene led the officers to a nearby hunting camp where a possible suspect was identified. More
(MI) Flint Journal – The Genesee County Parks Commission will not appeal a judge’s ruling against a controlled deer hunt to protect the ecosystem at For-Mar Nature Preserve & Arboretum. It’s probably not in our best interest to appeal. We’re budgeted down to the dollar at this point and every dollar we spend on something like this is a dollar we can’t spend on mowing or picking up trash or public safety,” said parks Director Amy McMillan in agreeing with the commission’s legal counsel not to appeal. “There’s just not an infinite well from which we draw to do our work for the entire park system.” More
(MI) Detroit Free Press – The Department of Natural Resources said Wednesday it confirmed that an animal in a photo taken last month by a trail camera in Chippewa County, in the eastern Upper Peninsula, is a cougar. The DNR also said it had verified two sets of cougar tracks found recently in the UP — one near DeTour in late October and the other this week near Gulliver in Schoolcraft County. More
(MN) Minneapolis Star Tribune – Research happens up close in the world’s longest continuous study of predators and prey at Isle Royale National Park in Lake Superior. Peterson has been watching and counting moose and wolves in this wilderness off Minnesota’s North Shore for nearly 40 of the study’s 51 years, in summer by foot and in winter by air. Now that continuity is at a breaking point. The island’s moose population is nearing a 50-year low, and what’s bad for the moose is worse for the wolves that depend on them. Peterson can see the day when the wolves die out on Isle Royale, and scientists must confront far-reaching questions: Should we intervene to help the wolves survive, or let them die out and start again?
(MI) Detroit Free Press – White-nose syndrome, thought to be caused by a fungus previously unknown in the United States, settles on the noses and wings of hibernating bats. It has destroyed as many as 97% of the bats in some caves in the Northeast. The telltale white fungus was first noted on dead bats in New York in 2006 and has claimed more than 1 million bats in nine states since then, scientists say. More
(MI) Grand Rapids Press – Beekeepers tend farm and backyard hives for the honey, to help pollinate gardens to earn cash and because they like bees. “Bees are so industrious. They work from sun up to sun down. It’s interesting to watch them go in and out of the hives and do their different jobs,” said businessman Chris Raphael, a Saugatuck resident who started beekeeping two years ago. More
(OH) Cleveland Plain Dealer – Since 2006, state wildlife officers have been shooting thousands of double-crested cormorants to prevent them from inundating several of the Lake Erie islands and denuding the landscape, threatening nesting egrets and herons and killing endangered plants. “When we saw what was happening with the deterioration on Middle Island in Canada, we wanted to stop the problem before it became so bad that the damage would be irreparable,” said Dave Sherman, a wildlife biologist with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources based at the Crane Creek Wildlife Research Station in Ottawa County. More