Category: Wildlife

Goldfinch

Michigan: Great Lakes frontage, acres of forest and more DNR surplus lands available at online auction

Great Lakes frontage, acres of forest, prime residential lots – these and more DNR surplus lands available at online auction

Keeping your eyes open for the right piece of Michigan property? Don’t miss the current auctions of surplus public land from the Department of Natural Resources.

After careful consideration of properties it manages on behalf of Michigan residents, the DNR has selected 10 that are much better suited for private ownership. The department is preparing these surplus properties – in Antrim, Baraga, Benzie, Berrien, Delta, Gogebic, Midland and Oakland counties – for sale via online auctions open now through June 15 and 16.

Scott Goeman, DNR Real Estate Services manager, said that while these properties no longer fit the department’s goals of efficient management and broad access to public outdoor recreation opportunities, they could fit nicely into potential bidders’ future plans.

“We are responsible for more than 4.6 million acres of public lands, and we regularly review those lands to evaluate how well they fit with our overall management strategy,” said Goeman. “Sometimes, it becomes clear that, due to a number of factors – for example, if a parcel is landlocked by private property, isolated from other DNR-managed land or doesn’t support optimum outdoor recreation opportunities – it makes more sense to remove that parcel from our management. Read more
Fishing, Hunting, Wildlife

Michigan DNR firefighters continue to suppress 68-acre fire in Marquette County

A crew of 10 Michigan Department of Natural Resources firefighters is continuing to construct a containment line around a fire that ignited Tuesday afternoon in a remote area of Marquette County, near the south end of Goose Lake in Richmond Township.

The crew is working with hand tools in a rocky area inaccessible to larger equipment, with the fire reported today as 75% contained.

The area burning is situated south of Marquette County Road 480 and north of County Road NC, which leads to the DNR’s boating access site on Goose Lake.

“We don’t anticipate any problems with the fire at this point,” said Pete Glover, the DNR’s incident commander on the fire. “We will continue to be out here monitoring the fire over the next few days.”

The so-called “gravel pit fire” was fought initially Tuesday afternoon by more than 30 firefighters from the DNR, the Sands Township Fire Department and the U.S. Forest Service, which had a crew from Oregon on fire stand-by in the region. Read more

Wildlife

Michigan: Leave firewood at home

Hot tip for travelers: Leave firewood at home

Wherever your travels may take you this summer, you can make more room for your favorite recreational gear, your pet or even an extra friend by choosing to leave firewood at home.

Moving firewood when you camp, hunt or head out for a weekend getaway means you risk carrying tree-killing insects and diseases inside the firewood. Bugs can crawl out, infesting trees and carrying diseases that can forever change the landscape of the places you love.

“Much like the emerald ash borer – which spread across the state in the early 2000s, killing many of Michigan’s 700 million ash trees – invasive oak wilt, beech bark disease and hemlock woolly adelgid are threatening tree species that are critical components of our forests and landscapes,” said Robin Rosenbaum, Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development Plant Health Section manager.

According to MDARD, there are 140 pests and diseases that can be moved with firewood. Some are already present in Michigan, while others, including Asian longhorned beetle, beech leaf disease and spotted lanternfly, are infesting nearby states.

“On their own, these insects and diseases can’t travel very far, but they can travel hundreds of miles on firewood,” said Sue Tangora, Michigan Department of Natural Resources Forest Health and Cooperative Programs Section supervisor. “Trees cut for firewood often died due to insects or disease. Why risk carrying oak wilt to your cabin or beech bark disease to your favorite camping spot?”

Keep the fire burning

You can still have a roaring campfire, or a cozy night in front of the fireplace, if you just know how to burn safe. Read more

Wildlife

SCIF Launches Grizzly Bear Conflict Mitigation Work With Bear Spray Giveaway Event

Safari Club International Foundation (SCIF) over the weekend participated in its first bear spray giveaway event with the Wyoming Game & Fish Department (WGFD), publicly launching the organization’s new work on grizzly bear conflict mitigation.

Thanks to a recent grant award from the Wyoming Wildlife Foundation’s Memorial Bear Fund, SCIF donated 100 cans of bear spray to the WGFD for distribution out of Dubois, WY for the local area’s shed hunting season opener on May 15 at the Thunderhead Campground up the East Fork of the Wind River in the Absaroka Mountains.

This year, as a pilot project WGFD permitted 25 shed hunters with 3 guests each onto the Spence & Moriarity Wildlife Management Unit to better manage the influx of humans into grizzly country and any potential impacts to wildlife. The area has been at high risk of conflict, especially as both bears and humans become more active on the landscape during the spring. While luckily there were no incidents this year, a man was mauled last year on this same unit on the opening day of shed season.

“This event is a continued effort by the WGFD to reduce human-bear conflicts in occupied grizzly bear habitat,” said WGFD Bear Wise Coordinator Dusty Lasseter. “It’s important that anyone recreating in bear country is prepared for a bear encounter and can protect themselves in the rare case of an aggressive encounter.” Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Firminator: Best Cultipacker Makes Food Plots Healthier

It starts with the soil. Ensuring your soil has the proper chemical composition is critical to food plot success, but it doesn’t stop there. The physical condition of the soil is just as important. This is why components like the Firminator’s built-in cultipacker are so essential in allowing you to get the job done right, and more efficiently.

Before you can plan your food plot, you need to prepare the site by turning the soil. Shortening the top link on the Firminator’s main pitch adjustment leans the implement more heavily onto its disk assembly for a deeper cut into sod and stubborn soil. Switching to a mid-range setting gives varying degrees of disk depth, while simultaneously allowing the built-in cultipacker to maintain good ground contact. This helps break apart clods while leveling and firming the soil.

One of the most important, yet often overlooked steps in maximizing the productivity of your food plots is compacting, or “firming,” the soil. This improves seed-to-soil contact, which dramatically improves germination rates and plant growth. This also saves you time, money and effort that would otherwise be wasted on poorer growing crops. Proper firmination means better germination. Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Every Yard Counts!

Enjoy the birds that visit your yard, and watch for a new arrivals as they migrate north, and perhaps you will see a new species. Watch the low underbrush for a Mourning Warbler (above) if you are in the East – a MacGillivray’s Warbler if you’re in the West (photo by Paul Konrad).

For migrating birds, as well as nesting birds, every yard counts – every tree and scrub and flower garden counts – and the food in every feeder counts, every type of feeder food counts in a feeding station, and every bird bath or other water feature counts! Everything we do individually makes a difference, and all the things each of us does for birds combines with the efforts of other birders so it all adds up to provide millions of backyard habitats, office habitats, schoolyard habitats, churchyards, city parks, and more. Think of each one as an island, then think about how they interconnect to form tracts of habitat, and towns of habitat, and it all means so much to migrating and nesting birds – starting with your yard, and expanding across the country, the continent, and the hemisphere!

It’s that time of the year when all you have done for birds in your property really pays off in the form of the variety and number of birds that come to your yard. That includes new birds and rare birds that only stop by once or twice a year, or every couple years – but especially resident birds and nesting birds. Your yard is most important for birds that will stay for May, June, and July to nest nearby and visit daily; then bring their fledglings to your yard to benefit from all you provide.

That’s all very important! Providing for vulnerable migrants and nesting birds is highly commendable, so be sure to give yourself credit as you enjoy the birds you have attracted as a benefactor. Take time to enjoy the birds, watch for them, appreciate them when they appear, drink in their beauty and their nature, appreciate what you’ve done, take a few photos, and appreciate you are richer for the birds that surround you. These weeks of May could be the best of the year to appreciate the fruits of your landscaping, your choice of feeders, the variety of foods you provide along with the fresh water so necessary for birds – the best of backyard birding is providing a total package for birds.

Share your backyard birding experiences and photos at editorstbw2@gmail.com

Wildlife

Fire danger is high around Michigan; be careful with campfires, debris burning and other activities

Fire danger is high around the state; be careful with campfires, debris burning and other activities

Whether you plan to get in some early-season camping, hit the trail on an ORV or clean up dead wood around your property, keep in mind that fire danger is high in many parts of Michigan this weekend.

“Even though the landscape is green, our forests and grasses are very dry,” said Paul Rogers, fire prevention specialist with the Forest Resources Division of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “A fire can escape and move quickly due to the dry air and dry fuels.” Fuels includes things such as dry grass, brush and downed tree branches.

If you build a campfire or a bonfire, enjoy the dancing flames but never leave the fire unattended, even for a moment. Make sure you always have water on hand while the fire is burning. Douse your fire with water, stir the ashes and douse with water again before going to bed or leaving the site. Read more

Wildlife

Federal Ammunition Supports Boone and Crockett Club Poach & Pay Research

MISSOULA, Mont. – The Boone and Crockett Club announced today that Federal Ammunition will be supporting the Club’s Poach & Pay project as a Trailblazer in Conservation. The three-year sponsorship agreement will provide consistent support for this critical research and policy project and generally support the Club’s overall conservation mission. For over 130 years, the Boone and Crockett Club has led the way on hunting ethics and the Poach & Pay project continues this tradition in an effort to raise the stakes against wildlife crime. Trailblazer in Conservation is the highest, mission-focused partnership level available with the Club and many of the sponsors are directing their support toward this flagship anti-poaching effort.

“Federal and our other ammunition brands of CCI, Remington, and Hevi-SHOT greatly value the Boone and Crockett Club’s extensive history of fighting for conservation and hunter rights, and their latest leadership in initiating the Poach & Pay project continues this tradition,” commented Federal’s Conservation Manager, Jon Zinnel. “We believe this commitment to finding the real cost of wildlife crimes and helping develop policies that will deter future crimes are essential to clearly show the difference between law-abiding hunters and poachers.”

The Boone and Crockett Club’s Poach & Pay research will assess the barriers to prosecuting poachers, evaluate the detection rate and conservation impacts of wildlife crime, describe the motivational factors and potential deterrents that influence poachers, and provide solutions to improve prosecution and conviction rates, as well as a defensible framework for poaching penalties. In addition, the Poach & Pay outreach campaign will arm U.S. sportsmen and women with real poaching data that clearly separates poaching from hunting. Federal’s culture of innovation has guided their company since it was founded in 1922. The company has long supported conservation efforts both through the excise taxes it pays on the sale of ammunition through the Federal Aid in Wildlife Restoration program, as well as through philanthropic support of conservation and advocacy organizations working to continue the future of hunting, shooting, and wildlife management. Read more

Poachers, Wildlife

SCI Opposes U.K. Proposal as Threat to Wildlife Conservation

This week the United Kingdom’s (U.K.) Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) announced their Animal Welfare Action Plan containing new proposals that threaten how, when, and where Britons can legally hunt. Among other potential harms, implementation of these proposals will detrimentally impact the conservation programs of countries effectively conserving the world’s largest populations of some species such as elephants, lions, and rhinos.

Safari Club International (SCI) strongly opposes these proposals in the Action Plan, which are unsupported by scientific evidence and will harm wildlife conservation efforts in and outside of the U.K.: Read more

Hunting, Wildlife

Wild Sheep Foundation Spring Raffle is Live

Bozeman, Montana- The Wild Sheep Foundation (WSF) has launched its Sheep Week® Spring Raffle to benefit wild sheep conservation.

“We’re blessed,” said Gray N. Thornton, president, and CEO of the Wild Sheep Foundation. “I don’t know of a more engaged and giving group than sheep hunters and those who are simply fascinated by these iconic species and want to see them thrive. The proof is in the numbers. This spring we’re offering a fun way for anyone to participate in our purpose of, Putting and Keeping Wild Sheep on the Mountain®.”

In FY 2019-20 alone, WSF raised and directed over $6.2 million to its mission programs, which include;

  • Habitat restoration, transplants, separation strategies from domestic sheep, and management plans and research
  • State, provincial, tribal, and territorial agency funding
  • Education and advocacy
  • Industry support
  • International conservation

Thornton said, “Everyone likes sheep hunts, so we’re raffling off a Dall’s and a desert, plus two other highly sought after hunting adventures, and several other great items. We’re also offering a special mountain game Rifle Raffle featuring a Weatherby Backcountry Ti in the new 6.5 WBY RPM and a complete Best of The West Mountain Hunter Series System, chambered in 6.5 PRC.”

The WSF online raffles are available at these links:

www.wildsheepraffle.org

www.wildsheepgunraffle.org

Wildlife
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