Tag: hunt

The Great Blue Heron

  • An island in the Upper Mississippi, not far from downtown Minneapolis, is home to many Great Blue Herons.(Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

Transcript

Some people say robins are the first sign of spring. But there’s another bird that makes a dramatic entry in northern states. The Great Blue Heron soars in to make a nest… and guard it:

On an island in the Upper Mississippi River, a stand of cottonwood trees is silhouetted against a gray sky. The bare branches are festooned with big nests, made of twigs and branches. Next to the nests, like sentinels at the castle gate, stand Great Blue Herons. These birds are four feet tall. More than a hundred of them are claiming their domain in these trees, just upriver from downtown Minneapolis. When one takes off and glides away, its six-foot wing span dwarfs the ducks and songbirds sharing the island.

It’s hard to tell the males from the females because they’re the same blue and gray. Birder Sharon Stiteler is leading me on a tour of this rookery.

“The males arrive first, and they work out who’s going to take which nest. Where you see one bird standing up, that is most likely a male. He’s hanging out there because the other males who are still waiting to attract a female could come by and steal sticks out of his nest to make his nest look better.”

On some nests, you can see females already sitting on pale blue eggs the size of small mangoes. But Stiteler says herons are not always good parents.

“If the chick falls out of the nest and lands on the ground, that chick is toast: the parents will not continue feeding it. And oftentimes you’ll see turkey vultures hanging out at rookeries, and they’re waiting for the young to fall and starve, and then they’ll have a whole bunch of food.”

But at least on this island, there won’t be many predators like coyotes or foxes.

These birds were once threatened by humans. Their cousins the egrets were hunted for their beautiful white feathers, and both suffered disastrous population loss until the pesticide DDT was banned.

Now you can see them in streams and lakes all over. They breed in Canada and the upper midwest. They spend their winters wherever they can find food. Herons literally stalk their prey.

“They have a lot of patience, and they just stare at one spot for long time, and then they jab down and grab the fish. Their beak is shaped like a pair of super-sharp chopsticks. Sometimes they catch a huge fish and they have to juggle it around, especially if they have it perpendicular with their beak, they have to jostle it around, and the fish is wiggling, and eventually they get it just right so it’s straight in line with the bill, and you can watch this huge thing slide down that long slender neck.”

Sharon Stiteler is a part-time naturalist with the National Park Service, and she writes a blog called bird-chick-dot-com.

Today the herons are pretty quiet. But Stiteler has a Blackberry loaded with their sounds, including the prehistoric squawk they make when they’re startled.

And Stiteler says it can sound really strange when the young are clattering for food.

After the young are raised — at least the ones that survive — the herons will stay here on the river, until it freezes over and they can’t fish anymore. Stiteler says the birds decamp all at once.

“One day we have Great Blue Herons, and the next day they’re gone, and they migrate at night.”

They tuck back their long necks when they fly, forming an S-shape and hiding their true length.

Stiteler says the recovery of Great Blue Herons, along with pelicans, eagles, and other birds near the top of the food chain is a sign of a healthier ecosystem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Interview: Climate Affecting Fish and Game

  • The National Wildlife Federation is concerned about the nation's fish and game species being impacted by climate change. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

People are beginning to notice the effects
of climate change – especially people who
get out in nature a lot. Hunters and anglers
with the National Wildlife Federation recently
released a list of some of the game and fish
species that are at risk due to climate change.
Lester Graham talked with one of the members
of the group:

Transcript

People are beginning to notice the effects
of climate change – especially people who
get out in nature a lot. Hunters and anglers
with the National Wildlife Federation recently
released a list of some of the game and fish
species that are at risk due to climate change.
Lester Graham talked with one of the members
of the group:

Lester Graham: Kathleen Law in an angler, a member of the National Wildlife Federation, a former member of the Michigan Legislature, and a retired research scientist. First, what kind of game and fish, besides polar bears and penguins, are at risk because of climate change?

Kathleen Law: Well, everything that nests in the water or tries to have a fishery involved. It is affecting our national and our local bird, deer, the population, the habitat.

Graham: I guess that’s the question, though – how do we know that it’s not something else at work? How do we know that it’s climate change? And, of course, the skeptics will say, ‘how do we know it’s man-caused changes to the climate?’

Law: Well, we can continue being in a state of denial, and wonder where everything went, or we can get ahead. It’s not important to me who’s causing it, it’s, ‘what can I do to help?’

Graham: The US House has passed climate change legislation, the Senate is debating a version. Will the policies in those bills be enough to save some of these fish and game species you’re worried about?

Law: It’ll give us a chance. Without a concerted, willful effort, we have a very limited chance. So, there are things that we can do, that we must do, as a people who want diversity, who want to fish, who want to eat – I like venison. So what do we do to protect that resource and, and in a positive way? Which is the education and resource restoration, I think, is probably the best way to start.

Graham: Opponents of climate change legislation worry a cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme will cost the economy too much. They don’t want the US to be put at a competitive disadvantage. Will the concerns of hunters and fishers sway any members of Congress to actually support climate legislation, if they believe it’s a jobs killer?

Law: Well, it will certainly be a consideration. The hunters and fishing folk are your constituents, they’re your neighbors, they’re your family. You can look at that, ‘it’s a job killer.’ So is climate disruption a job killer. So, how do we create new jobs? Well let’s get people out planting marsh grass. Let’s, you know, something positive. Something that people can do that makes a difference for them and their neighborhood and their community. That’s positive. That’s hope. We gotta give them hope.

Graham: What is the National Wildlife Federation doing in Washington to affect the debate about climate change?

Law: Well, they have flown in a large contingent of just people who are hunters and fishers and who have represented people in the constituencies to come in and talk to the Senators. Our hunters and fishing people – consider them sentinels. They’re out there in November, hunting ducks. They’re out in April, standing in the water, fishing. These are sentinel people, and to pay attention to what they’re saying is very important, vital, and that’s what we did in Washington DC.

Graham: Kathleen Law is a retired research scientist, a former member of the Michigan legislature, and working with the National Wildlife Federation as part of an effort to save fish and game species the group says is at risk because of climate change. Thanks very much.

Law: Thank you.

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Part 4: Hunters Warned After Dioxin Delays

  • Fish advisories dot the banks of the Tittabawassee and Saginaw Rivers. Various forms or pollution, including historical dioxin pollution from Dow Chemical, have led to warnings to avoid certain species of fish and limit consumption for them. Pregnant woment and young children are given more stringent warnings. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:

Transcript

It’s deer season in Michigan, and
hunters are trekking through the woods,
trying to bag dinner or something
special for the holidays. Hunting’s
gotten a little complicated in some
areas recently. Just because you catch
something doesn’t mean you should eat
it. That’s because a stretch of river
in Michigan was polluted with dioxin –
decades ago. In the fourth part of a
series on Dow Chemical and dioxin, Shawn
Allee found the state thinks
old dioxin pollution from a Dow chemical
plant poses a health risk today:

It was hard for me to understand why wild game like deer or turkey might be contaminated from river pollution, so I hit up Daniel O’Brien for some answers. O’Brien’s a toxicologist with Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources. He says the problem starts with dioxin in the river.

“It’s in the sediments in these contaminated parts of the Tittabawassee River, and after flood events in the spring when, say, mud in the river gets deposited onto bushes or whatever and deer browse those, then they pick up soil that way.”

Part of O’Brien’s job is to spread the news about the contamination. He says when you buy a hunting license in Michigan you get this brochure.

“It’s a booklet that has all the regulations for hunting and trapping in it.”

These wildlife consumption advisories are voluntary but they kinda read like owners manuals. They lay out where the dioxin-contaminated animals are. They tell you what animals you can eat, and what parts. For example, no one’s supposed to eat deer liver from the areas – that’s got the most dioxin in it. And, of cuts you can eat, the advisory says how much, and how often. Plus, they tell who should eat less or maybe none at all.

“Kids might be more sensitive. They might have a more stringent advisory than somebody like me who’s kinda your middle-aged man and we might not be as susceptible to toxic effects.”


The idea’s to protect people from dioxin, and the risk it poses for cancer and diseases of the immune, reproductive, and developmental systems. It’s an important job, given how big hunting is in Michigan.

“We have three quarters of a million hunters every year that go afield and harvest half a million white-tailed deer.”

Michigan scientists take the issue seriously, but I’m kinda curious whether hunters do. So, I visit the Saginaw Field and Stream Club. Inside, there’s this paneled wall with faded pictures of club presidents. It stretches from the club’s founding in 1916 – all the way to this guy, current President Tom Heritier.

“We’re still here today.”

Heritier says his club’s smack-dab in the contaminated area and everyone knows about the advisories, but, well …

“With the game advisories, I have not heard one person who has any problem with the deer or the birds around the watershed.”

This goes for him, too.

“Nobody is sick from it. I don’t know of anybody that has died of exposure. That’s never been proven. It’s nothing to take lightly, but then again, it might be a little bit on the overblown side, too.”

The State of Michigan tried to survey hunters like Heritier. Officials wanted to know if hunters were feeding tainted game to young children. That survey never made the budget.

Before I leave the hunting club, Heritier wants to clear something up. He’s actually mad about dioxin. It’s in the environment – he wants it gone.

Heritier: “There’s absolutely no reason for industry to be polluting our natural resources, whether it be air, soil, or water.”

Allee: “Even if it’s not a slam-dunk, for sure, killing people off sort of thing?”

Heritier: “Number one, God didn’t put it there, it don’t belong there. That’s the way it is.”

Well, Heritier wants the environment protected from dioxin, but not necessarily himself.

State scientists say, if Heritier changes his mind and wants to reduce his health risk – they’ll keep printing those game advisories for him.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Pet Pythons on the Loose in Florida

  • JD Willson holding a juvenile python. (Photo by Samara Freemark)

Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

Foreign animals that get released
in the wild usually don’t spark that
much interest. But when that species
is a giant snake, well, most people
sit up and take notice. That’s the
problem facing the state of Florida,
where Burmese pythons have moved in
to Everglades National Park. Now,
scientists are trying to figure out
if the snakes could spread to the
rest of the country. Samara Freemark reports:

Meet South Florida’s newest invasive species – the 20 ft long, 200 lb,
Burmese python.

“They’re impressive animals. They’re really impressive animals. And
they’re breeding
like crazy out there.”

That’s python researcher JD Willson. He says the pythons probably started
off as pets –
until their owners got bored of them and dumped them in the Everglades. Now
those pets
have procreated their way into a huge wild population.

“Certainly thousands. Certainly tens of thousands. Some people have gone
as far as to
say hundreds of thousands.”

Willson says most pythons won’t attack humans. But they do pose a big
threat to local
ecosystems.

“These are snakes that are top predators. They eat alligators, they got a
bobcat record, a
couple of white tail deer. These are a predator that native wildlife are
just not prepared to
deal with. They’re not used to having a giant snake around.”

Florida lawmakers are considering putting a bounty on the pythons – paying
hunters to
kill them. And people in neighboring states just have their fingers crossed
that the
pythons won’t spread north.

But no one really knows enough about the snakes to come up with a good
control plan.

Willson and some other researchers are trying to change that.

“This is the python enclosure.”

They’ve built a little artificial habitat in South Carolina, surrounded
it with a really tall
wall, and filled it with 10 pythons. The researchers want to learn more
about how the
snakes behave in the wild, and see if they can make it through a winter
with freezing
temperatures.

(sound of door opening)

The snakes are tagged with radio transmitters, so the scientists can track
them and record
data on how they’re doing.

Freemark: “It’s safe to be in here?”

Bower: “Oh yeah, they’re not aggressive.”

Inside a student volunteer, Rick Bower, is tracking the snakes with a radio
receiver.

“As you sweep it across, you can see how the signal strength changes and
you get an idea
of where the strongest signal is coming from.”

The receiver tells us we’re basically standing right on top of one of the
pythons.

“Yeah, he’s right at our feet. Yeah, he’s down there.”

But we don’t see anything, even when Willson starts jabbing a stick at
the source of the
beeping.

“Somewhere within an 8 foot radius of where we are, there’s an 11 foot
snake. And he’s
hiding in this aquatic vegetation. And not only can we not see him, but
poking in the
vegetation doesn’t seem to be eliciting too much of a reaction.”

He’s a really sneaky snake.

Whit Gibbons is also working with the crew. He says that if the scientists
have so much
trouble tracking down their pythons, in an enclosed cage, using radio
transmitters –
there’s no way bounty hunters could make even a dent in the Everglades
python
population.

“So they find a hundred, so what. There’s a hundred thousand left. No
one’s going to find
100,000. I mean, we’ve got ‘em in a small enclosure, 10 big snakes,
over 75 feet of snake
if you add them up. And you can’t find them.”

Instead, Gibbons says people could opt for a harm reduction strategy- focus
on limiting
the spread of the snakes, try to protect species they threaten.

“One position is, ‘okay, they’re here, here’s what they can do to
us, or to our pets, or to
the wildlife. Let’s learn to live with them.’”

The South Carolina python study ends next summer. JD Willson says he’s
not sure what
they’ll do with the snakes afterwards. But he does know one thing –
they’re not going to
release them back into the wild.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Open Season on Wolves

  • Idaho Fish and Game sold 1,825 wolf tags in the first hour. By mid-afternoon the first day, about 4,000 tags had been sold. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

It’s open season on wolves starting
today. Lester Graham reports
Idaho has issued tens of thousands
of hunting permits for the first
wolf season since the animal was
taken off the endangered species
list:

Transcript

It’s open season on wolves starting
today. Lester Graham reports
Idaho has issued tens of thousands
of hunting permits for the first
wolf season since the animal was
taken off the endangered species
list:

This is the first time a state has allowed an open hunting season on the wolf since it was protected by federal law.

Jon Rachael is state game manager for Idaho’s Fish and Game. He says there are about 1,000 wolves – far more than the original plan when the wolves were reintroduced.

So, hunters can kill as many as 220 of them.

“The intent of that is to reduce the population slightly. But that would leave us in the neighborhood of about 800 wolves at the end of the year.”

A Montana hunting season would allow another 75 wolves to be killed.

Environmentalists say it’s outrageous to kill so many wolves in the northern Rockies so soon after they were taken off the endangered species list.

The Environmental group Defenders of Wildlife sued to stop the wolf hunting season. A federal judge has not yet ruled on whether to stop the hunt.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Some States Planning Wolf Hunts

  • In some states, there are plans for a wolf hunting season (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Some states plan to let people hunt wolves. Rebecca Williams reports that’s happening because the US government is taking gray wolves off the federal endangered species list in two places:

Transcript

Some states plan to let people hunt wolves. Rebecca Williams reports that’s happening because the US government is taking gray wolves off the federal endangered species list in two places:

This decision means states in the western Great Lakes and several Rocky Mountain states will have control over wolves.

Some states are calling wolves a protected nongame species.

For example in Michigan, a wolf can only be killed if it’s attacking people, pets or livestock. But in other states – like Idaho and Montana – there are plans for a hunting season for wolves.

Jonathan Lovvorn is chief counsel for the Humane Society of the United States. His group and several others are planning to sue.

“Essentially what we’re worried about is that this is basically going to be a declaration of open season on animals that have been protected for decades.”

The federal decision to take wolves off the endangered species list could be overturned in court. That happened last fall.

If the decision sticks, then the Fish and Wildlife Service will be keeping an eye on wolf populations for at least the next five years.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Lead Bullets and Hunters’ Meat

  • Condors are harmed by eating meat contaminated with lead from hunters' bullets (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Hunters have been using lead
bullets for decades to kill game with
little, if any, side effects. But new
research finds that hunters may need
to use more caution when choosing their
bullets. Reporter Sadie Babits has this
story on a hidden danger that’s just
coming to light:

Transcript

Hunters have been using lead
bullets for decades to kill game with
little, if any, side effects. But new
research finds that hunters may need
to use more caution when choosing their
bullets. Reporter Sadie Babits has this
story on a hidden danger that’s just
coming to light:

Tony Hanson has been hunting wild game all of his life. And over the years, he’s
grown pretty attached to what he considers the most cost effective, most efficient
bullet around – a lead bullet.

“It matters a lot to a hunter. You are counting on the range of that bullet. You know
what the bullet can do and you know what the gun will do. You’re out there to take
an animals life, and that’s not something we take lightly.”

The typical bullet used by most hunters is made up of about 65% lead. The bullet is
capped off with a copper jacket. These bullets are designed to handle high speeds and
to kill an animal quickly without breaking apart and sending tiny lead fragments
throughout the meat. Hanson works with the country’s largest conservation group –
Michigan United Conservation Clubs. He says he’s not concerned about possible
lead poisoning.

“Generally speaking, if you make the shot you are supposed to make you’re not
getting any edible meat. It’s not something that really weighs into my thought too
much. ”

Like Hansen, most hunters don’t give lead bullets a second thought. So why worry?

Well, early last spring, food pantries across North Dakota and Minnesota were
advised not to give out donated ground venison. That’s after lab tests revealed tiny
lead fragments in some of the meat.

It generated enough interest that North Dakota launched a study involving some 700
people. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention worked with North
Dakota’s Health Department. They found that people who ate a lot of wild game
tended to have higher lead levels in their blood than those who ate very little or no
wild game.

The results validated similar research involving California Condors. The Condors
almost went extinct in large part because of lead poisoning. You see, the birds would
feed on gut piles and carcasses left by hunters, and, if those hunters used lead bullets,
the condors would get sick.

That old problem still exists. Lead poisoning remains the number one obstacle
standing in the way of restoring the California Condors.

(sound of birds outdoors)

Rick Watson is the vice president of the Peregrine Fund in Boise, Idaho. He says
they’ve tracked the birds through satellites to see what they feed on. They’ve also
shot deer in the same way a hunter would, using typical lead bullets. The animals
were then x-rayed.

“And we were astounded by the results. Typically out of the 30 or so deer all of them
had fragmented lead bullets in them. And we were also amazed about the actual
extent the lead fragments are sprayed throughout the meat.”

Watson says about 5% of a bullet does break apart and some of it gets into the meat.
He’s now working on another study to see the impact of lead bullets on people.
That’s involved shooting more deer, sending the meat to random processors, and
then running that meat through an x-ray machine. The findings, he says support
what North Dakota discovered late last fall.

“And again what we found that 30% of the packages of meat that came back had at
least one fragment of lead in them.”

Not enough to make a person sick, but enough to raise a red flag. Watson says the
solution is simple. Hunters need to use non-toxic lead bullets. But most hunters
aren’t convinced. So-called green bullets are about twice the cost of lead bullets and
hunters don’t believe they are as efficient.

Hunters say they want independent research done before anybody starts making the
switch to non toxic bullets.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

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Hemingway’s Paradise Lost

  • Students do 'the Hemingway thing' (Photo by Jennifer Guerra)

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Transcript

A good book has the ability to transport
you to different times and places. You can travel
to far off exotic countries or cities nearby. You
can also visit places that aren’t so easy to get
to – mostly because they don’t really exist anymore.
Places like Hemingway’s wild north woods. Jennifer
Guerra reports:

Say what you want about Ernest Hemingway’s writing, the man loved his North Woods.
Up until his early twenties, he spent almost every summer up north at his family’s cottage
in Michigan.

And it’s there where most of The Nick Adams Stories take place.

“They were walking on the brown forest floor now and it was springy and cool under
their feet. There was no underbrush and the trunks of the trees rose sixty feet high
before there were any branches. It was cool in the shade of the trees and high up in
them Nick could hear the breeze that was rising.”

This is Nick Adams country in the early 1900s. The Last Good Country, Hemingway
called it. Filled with cathedral-like forests and streams swimming with big fat trout.

Now, it’s said that some of The Nick Adams Stories are based on Hemingway’s own
experiences in the north woods. Especially the parts in the book about hunting and
fishing.

“That was one of his favorite things to do.”

Valerie Hemingway was with the author when he wrote The Nick Adams Stories. Before
she married into the family, she was Hemingway’s secretary and occasional fishing
buddy. She says Hemingway used to go on and on about the good old days back in
northern Michigan.

“He taught me how to shoot a gun, told me about the river fishing – and these were
things that were initially associated with Michigan. And I think Michigan
represented the freedom in his life.”

But if Hemingway went up north today, he probably wouldn’t recognize the place.

“I think we’ve done our share of damaging it. And I’m sure there are areas where we
can still find something that he found, but it would be few and far between.”

Mary Crockett just finished The Nick Adams Stories. She read it as part of a state-wide
reading project put on by the local chapter of the National Endowment for the
Humanities. The reason The Nick Adams Stories was chosen for the great state read was
because of its obvious ties to Michigan and the north woods.

But Adam and Eva Colas
just read the book in a high school writing class. They’ve lived in Michigan their entire
lives, and they can’t relate to Hemingway’s North Woods at all.

“It doesn’t feel really representative of Michigan to me, cause it’s not the Michigan I know.”

“Cause even if you go to
Lake Michigan now for camping, there are specific pits for bonfires and specific cabins and all
these designated areas that make sure you don’t get lost or hurt, and you don’t have
to do anything for yourself.”

Their teachers thought that might happen, so they came up with the next best thing. An
outdoor classroom where the students can talk about the stories while doing what Adam
and Eva Colas call ‘the Hemingway thing’.

“The nature, hiking, canoeing. We can’t do the hunting/fishing thing, but just sort
of experiencing nature as nature.”

“Michigan as it was back in the day when this takes
place.”

See, that’s the beauty of a good book. Virginia Murphy teaches a class on Environmental
Literature at the University of Michigan. She says just because the students can’t
experience Hemingway’s world as it was back in the day, doesn’t mean they can’t learn
from his words.

“It allows them to see an environment that they’re not necessarily exposed to on a
daily basis. Most of us live in cities, drive our cars, work in buildings. And so it offers us a
perspective that we don’t have.”

So even if you never got to experience the north woods with all the big open spaces and
virgin forests and clear blue streams, well, there’s always the public library.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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Indian Treaty 2.0

Five Indian tribes claim the right to hunt, fish and gather on lands
and lakes they sold to the federal government years ago. Their
claim extends back to the Treaty of 1836. But it’s been
challenged in court by state officials who say those rights expired
long ago. As Bob Allen reports, now all the parties have reached
an uneasy compromise:

Transcript

Five Indian tribes claim the right to hunt, fish and gather on lands
and lakes they sold to the federal government years ago. Their
claim extends back to the Treaty of 1836. But it’s been
challenged in court by state officials who say those rights expired
long ago. As Bob Allen reports, now all the parties have reached
an uneasy compromise:


170 years ago, the tribes sold millions of acres to the U.S.
government. But they reserved for themselves the right to hunt
fish and gather foods and medicines until the land was settled.


Hank Bailey is an elder with the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa
and Chippewa. He’s scouting out a favorite fall hunting spot
even though it’s pelting rain:


“I know these hills well all around here just from exploring
it…hunting, gathering mushrooms…”


Bailey is a direct descendant from a tribal leader who signed the
original treaty. He says the exercise of those rights in times past
were the difference between survival and starvation. And he
doesn’t think a new piece of paper can ever erase what his
ancestors preserved:


“They were told that this treaty was forever. And I know in
my heart that’s what they believed in. And they thought well
as long as we can hunt, fish and gather we will be able to
survive as a people. This is what bothers me about is, I’m
being told now that when we sign this paper, this is going to
be forever and here we go again.”


Four years ago, the state of Michigan went to court to argue tribal
hunting and fishing rights had expired because the land had been
settled long ago.


But then state officials noticed court rulings in other Great Lakes
states that upheld treaties and in some case awarded tribes as
much as half of the natural resources.


Tribal leaders thought they had a strong case, but they too were
leery of how today’s courts might interpret the phrase that said
their treaty rights exist “until the land is settled,” so the parties
were motivated to negotiate a deal outside court.


Jim Ekdahl is with the state Department of Natural Resources:


“We were in a strange kind of legal limbo where the state
wasn’t exactly sure what the ground rules should be in
light of the fact the federal courts hadn’t ruled on the inland
rights. The tribes weren’t 100% confident that they could
advise their membership in terms of what they ought to be
doing.”


From legal limbo, there are now 130 pages of rules and
regulations on how and where the tribes can exercise their rights.
There’s been some grumbling on both sides.


Some tribal members complain, with some exaggeration, that they
have to fill out a form now before they can pick a single
blueberry, and there are sportsmen who don’t like a special set of
rules for Indians.


What the tribes have agreed to is their rights to hunt, fish and
gather will only apply on lands open to the public. And they only
can take enough for subsistence, not for commercial sale.


Tribal resource managers say what their members take is a drop
in the bucket of the overall resource. And Jim Ekdahl with the
state says there’s still plenty to go around:


“There’s sufficient harvestable surpluses of resources
available to accommodate tribal interests. There’s essentially
no effect on harvest by state licensed recreational users. And
essentially no changes in state regulations are gonna be required as this
thing moves forward.”


The parties to the agreement say is it avoids a bitter legal battle
that could last a decade or more and cost millions of dollars.
Both sides remember an ugly dispute that raged 30 years ago
when tribes reasserted their right to fish commercially with nets
in the Great Lakes.


Matthew Fletcher is a specialist in tribal law at Michigan State
University. As far as he can tell, this is the first time a state has
voluntarily recognized tribal treaty rights extending to off-
reservation lands without being told to do so by a court:


“There are tribes and there are treaties nationwide that have
similar language. And I’m sure they’re watching this very
carefully. And this kind of consent decree is going to create a
kind of precedent for other states that are engaging in similar
kinds of negotiations.”


The agreement still needs to be accepted by a federal judge
before it becomes binding in law. For tribal elder Hank Bailey
the deal might chip away some free exercise of historic rights,
but it also reasserts that those rights can’t ever be taken away:


“For me that’s… that is about the most powerful part of it is
being able to know that I will continue to be an Odawa, black
wolf clan, a man… somebody that respects the resources
around me. And I’m willing to work with anybody else that
feels the same way, whether they’re tribal or not.”


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

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Hunters, Fishers Down

The numbers of people who hunt, fish and watch wildlife went down again in 2006, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Tracy Samilton reports:

Transcript

The numbers of people who hunt, fish and watch wildlife went down again in 2006, according to a survey by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Tracy Samilton reports:


The number of people who fished in 2006 was down 12 percent from 5 years ago.
Hunting numbers were also down a little, about 4 percent:


Jerry Leonard is an economist with US Fish & Wildlife Service. He says since 1996,
fewer people have been passing down the tradition of hunting and fishing to their
children. He says that isn’t great news from an economic standpoint:


“The money that is spent on wildlife-related recreation is huge. In fact, over 120 billion
dollars. That’s approximately equivalent to 1 percent of the gross domestic product in the
United States.


Still, even though fewer people are involved in wildlife recreation, spending on the
activities is slightly up from 2001, mostly due to inflation and higher license fees being
charged by states.


For the Environment Report, I’m Tracy Samilton.

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