Wildlife

Great Lakes researchers mobilize wasps to combat emerald ash borer

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Researchers are increasingly recruiting different wasp warriors in the battle against the emerald ash borer, a destructive, tree-eating beetle that has infiltrated the entire Great Lakes region.

Costly insecticides, tree-removal strategies and bans on moving firewood have provided some defense against the critter.

But a bug-on-bug battle strategy appears to hold promise.

Wildlife

Wild Pig Poll: Should we trap ’em?

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Between 3,000 and 5,000 wild hogs inhabit 69 of Michigan’s 83 counties. They ravage crops and forests and carry diseases. The Michigan Wildlife Conservancy – with help from the U.S. Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services branch – has developed the Michigan Wild Hog Removal Program. It aims to set 100 traps – that cost $450 each — to round them up. Want a piece of the action?

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

Wildlife

New insight on old pesticide spells trouble for the Great Lakes’ invasive sea lamprey

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By Jeff Gillies
Oct. 20, 2009

While Great Lakes officials beat back the voracious Asian carp at the gates of Lake Michigan, they still wrangle with another nasty fish that snuck in at least 90 years ago. Sea lampreys, eel-like parasitic fish native to the Atlantic Ocean, use a mouthful of teeth and a bony tongue to latch onto and scrape through fish flesh. Scientists debate whether the lamprey is native to Lake Ontario, where it was discovered in 1835. But it invaded Lake Erie by 1921 and the rest of the Great Lakes by 1946.

Wildlife

Chemical carp control considered at Chicago

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By Shawntina Phillips
phill465@msu.edu
Oct. 13, 2009

State and federal officials are considering a fish poison as a way of pushing back a front of hungry carp that are advancing toward the Great Lakes. Recent DNA testing indicates that Asian carp are now within a mile of an electric barrier  designed to keep fish out of Lake Michigan. They already have reached the Des Plaines River, a body of water that runs parallel to the barrier. That’s worrisome said John Rogner, the assistant director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources.

Wildlife

Emerald Ash Borer found in La Grange

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(IL) Chicago Tribune – They’re metallic green, can fit on a penny and are now a threat to the thousands of ash trees in the Village of La Grange. According to Ryan Gillingham, La Grange’s director of public works, multiple adult Emerald Ash Borers were found in one of the six traps the village has maintained for detecting the beetle. More

Wildlife

Special report: The alewife question

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Alewives are a Great Lakes invasive fish that baffle native fish reproduction but give imported Pacific salmon — the target of a profitable fishery — something to eat. What’s a Great Lakes fishery manager to do? Sept. 2, 2009
Alewives: Should Great Lakes managers kill ‘em or keep ‘em? Fishery managers have made little progress in restoring lake trout, the Great Lakes’ dominant predator until the species collapsed in the 1940s and 1950s.