September 3, 2001

   The Les Cheneaux Islands were once home to a world class yellow perch fishery, and a highly thought of smallmouth bass fishery, too. But all that has changed in the last twenty years, and most residents and visiting anglers blame the collapse on cormorant predation.Recent and ongoing studies and biologists concur, but those studies, commissioned by the MI DNR, are not completed 

yet. Recent creels show only about 700 perch

were harvested last year, down from 66,500 in  the early ‘90s, and well over 180,000 in the ‘80s and before.

   The story is the same elsewhere. A once great fishery, now in decline or virtually gone – but not by over harvesting, or poor resource management at the state level. The decline and waste can be directly attributed to the ecological approach  implemented by the USFWS in the past decade.

Catch & Release Problems

Recent studies conducted in several southeastern states have documented total mortality (initial and post release mortality) associated with bass tournaments, ranging from 

20 to 60 % during the summer.  The highest mortalities

occurred when water temperatures exceeded 85°.  The recent increases in numbers of bass and walleye tournaments have increased  the overall pressure on fish stocks and related mortality.

New York

   Although NY sportsmen overwhelmingly approved a license fee increase recently, the state Legislature, for the third year in a row, has refused to raise the fees that New York hunters, anglers and trappers pay for sporting licenses.  As a result, the state Conservation Fund is slipping into deficit and critical fish and wildlife programs are in jeopardy. 

Resident license fees were last raised on October 1, 1991.According to a memo from DEC Director of Fish, Wildlife and Marine Resources Gerry Barnhart sent to key managers, they and their programs are about to be bathed in red ink.  Without the proposed fee hikes or an equivalent transfusion from the state's General Fund, Barnhart 

warned, the Conservation Fund will run up a deficit of more than $5 million in the next year.

Wisconsin

   Wisconsin state Senator Robert Welch has referred to the DNR’s 16 planes as toys, and has submitted legislation proposing the fleet be reduced to three. The DNR uses those planes for fire patrol, law enforcement, wildlife surveys environmental monitoring, and in some cases meeting attendance, and some are questioning the proposed reduction as short-sighted and inefficient.  Those “DNR toys” are considered a vital part of every day business for DNR staff. Sportsmen view the use of planes for law enforcement alone is worth maintaining the fleet at the current level. Welch claims the state has a $700 million shortfall and is asking all agencies to sacrifice.

Offshore Canadian Rigs Tap Natural Gas for Years

Ontario is the only place on the Great Lakes where drilling occurs from offshore rigs.  Large drilling platforms towering over the water drilling for natural gas - and oil, to a much lesser degree - has occurred on the lakes for decades.

   Platforms are put in the water in late spring and removed before winter. Only natural gas is allowed to be drilled from offshore rigs.  Canada has taken away the incentive for offshore oil exploration by requiring the sole operator, Talisman Energy, to plug immediately any offshore wells that strike oil. Oil rights are turned over to the government.

   Ontario first allowed offshore drilling in 1913.  The province has allowed 2,500 gas wells to be drilled into the lake over the years, with  about 550 still in production.  About 20 new wells are drilled a year.

   Of the wells drilled beneath the Great Lakes on the Canadian side, a few are permitted to extract oil and natural gas. Michigan has allowed 13 wells to be drilled beneath Lake Michigan and Lake Huron since 1979. Seven are still in operation. Five in Manistee County, are used to extract natural gas from beneath Lake Michigan. One in Bay County, is used to extract gas from beneath Lake Huron. The other one, in Bay County, is used to extract oil.

President Bush announced his intention to nominate Craig Manson, a California Judge, to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Interior for Fish, Wildlife and Parks.  The position is subject to confirmation by the U.S. Senate.

   Manson was appointed to the Sacramento County Municipal Court in January 1998, and elevated to the Superior Court in June 1998.  Before that he served as General Counsel for the California Dept of Fish and Game, with responsibility for providing legal advice to the agency

Director and Governor, on state and federal Endangered Species Acts, wetlands, and other natural resource issues. Manson is also an Adjunct Professor at the McGeorge School of Law, and also worked as counsel for the California Department of Conservation.   

   Manson, a colonel in the California Air National Guard, served as Associate Professor of Law at the Air Force Academy, and is the founding Director of the Academy's Air and Space Law Program.  He served as Area Defense Counsel for the Air Force Judiciary, and Deputy Staff Judge Advocate. Manson will become the first African-American to serve as Ass’t Secretary for Fish, Wildlife and Parks.

Time’s running out for the world’s sturgeon population, and organizers of an international symposium in Oshkosh last month called for a worldwide society dedicated to conserving populations of this fish. Sturgeon, which has outlived the dinosaurs, now face extinction in many places as a result of human activity.

first time on U.S. soil, drew over 400 scientists, resource managers, aquaculturists and conservation club members to Oshkosh.

   The proposal calls for a World Sturgeon Conservation Society organization that would not compete with existing regional sturgeon conservation organizations, but would be an umbrella group. Such a group would help bring regional and local sturgeon conservation groups together to exchange scientific information, address issues common to the world’s sturgeon species, and help give support to countries with sturgeon stocks in a period of dramatic changes within those countries.