Tag: fish and wildlife service

Money for Mussels

A million dollar fine will be used in restocking and studying
freshwater mussels. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham
reports:

Transcript

A million dollar fine will be used in restocking and studying freshwater
mussels. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


A Japanese-owned company called Tennessee Shell Company has paid the first
installment of the million dollar fine. The company pleaded guilty to
illegally harvesting freshwater mussels in Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and
West Virginia. The company places mussel shell material in oysters to grow
cultured pearls. Chuck Traxler is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He
says the money from the fine won’t just go into the the agency’s general
account.


“The entire amount will be used for mussel research. This is unique
in that these funds are going to be used to help the species that was
damaged.”


Besides being over-harvested, native mussel populations have declined
because of poor water quality and because of invasive species such as the
zebra mussel.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Invasive Fish on the Move

An exotic species is making its way toward Lake
Michigan… from Lake Superior. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Mike Simonson reports that the Eurasian Ruffe (ROUGH) fish is
multiplying at a rate wildlife specialists can’t control, threatening to
spread to other Great Lakes:

Battle Lines Drawn for the Round Goby

  • A plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is intended to stop invasive species from traveling between the Great Lakes and the Mississippi river and its tributaries.

The government is trying to stop an invader from expanding from the GreatLakes into the Mississippi River system. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’sLester Graham reports… the field of battle is a small channel nearChicago:

Managing the Cormorants

Wildlife officials around the Great Lakes region are struggling with
the issue of double-crested cormorant populations. There are questions
about the impact of the birds on sport fish and commercial fisheries.
New York State has asked the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service to approve a
new controversial plan for managing cormorants in eastern Lake Ontario.

Snow Geese Hunting Restrictions Eased

The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service has allowed most of the states in the
Great Lakes region to ease restrictions on hunting Canadian Snow Geese.
And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Scheck reports, the effort
is being made to protect a region in Canada: