If you planted new trees this spring or last fall, bring out the garden hose. A little water will keep those trees healthy and happy as Michigan’s dry spring progresses into summer.

“Abnormally hot and dry conditions mean your newly planted trees are probably thirsty,” said Kevin Sayers, Urban and Community Forestry Program manager with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. “Make sure any trees planted in the past year are getting at least 10 to 20 gallons of water a week until regular precipitation returns. Your trees will appreciate the drink.”

New trees, especially, are still setting their roots and need water, Sayers said. However, dry weather also can weaken healthy trees and make them more vulnerable to disease, insect damage or winter breakage.

Deciduous trees – those that lose their leaves in fall – show drought stress through curling or drooping leaves. Leaves may “scorch,” or turn brown at the margins, fall off early or exhibit early fall color. Evergreen needles may turn yellow, then red or brown. Read more

A team of 10 firefighters from the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources arrived
to help the Michigan DNR and cooperating agencies battle the Wilderness Trail Fire located southeast of Grayling.Firefighters continue to secure and suppress the fire, which started with a campfire on private land. The fire is approximately 90% contained as of 5 p.m. The fire remains at approximately 2,400 acres.

“We’re grateful for the help from our neighbors in Wisconsin as well as the support from federal, state and local fire departments, emergency management officials and law enforcement personnel,” said Mike Janisse, leader of the DNR Incident Management Team responding to the fire.

Ten firefighters from Wisconsin brought three Type 4 engines with tractor plow dozers and two Type 6 engines to assist with fighting the fire. They arrived early Sunday afternoon.

These resources were made available by the Great Lakes Forest Fire Compact agreement. This compact is comprised of the states of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan, and the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Manitoba. Read more

The California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) has confirmed that multiple sightings of what is believed to be the same wolverine occurred in May in the Eastern Sierra Nevada mountains. Two sightings were in the Inyo National Forest in Inyo and Mono counties. A third sighting occurred in Yosemite National Park in Tuolumne County.

Images and video of the wolverine, taken in May by separate individuals in different locations, were sent to CDFW for analysis, which consulted with wolverine experts from the U.S. Forest Service. Scientists identified the animal as a wolverine by its size, body proportion, coloration and movement patterns. CDFW field teams then confirmed the sighting locations through coordinates imbedded in the photos and video.

“Wolverines can travel great distances, making it likely that the recent sightings are all of the same animal,” said CDFW Senior Environmental Scientist Daniel Gammons. “Because only two wolverines have been confirmed in California during the last 100 years, these latest detections are exciting.”

Scientists documented a single wolverine in California from 2008 to 2018. That wolverine was first discovered in February 2008 in the Truckee region of the Tahoe National Forest. The recent detections were likely of a different wolverine given that the species’ lifespan is typically 12 to 13 years. Read more

Wednesday, June 7, 10 a.m. to noon
Allegan State Game Area headquarters
4590 118th Ave., Route 3, Allegan, MI 49010

Join us for this free educational walk and forest management workshop at Allegan State Game Area, hosted by the Allegan Conservation District and the Michigan Department of Natural Resources and led by district forester Ben Savoie.

Michigan has almost 20 million acres of forest, and oak forests are an important part of Allegan County’s landscape. However, due to development and management that does not always favor oak regeneration, Michigan’s forest landscape has changed over time. Over half of Michigan’s forested land is privately owned, and many of Allegan County’s privately owned forests are small-acreage and owned by families or first-time forest landowners. Read more

BOONE, Iowa — Scientific analysis will be done on wild turkey carcasses and wild turkey eggs consumed by mammalian carnivores, thanks to a $15,000 grant from Turkeys For Tomorrow.

TFT’s support goes to aid a study now in its third year of a projected decade of work. Remarkable for its scope and thoroughness, the study attaches transmitters to wild turkey hens during the winter, then follows them through the spring, documenting their survival, their nesting success or failures, their use of the habitat and the precise reasons their reproductive efforts come to grief when they do. The genetic study is led by the Iowa Department of Natural Resources in collaboration with Dr. Dawn Reding, a conservation geneticist at Luther College.

The funds from TFT will go specifically to support DNA analysis of turkeys and eggs that have fallen to mammalian carnivores to identify species-specific rates of nest predation and whether those change over time within nesting seasons or across years. Read more

Wetlands are critical to so many species of birds nationwide and hemisphere-wide, and wetlands are especially important to people – we all rely on wetlands to reduce the chances of flooding, improve water quality, recharge ground water supplies, provide outdoor recreation, opportunities, and much more. Yet, last week the US Supreme Court removed critical protections for wetlands including marshes, ponds, swamps – self-contained basin-filled wetlands – that have been protected for more than 50 years under the Clean Water Act, a law passed by Congress in 1972 made it illegal to drain, fill, or pollute “waters of the United States” without a permit.

In a close 5-to-4 majority opinion, Justice Samuel Alito wrote that wetlands are covered by the law only if they have a “continuous surface connection” to larger water bodies, an unprecedented re-definition of wetlands. That measuring stick dictates that the Clean Water Act applies to a wetland only if it connects with a river, stream, lake, or ocean such that it is “difficult to determine where the ‘water’ ends and the ‘wetland’ begins.”

Wetland basins such as the prairie potholes, varied single basin marshes, and other wetland types are essential for a wide variety of birds, especially during the nesting and brood rearing periods, during migration stopovers, and at wintering areas. Every wetland counts, especially considering that more than half of America’s wetlands have already been destroyed.

The ruling “is devastating for wetlands and the benefits they provide to people,” noted Royal Gardner, a wetland law expert at Stetson University College of Law. Scientific improvements have made it possible to define the boundaries of almost any wetland, Gardner explained, and by Justice Alito’s reckoning, that means that only tidal wetlands and those within a river’s typical high-water mark qualify for protections. “The ‘continuous surface water connection’ requirement, has no basis in science,” he wrote. Read more