Wildlife

We don’t hate sturgeon

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Echo reader Stephanie Ariganello pointed out a typo in Thursday’s Great Links section: “Volunteers sought to protest sturgeon in Michigan – Detroit Free Press”

She writes: “Those pesky sturgeon.  We ought to be having rallies against them alright, with their snotty prehistoric scutes and their smarmy shark-like fins. Whether it was a simple mis-typing or subconscious comment on someone’s part, not sure. But I believe it should be ‘protect.’”

It was a simple typo, I swear. We like to be transparent about our biases around Echo. And I feel fairly confident that no one on the staff has it in for sturgeon.

Wildlife
Eagle

Eagle watch: Spotting baldies in the Great Lakes states

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Spotting a bald eagle may not be a big deal for people who live in Alaska, along the East and West Coasts, the Rocky Mountains and the Mississippi River, where the large, predatory raptor lives year-round. But Great Lakes staters take what we can get when we get it. Below are the best spots in each of the Great Lakes states to spy the national bird, courtesy of the National Wildlife Federation. And once you see one, ask the bald eagle why it finally decided to clarify its stance on war. Indiana

Monroe Lake, (812) 837-9546

Michigan

Erie Marsh, (517) 316-0300

Minnesota

Voyageurs National Park, (218) 283-6600

New York

Mongaup Falls Reservoir, (845) 557-6162

Hudson River, (212) HUDSON

Sullivan County, (845) 557-6162

Ohio

Ottawa National Wildlife Refuge, (419) 898-0014

Pennsylvania

Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, (717) 787-1323

Wisconsin

Nelson Dewey State Park, (608) 725-5374

Wildlife

Wolf killings in U.P., 2 other states probed

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(MI) The Detroit News – Federal agents are investigating a recent rash of illegal wolf killings across northern Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service on Tuesday asked for the public’s help in finding suspects in 16 wolf killings across the three states in November and December. More

Wildlife

Coast Guard targets zebra mussels in Great Lakes

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(IL) Chicago Sun Times – Twenty years after the pervasive zebra mussel was first detected in the Great Lakes, the U.S. Coast Guard is preparing rules to prevent new invasive species from infiltrating the nation’s freshwater systems.

Ecologists, environmentalists and public officials have mixed feelings about the rules. While they are delighted over the prospect of the first national standard for treating ship ballast water, they’re disappointed by the timetable. “We’ve been dealing with this issue literally for decades,” said Matt Frank, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources. “And we don’t believe the Coast Guard rules are aggressive enough.” More

Echo

Turtle and fish poacher nabbed at Shiawassee refuge

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(MI) Bay City Times – A wildlife poacher from Saginaw was nabbed and ticketed after a two-month investigation by officials from the Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge and Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Painted turtles, snapping turtles, largemouth bass and channel catfish were removed from the vicinity of the refuge’s Green Point Environmental Learning Center, refuge officials said. The turtles were kept in swimming pools in the basement of the poacher, identified as a man from Saginaw. More

Wildlife

More than $590,000 awarded for restoration in Great Lakes

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(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

Wildlife

State’s a haven for bats

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(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

Wildlife

Walleye in Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay carry less PCB contamination than a decade ago

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By Jeff Gillies
Nov. 24, 2009

Walleye swimming in Michigan’s largest watershed are 80 percent less contaminated with PCBs than they were in 1997, according to a study published recently in the Journal of Great Lakes Research. PCBs are toxic, potentially cancer-causing chemicals that were used in electrical insulators, hydraulic equipment and some paints. The U.S. and many other countries banned PCB production in the 1970s and 1980s

PCB levels in Saginaw Bay walleye have dropped 80 percent since 1997, said study author Chuck Madenjian, a fishery biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Great Lakes Science Center. He credits the drop to a dredging project in 2000 and 2001 that pulled more than 340,000 cubic yards of polluted sediment out of the Saginaw River, the bay’s main tributary.