More than a dozen wildland firefighters from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources have been sent to California, Oregon, Washington and elsewhere to battle wildfires and to gain valuable firefighting experience.

A crew of three firefighters has taken a DNR fire engine to help fight the vast and still raging Carr fire in northern California, said Dan Laux, fire section manager for the DNR’s Forest Resources Division. Laux just returned from a two-week fire assignment in Portland, Oregon, mobilizing resources to battle fires in Oregon, Washington, California and Idaho.

“We’re mobilizing as many people as we can to assist wherever necessary,” Laux said. “It’s a great way for our folks to get experience, while providing their own skills and experiences to the situation at hand.”

Assistance agreements go both ways. If a significant fire occurs in Michigan, firefighters from other states and Canadian provinces can be tapped for help. Michigan’s largest recent fire was the Duck Lake blaze in the eastern Upper Peninsula, which burned more than 21,000 acres in 2012. Read more

It’s time to get serious about the maintenance backlog in America’s Great Outdoors.  That’s the message of a striking new video from the Department of the Interior.  The video was premiered at a Capitol Hill event hosted by Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke and featuring Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Steve Daines (R-MT), Angus King (I-ME), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Mark Warner (D-VA) July 31.  To see the full video, click here.

America’s public lands and waters host nearly 900 million recreation visits every year, providing significant economic benefits to communities across the country.  But major problems still remain.  The combined deferred maintenance and repair backlog of the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and U.S. Forest Service – which amounts to $18.62 billion and includes trails, campgrounds, roads, visitor centers, bathrooms, staff housing, water systems, thousands of historic buildings and more – hampers access to, and enjoyment of America’s public lands and waters by visitors everywhere.

“Last year, more than 300 million people visited America’s national parks.  Unfortunately, many roads and bridges, visitor centers, historic buildings, trails and campgrounds in our parks need critical repairs and upgrades to meet the needs of today’s visitors,” says the video.  “The national parks are special places of wonder.  We must meet the challenge of preserving them for our children and grandchildren.” Read more

MISSOULA, Mont.—The Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Sportsmen’s Alliance Foundation filed a joint summary judgement brief supporting a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service decision to remove federal protections from the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem (GYE) grizzly bear population.

“We stand alongside the Sportsmen’s Alliance and our fellow conservation organizations in supporting federal scientists and wildlife biologists who declared the grizzly population fully recovered,” said Kyle Weaver, RMEF president and CEO. “The next step is keeping grizzly management under the umbrella of state agencies that manage all wildlife in accordance with the North American Wildlife Conservation Model, which uses hunting as a management tool.”

“Despite the emotional rhetoric of the animal rights crowd, the time has come to return this population of bears to state management,” said Evan Heusinkveld, Sportsmen’s Alliance president and CEO. “The truth is, this is a historic moment for the species and the Endangered Species Act as a whole. Returning the Yellowstone area population of bears to state management should be a monumental achievement widely celebrated as a conservation success story.”

Numbering more than 700, the Yellowstone grizzly population meets all delisting criteria. These factors include not only the number and distribution of bears throughout the ecosystem, but also the quantity and quality of the habitat available and the states’ commitments to manage the population in a manner that maintains its healthy and secure status.

RMEF and its partners helped permanently protect more than 169,000 acres of vital wildlife habitat valued at more than $131 million in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. Additionally, RMEF also directly contributed more than $3.1 million and leveraged an additional $17.5 million to help enhance wildlife habitat on more than 426,000 acres in the GYE. RMEF also contributed more than $1 million in funding and leveraged an additional $10 million from conservation partners to carry out 118 GYE wildlife management and wildlife research projects.

“These projects are crucial and helped to contribute to the understanding of wildlife populations, ecology and habitat needs, including increasing the understanding of grizzly bears and conserving the habitat needed for them to thrive in conjunction with all wildlife populations,” said Weaver. “Habitat needs to remain the focus of on-the-ground conservation work, not seemingly non-stop litigation.” Read more

Safari Club International supports major proposed revisions by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to its Endangered Species Act regulations that were announced today.
“Today’s announcement ushers in a major move forward for the FWS.  At long last, we have leadership that recognizes the importance of flexibility in the conservation of federally listed wildlife and the recognition that different approaches, including sustainable use, can be used to recover and sustain the world’s wildlife,” said SCI President Paul Babaz.
Of the many proposed changes, SCI generally supports the proposals to provide more flexibility to the management and recovery of threatened species and to modify how the agency establishes the “foreseeable future” when making threatened listing decisions.
Under one proposal, the FWS would decide on a species-by-species basis what, if any, ESA prohibitions would apply to each species listed as threatened.  The ESA itself applies these prohibitions (e.g., regarding take and import) only to endangered species.  Congress envisioned that the FWS would decide individually what prohibitions applied to each particular threatened species.
But the FWS long ago adopted a blanket rule that the statutory prohibitions would automatically apply to all threatened species, unless the FWS adopted a “special rule” specific to a particular species that spelled out what restrictions applied.
The FWS’s sister agency in implementing the ESA, the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS), followed Congressional intent and did not adopt the blanket rule.  The FWS’s proposal would align it with NMFS and Congressional intent. Read more

PHOENIX – Scientists involved in Mexican wolf recovery say environmental groups distributing old and faulty data that calls for the release of captive adult wolves are not helping the recovery of the  endangered subspecies. Biologists at the Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) say maintaining a savvy wild-born population and limiting introductions of naïve captive-raised adult animals have been the keys to the ongoing success of the recovery program.

“This period of strong population growth has happened with almost the entire population being wild- born wolves,” said Jim Heffelfinger, a University of Arizona research scientist, AZGFD wildlife science coordinator and co-author of multiple peer-reviewed scientific studies on wolf recovery. “We’ve also learned that releasing captive singles and pairs that have spent their lives in a zoo setting has been ineffective in enhancing genetic diversity. The sobering truth is that in the last decade, no captive-raised adult wolf released in the wild has subsequently raised pups in the wild to contribute to the gene pool.”

The Center for Biological Diversity (CBD) and other environmental fundraising organizations have been pushing a narrative that captive-raised adult wolves should be released into the wild.  A July 12 news release from the groups called for the release of three packs of zoo-raised wolves. The piece also misstated the number of wolves already released and omitted an entire year of successful cross-fostering data from their analysis.

Contrary to the incorrect information issued by these organizations, AZGFD and its conservation partners have released 20 wolves from captivity since 2014 through “cross-fostering,” or selectively placing genetically valuable pups from captivity into wild packs to be raised by wild parents and with wild siblings. The latest wolf survey (2017) documented an all-time record number of 114 Mexican wolves in 22 packs, with 26 potential breeding pairs and 88 adult wolves in the wild population. Read more

“We reject the EA’s claim that this wind energy facility would have ‘little to no impact’” on birds, said Kimberly Kaufman, BSBO’s Executive Director, citing the critical importance of Lake Erie to migratory birds such as the endangered Kirtland’s Warbler. Read more

When it comes to whitetails, the most effective habitat management plans are those that provide proper year-round nutrition through planting a variety of crops for different seasons. The variety of plant species that whitetail prefer can have vastly different seed sizes and planting prescriptions. That presents a problem if you’re not properly equipped, and it can lead to costly waste.

The Accu-Seed System, just one of the many great features of The Firminator all-in-one food plot implement, addresses that by handling seeds of all sizes, from the tiniest clovers up to corn, soybeans, peas and sunflowers, and everything in between. You can even sow different sized seed simultaneously. This versatility makes the Firminator an ideal choice for the modern land manager, whether you’re installing food plots, filter strips, pastures, lawns or other conservation plantings.

Begin by filling the seed hopper and adjusting the metering openings by moving the linkage handle on the back of the seed box. An indicator on the handle shows seed size selections in one-sixteenth inch graduations. Set the size for the largest seed in the hopper and the metering system will automatically dispense seed at the generally accepted rate. When you are ready to dispense the seed, open the small access door on the side of the frame, pull and turn the small pin one-quarter turn and release. This engages the metering shaft allowing seed to fall as the Firminator rolls. Read more

Even if the grass near you looks green, Michigan’s recent hot, dry weather has sucked most of the moisture from this year’s grass and completely dried last year’s growth, greatly increasing the risk of fire.

That means we should all take extra precautions to prevent accidentally starting fires, such as waiting to burn debris and not using all-terrain vehicles, lawn mowers or other outdoor machinery, according to the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

“The layer of decomposing leaves and grasses in the ground has dried out,” said Paul Rogers, fire prevention specialist with the DNR. “That means fires that do ignite will burn down into the soils layer, making it harder, and more time-consuming, to put the fire out.”

In very dry conditions, heat from even a lawn mower or the exhaust pipe of an all-terrain vehicle can ignite dry grass, Rogers said. Things like a trailer chain dragging on pavement also can create sparks. Read more