Outdoors Blog

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Category: Wildlife

Invasives strike again

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) -- It's a fishing tale that packs a wallop so strong it broke the jaw of a southeastern Arkansas teen and covered him in fish blood and guts.

Seth Russell, 15, of Crossett, was cruising Lake Chicot on a large inner tube towed by a boat when a silver Asian carp leaped from the water and smacked him in the face. Seth was knocked unconscious.

"He doesn't remember anything at all," the boy's mother, Linda Russell, said last week. "He was laughing, and the next thing he remembers, he is waking in a hospital."

The teen has had oral surgery to wire several teeth together and still experiences back pain that doctors attribute to whiplash from the high-speed collision, his mother said.

He's not the only one who's has a run-in with the "flying" Silver Asian carp.

"They do not fly, but they are quite good jumpers," said Carole Engle, director of aquaculture and the fisheries center at the University of Arkansas at Pine Bluff. "Over the past year, we have had some calls about fish jumping and causing injuries on Lake Chicot.

"Their jumping behavior is a problem, and their population appears to be growing there," Engle said.

Silver Asian carp were first imported to the United States in the 1970s. Catfish farmers brought them here to remove algae and other suspended matter from their ponds. The Environmental Protection Agency started a program allowing cities to use the fish to help clean the water in sewer treatment plant ponds.

Category: Wildlife

Another bad acronym for Michigan deer: EHD

The Michigan DNR said today that it was epizootic hemorrhagic disease (EHD) that killed more than 50 deer along the Clinton River in Oakland and Macomb counties in recent weeks.

The viral disease is a nasty one, transmitted by teensie little flies -- midges -- about 1/10-inch long. It causes confusion, progressive weakness and often death.

It has appeared in Michigan before, most recently in 2006 along the Allegan River. Michigan had outbreaks in 1955 and 1974, too, and it has been seen in other states. Indiana has been losing deer to it in the past several years.

It usually comes in late summer and dies off when frost kills the midges.

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Category: Wildlife

Wolf plan sure to stir controversy

Remember the mourning dove?

You know, the drab little bird with the tasty breasts that we can't hunt in Michigan?

Even though the vast majority of them fly to Ohio and Indiana to get shot at?

And they reproduce so furiously that they cheerfully withstand 70-percent mortality rates and come back strong year after year?

And never mind that the Humane Society of the United States, the world's most fervent anti-hunting group, bamboozled Michigan voters into ignoring the science about doves with a misinformation campaign loaded with hogwash about people shooting birds too small to eat (ever try a shrimp?) off their backyard feeders.

Because you ain't seen nothin' yet.

Next month the Natural Resources Commission is expected to approve the draft of the DNR's wolf management plan, in anticipation of wolves coming off the state's endangered species list later this summer.

Some 500 wolves roam the U.P. these days, up from roughly none as recently as the 1980s. In my view it's a remarkable comeback story about an opportunistic predator exploiting a huge, available ecosystem. Very cool.

But now they need to be managed. The plan is heavily focused on understanding wolves and maintaining the wolf population while minimizing conflict with humans and livestock. Most everyone involved agrees with that strategy.

But one section of the plan will raise a furor that could make the mourning dove argument look like an afternoon tea:

"Develop and Implement a Socially and Biologically Responsible Policy Regarding Public Harvest of Wolves."

Under the management plan, wolves will likely be killed. But it distinguishes between harvesting wolves to reduce conflict and harvesting wolves for other reasons, which essentially means "for fun and profit."

And here, at long last, is my point. The folks who dumped millions of dollars into keeping the ho-hum mourning dove off the list of game species will certainly back up the Brinks truck to prevent killing large, charismatic predators like the gray wolf.

The state has not indicated that there will be recreational wolf hunting any time soon. But those who oppose hunting will not draw any distinction between recreational hunting and wolf management.

To them killing animals is bad, period. Science is to be ignored. Ecosystems come in second-to-last place, ahead of only impact on humans. Balance? Pff. And no argument is too shrill, too venomous or too devoid of truth to make their case.

Brace yourself. It's going to get loud.

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Category: Wildlife

Melting ice has polar bears in danger

It's official: The polar bear has become the first species to achieve protected status due to climate change.

Climate change, by the way, is the scientifically accepted term for the more politically charged "global warming."

The U.S. Department of Interior said that polar bears are in danger of extinction because the Arctic sea ice where they earn their living is shrinking dramatically.

The Bush administration immediately pointed out that in no way should that designation be used to regulate greenhouse gases or broadly address climate change.

No surprise there, I suppose.

But make no mistake: Scientists who study such matters are virtually unanimous in concluding that climate change is real, and human activity is speeding it up.

They aren't policy people. They aren't taking sides. Most don't even suggest any solutions. They're just looking at their data and telling us what they see.

Those who claim that's backing some wacky agenda are the ones to worry about. They're trying to cloud the issue and create a controversy where there isn't one.

Naturally, the solutions to climate change are hugely complicated. There is no magic wand to wave. Solving the problem will come with economic costs that need to be weighed against long-term ecological consequences.

But so far that discussion hasn't even begun, and it won't until we can agree that climate change is real.

Is it? Ask a polar bear.

If you can find one.

Category: Wildlife

Battle Creek bear shooting was overkill

Am I the only one who's appalled by the police shooting of a young bear that had the misfortune to follow his nose into Battle Creek last night?

In case you haven't heard, Battle Creek police officers were in a neighborhood looking for a domestic violence suspect. One officer looked down a side street and was astonished to see a bear in the road.

So he shot it.

Because, of course, it was hurting someone. Or threatening to hurt someone. Or charging the officer. Or maybe menacing a cat or something.

Oops, none of the above. It was just, well, standing in the road.

Of course, after the first shot it became a wounded animal far more likely to injure someone out of fear or shock. But never mind that. IT'S A BEAR! SHOOT IT!

After more shooting during a chase through a neighborhood, they did manage to corner the poor beast up a tree and put it out of its misery. The DNR collected the carcass for testing.

Young male black bears often wander out of their northern Michigan range this time of year and have been seen in southern Michigan with some frequency. One was hit by a car near Flint last spring. Grand Rapids and Lansing have had reports.

And seeing one in extreme southern Michigan was a shock, I'm sure.

According to DNR spokesman Mike Bailey, public safety officers have the right to take immediate lethal action when a bear is determined to be a threat to public safety. As in, kill them.

But shooting a bear in the dark (what's beyond your target?) in a neighborhood (where will the bullet bounce if it hits?) with a handgun (notoriously inaccurate by definition) or a shotgun (more likely to wound unless it's point-blank) strikes me as horribly irresponsible and grotesquely inhumane.

And why? A resident had reported seeing a bear, but there were no reports that it was threatening anyone or being a nuisance.

Typically those roaming bears follow the food supply straight out of town. The ones who find a particularly savory trash source may stick around a few days, but they're relatively easy to sedate and remove. It happens all the time in bear country.

The officer who shot the bear says he's a hunter and even plans to hunt bears next year.

I wish he hadn't said that. Because his thoughtless actions give hunters and cops a bad name.

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Category: Wildlife

The migration is on

If you hunt, you've heard the lame jokes.

You mention any living creature in any context, and some knucklehead chimes in with "Did you SHOOT it?"

Har har.

What a lot of people don't understand is that many of us just love being outdoors and seeing real life happen. It could just be noticing a dogwood in bloom or catching a snake sunning itself. It's amazing what you can see when you sit still and open your eyes.

This is the best time of year to take a close look at who's flitting around our treetops. That's because we're hard in the middle of the spring neotropical migration, when millions of tiny birds make their way back north from wintering grounds in the Caribbean and Central and South America.

They're mostly headed for Canada, and the western end of Lake Erie is renowned for the migration. Point Pelee in Ontario is world famous. But plenty of birds pass by on our side of the border, too.

With that in mind, I took out the binoculars Tuesday morning and trained them on a small bird feeding in an elm tree. I expected one of the usual suspects -- a chickadee or a house sparrow -- but was astonished to see a brilliantly colored male Blackburnian warbler. Right in my yard.

And he wasn't alone. Two other warbler types were working the tree, but they wouldn't hold still long enough for me to ID them.

It happened again this morning, but with all new suspects: chestnut-sided warbler. American Redstart. Veery. Eastern wood-pewee.

I had to look these up, of course. And I know that to serious birders these aren't exactly once-in-a-lifetime species.

But I can't emphasize enough how easy this was, or how cool. I'm talking a grand total of 10 minutes of birdwatching -- from my porch in Ann Arbor.

I can't wait to see who shows up tomorrow.

I'm sure the neighbors will begin to wonder why I'm lurking in the yard with binoculars.

But so far I haven't aimed them at any windows.

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Category: Wildlife

Nature didn't create cormorant explosion

One other note on cormorants, the destroyers of fish populations and uninhabited islands that are currently being culled across the Great Lakes:

Animal rights folks argue that nature should be allowed to run its course, and that it's wrong for humans to intervene, especially when intervention requires actively killing animals.

The problem with that argument, of course, is that the explosion of cormorants is a direct result of human intervention in the first place, and now the birds are having a devastating impact on aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems.

I just spent nine days traveling around Lake Erie with the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. I and a group of other journalists met with scientists, policy-makers, business people, environmentalists and others to discuss a number of environmental issues surrounding the Great Lakes.

One thing that became abundantly clear is just how much humans have altered the lakes. We've dumped toxic chemicals, manipulated shorelines, altered the flow from the upper lakes to the lower and introduced invasive species that have fundamentally changed vast ecosystems.

The idea of letting nature take its course at this point is pretty laughable. That ship sailed decades ago.

Cormorants have thrived because of species humans introduced to the lakes. The filtering activities of zebra mussels and the introduction of alewives and round gobies have created an easy close-to-shore feast for the birds.

As their numbers grew exponentially, native fish stocks collapsed and beautiful islands became stinking guano heaps.

I admit as a hunter and angler that I tend to side with the ecosystem. Balance is crucial to the health of all kinds of species, not just the ones we prey upon.

And when our activities disrupt that balance, sometimes adjustments are necessary.

Letting nature run its course didn't create the cormorant problem. It isn't going to solve it, either.

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Category: Wildlife

Michigan moving on cormorants

Jim Johnson is a fish guy.

As director of the DNR's Alpena Fisheries Research Station, his job is to know what's swimming around Lake Huron.

These days that means he pays very close attention to birds, specifically double-crested cormorants. They eat fish. Lots of fish. And the best way to see what's in the lakes is to open up a few cormorants.

Johnson says there's good news in those bird bellies. Just a couple years ago the cormorants in the Les Cheneaux Islands, east of St Ignace, were full of round gobies. These days the Lake Superior State University scientists who open up the birds are finding perch, pumpkinseeds and other natives that indicate a fish community regaining a much better balance.

Not coincidentally, Michigan has been knocking back the Les Cheneaux cormorants since 2005 with a combination of egg oiling, which keeps the young from hatching, and sharpshooters who kill off the adults.

There were roughly 3,200 cormorant nests in the Les Cheneaux a few years ago, and anglers threw up their hands in disgust. The fish, they said, were gone.

Now there are somewhere between 500 and 1,000 pairs of Les Cheneaux cormorants, and a heck of a lot more fish.

"The Les Cheneaux (fish) population is right on target," Johnson said. "We're pretty upbeat about that outcome."

Things aren't quite as rosy in Thunder Bay, near Alpena. There, some 4,000 pairs of cormorants have denuded islands and decimated fish populations. What's left are gobies, which now make up about 96 percent of cormorants' diets in Thunder Bay. There's nothing else left.

"It's not just an apocryphal statement," Johnson said. "The whitefish are virtually gone."

Not surprisingly, cormorant reduction is farther behind in Thunder Bay. Islands have been so devastated by cormorant colonies that it's nearly impossible to tell what kinds of trees their poop -- guano to the more civilized -- has killed.

But the biologists have a plan for Thunder Bay and elsewhere, and they're working it. They believe that fewer cormorants equal a more diverse, vibrant aquatic community.

The science of the Les Cheneaux seems to support that. So pass the oil and sharpshooters, please.

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Category: Wildlife

Cormorant cull puts ecosystem first

They're shooting cormorants in Ontario today.

Just like they did last Wednesday. And Thursday. And will again tomorrow and beyond.

The fish-gobbling water birds have had a huge impact on ecosystems across the Great Lakes, including colonies on the Les Cheneaux and Thunder Bay islands on the Michigan side of Lake Huron. Once nearly a DDT casualty, the birds have come screaming back in huge numbers due in large part to human activities such as introducing invasive species that feed them.

Cormorants made Parks Canada's hit list when biologists and park officials decided the ecosystem trumps the species. So after years of research and a legal challenge by animal-rights groups that cleared last week, sharpshooters on Wednesday and Thursday began culling cormorants from Middle Island, a western Lake Erie island in Point Pelee National Park.

Three shooters with .17-caliber rifles took out 72 cormorants over the two days, a pair at a time. It's a mere fraction of what's coming. The island is home to 4,000 pairs of nesting cormorants (minus a few now), and Parks Canada's five-year plan calls for a number closer to 500.

Parks officials call it "active management," but let's face it: It's large-scale carnage. I'm not convinced that's a bad thing.

I toured Lake Erie last week on a fellowship with the Institutes for Journalism and Natural Resources. One of our stops took us to East Sister Island, a province-owned island near Pelee.

East Sister is exactly what parks officials don't want Middle Island to become. The islands that dot western Lake Erie are Carolinian forest, a rare remnant of ancient times that more closely resembles the forests of the southeastern United States. But East Sister looks more like the moon, thanks to the relentless shower of cormorant poop. The trees there are almost all dead. The ground is bare. The number of other nesting bird species is dwindling to nothing. Great egrets and black-crowned night herons once competed as equals on East Sister. Now a few hardy stragglers claw for what little barren space remains.

The Lake Erie cormorant situation is a little different from that in Lake Huron, where the birds were chowing down on whitefish and other species that are more important to humans. Erie cormorants feast almost strictly on round gobies, a plentiful and unwanted species in their own right, while desirable species such as yellow perch and walleye thrive. So it's less about fish loss and more about how many other species of flora and fauna are being crowded out of their habitat. The answer: plenty.

That's why they're shooting cormorants in Ontario today.

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Category: Wildlife

Listen up, then count

Scientists have decided that a good way to measure the health of the woods and waters is to tune in on the spring mating calls of frogs and toads.

The amphibians are sensitive to icky things like pollution, and in some cases their numbers are declining. In places where they're plentiful, we know that, hey, things are mostly OK.

The state is looking for help in determining just how OK things are and where. The DNR's annual Frog and Toad Survey gives Joe Citizen a chance to take part in the scientific process.

It works like this: You create a route of 10 ponds, wetlands, marshes, etc. and submit them to the DNR to make sure your route doesn't overlap someone else's.

Once approved, you receive some training materials on recognizing frog and toad calls and instructions on how to count. Then three times over the course of spring and early summer, you run your route. You stop at each site and listen for frog calls to see how abundant they are.

At the end of the counting season you submit your findings to the DNR.

It's an excellent way to get the family dialed in to the outdoors, and it's a great project for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts.

I've always enjoyed this particular sign of spring, which starts with the spring peepers shortly after the snow starts to melt in earnest. By now the western chorus frogs and wood frogs have joined in, too. And there are still several more to come. Michigan has 13 species of frogs and toads.

So listen up.

DNR photo of a spring peeper by Jim Harding)