Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/category/wildlife/)
This broad category encompasses fish. It is further divided on the main menu with tags for mammals, insects, amphibians, birds, mussels, invaders and endangered wildlife.
By Victoria Witke Catch and release ethics is credited for the fact that smallmouth bass in Lake St. Clair have been getting larger over the past 50 years, a DNR study finds. Other factors may include warming Great Lakes water temperatures and longer growing seasons due to climate change.
By Emilio Perez Ibarguen
An Ottawa County legislator, who is also a dairy farmer, says the Environment, Great Lakes and Energy regulations of animal waste are too strict and harm businesses. The Michigan Environmental Council says strict rules are necessary, as does a Lenawee County farmer-activist who provides water testing training to rural communities.
By Victoria Witke
Consistent training of dairy farm workers can prevent mastitis, and improve milk quality and employee communication, according to a recent MSU study. The dairy industry contributes $15.7 billion yearly to the state economy. Huron and Clinton counties host the greatest number of dairy cows, and Lenawee, Missaukee and Ionia counties also have lots of them.
By Julia Belden
It’s one of Mother Nature’s most spectacular events. Mature chinook salmon, battered from a long and exhausting migration, return to the shallow tributaries of their birthplace to spawn. It’s the final act of the salmon’s short two-to-three-year life: after passing on their genes to the next generation, the fish quickly die.
By Victoria Witke
After the death of tens of millions of Michigan ash trees from the invasive emerald ash borer, a new study done in Clinton, Eaton and Ingham counties shows white ash are more resilient than previously thought. Despite so many dying, they continue to reproduce in forests with the invasive bug.
By Dylan Engels
Michigan’s wolf population has grown since the animal was listed as an endangered species a half-century ago, and that raises some concerns. Meanwhile, a new study from the National Park Service and the University of Wisconsin looks at how the reintroduction of wolves on Isle Royale has affected the diets of two other island predators, the American marten and the fox.
By Anna Barnes
A new book from a Rogers City-area writer collects tales of the contentious issue of the presence or absence of cougars in the Northern Lower Peninsula and UP.
By Clara Lincolnhol
Chris Compton, owner of a company called Goose Busters, has spent nearly 30 years addressing human-goose conflicts. Over the years, the goose population has continued to grow, especially in more populated areas, he said.
“We have them all over,” he said. “They’re building up in Lansing quite a bit. Ann Arbor’s a big area. Troy, Detroit, Rochester Hills and Auburn Hills too.”
That also means there’s a lot of goose poop. One adult goose can produce up to two pounds of feces a day. Too much waste could cause environmental problems, research shows.
By Ruth Thornton
Gary Groff fondly remembers hunting all day on his grandfather’s land as a boy. “For my dad’s life he could not believe that I could go out there before daylight and come back after dark,” he said.
Now retired for many years, he still hunts the central Michigan property with friends. The parcel is partially wooded and partially farmed, but the farmland is poor. “The soil is sandier than heck,” Groff said, and the farmer who rented it did not make much money from the crops.
So, a few years ago, they enrolled the parcel in a government set-aside program and seeded it with native grasses and wildflowers. Now, the farmer “gets paid more for leaving it idle than he does for farming,” Groff said.
The program is one of many by state and federal agencies to restore grasslands and native prairies in Michigan.
By Eric Freedman
Capital News Service
Remember the canary in the coal mine? If the caged canary died, that was an urgent early warning for miners that the air was too dangerous to breathe and to get above-ground as quickly as possible. Now there’s evidence from Southeast Michigan that the American robin can provide an early warning about dangerous lead levels in the soil. A new study in the journal “Urban Ecosystems” found that high blood lead levels in robins can accurately predict where soil is contaminated.
Exposure of children to lead is linked to damage to their nervous system and brain, learning and behavioral problems, and speech and hearing problems, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There is relatively little knowledge about the health impacts of blood lead levels on songbirds such as robins.
By Ruth Thornton
Gray wolves could thrive in the eastern United States well beyond their current range in the Great Lakes region, but they might have a hard time reaching other suitable habitats without human intervention, researchers say. Wolves once had the largest known range of any land mammal but they were nearly exterminated in the United States in the early 1900s after persecution by humans.
Their population only recovered after they were placed under federal protection in the 1970s. They have since recolonized some areas where they once flourished, including in Minnesota, Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
A 2022 study analyzed which areas in the eastern U.S. still have suitable habitat for wolves and are connected enough to each other so wolves might be able to travel between them.
To do that, the researchers used survey data collected between 2018 and 2020 by biologists working for the natural resource departments in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.
They then modeled the characteristics of the habitats where wolves were found and predicted where else in the eastern U.S. large tracts of suitable areas occur. They also modeled how connected to each other those areas are. They found that six areas had good habitat and were large enough to sustain wolves, but the animals occur in only one of them, the western Great Lakes.
