DEER HUNTING

DEER HUNTING THE WORLD


DNR seeks public input on Minnesota deer populations

DNR NewsOffering public input on deer populations in northeast and north central Minnesota will be more convenient thanks to a unique online survey the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) has posted on its Web site.A presentation and survey have been posted at www.dnr.state.mn.us. The presentation will guide viewers through the deer population goal setting process and collect input through a survey at the end. Online users can either click the banner ad on the right side of the DNR’s home page or go directly to the site at www.dnr.state.mn.us/hunting/deer/dgs/index.“We hope this will increase the number of participants, since people can view the information at their convenience,” said Michael DonCarlos, DNR wildlife program manager. “Public participation is a critically important component of this project and will help DNR make sound decisions on deer populations.” Previously, comments on deer populations have been collected in writing, by e-mail or at public input meetings. In early 2006, DNR worked with stakeholder teams in these areas to help set the future direction on deer populations. The teams represented such interests as deer hunters, landowners, businesses, counties and conservation and environmental groups. The teams met twice to recommend if deer populations should be increased, decreased or stabilized for each of the forested permit areas, according to Lou Cornicelli, DNR Big Game Program coordinator.“Deer management today must take into account many social and biological factors,” said Cornicelli. “I think this process went a long way towards giving us some direction on where to take deer populations.” Cornicelli noted while the teams made very good recommendations, there still needs to be a process to obtain information from the general public. “We recognize that not everyone is affiliated with a group,” Cornicelli said. The first page shows a map from which users will select their area of interest. People can click the area on the map to access a presentation. (The presentations are in PDF format, requiring Adobe Acrobat to view them.) The presentation explains the deer goal setting process, a brief history of deer management and the team recommendations for the selected area. After viewing the presentation, there will be a link on the last slide to a brief survey. Users should click the button, fill out the survey and then click “submit.” The responses will be saved in a database. The DNR will leave the online presentation active for approximately one month. Once the public input is summarized, a decision on deer populations will be made for each permit area.Written comments may be mailed to: Lou Cornicelli, Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, Box 20, 500 Lafayette Road, Saint Paul, MN 55107.


DNR uses eye in the sky to identify wetlands violations THIEF RIVER FALLS, Minn. (AP) – From 2,000 feet, Don Murray usually can tell if something’s going on in a wetland or along a lakeshore that shouldn’t be.Something bad, such as illegally draining a slough or removing aquatic vegetation from a shoreline.A pilot for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Enforcement, Murray is part of a crew flying the state this summer looking for wetland violations. It’s part of a DNR initiative to reverse the loss of wetlands and lakeshore that provide clean water and habitat for fish, waterfowl and other wildlife.Last Thursday, Murray was flying parts of Polk and Hubbard counties looking for problem areas. Beltrami County was on the agenda Friday.“We can cover in two days what it would take an officer two weeks to cover on the ground,” Murray said. “For what you see in a day, it’s extremely efficient.”Since state lawmakers passed the Wetland Conservation Act in 1991, Minnesota has had a “no net loss” policy on wetlands. That means landowners can’t just drain or fill in a slough without providing comparable habitat somewhere else.Still, the state continues to lose wetland habitat, as developers turn duck sloughs into parking lots, and cabin owners transform lakeshores into lush, green lawns. According to DNR statistics, about half of Minnesota’s wetlands have been drained since the 1860s, a number that exceeds 90 percent in some agricultural areas.“We don’t have an excess supply of wetlands, and we’ve degraded what we have because there’s so few of them,” Murray said. “It’s not just a specific area, it’s everywhere, and that’s the problem.”According to Perry Bollum, wetland enforcement supervisor for the DNR in Grand Rapids, the agency always has relied on its pilots to be eyes in the sky for wetland violations. But this year, he says the DNR decided to step up the effort to specifically target wetland violations.The big problems, he says, are violations of the Wetland Conservation Act and landowners who defy restrictions protecting lakeshore habitat by removing aquatic vegetation or using heavy equipment to work below the traditional high water mark or, in some cases, even in the water.“Pretty soon, you’ve got hundreds of feet of lakeshore where there’s no vegetation at all,” Bollum said. “They’re easy to spot from the air.”That’s evident from results of the flights so far. Between early April and May 1, DNR pilots tallied 368 potential wetlands violations in a dozen counties in central Minnesota and the Twin Cities metro area. According to Bollum, the goal of the flights is to get a better handle on the extent of the problem and at the same time educate landowners about the need to protect wetlands and lakeshore habitat.“These areas are critical to clean water and their quality of life in Minnesota,” Bollum said. “This is the message we’re trying to get out to people.”Murray recently found a couple of potential violations within minutes of the Thief River Falls airport, one involving a homeowner who’d hauled significant amounts of gravel right to the edge of a slough, perhaps to build up his yard.When he spots a possible problem, Murray logs the latitude and longitude coordinates on a Global Positioning System and snaps a couple of photos with a digital camera. From there, he passes the information to the local conservation officer, who’ll visit the site to determine if there’s really a violation.The best outcome, he says, is to catch a problem before it occurs.“As much as we enforce, we also try to keep people out of trouble,” Murray said. “It’s not like we’re trying to catch people in the act; the goal is to try and save a wetland.”According to Bollum, the DNR can issue a cease-and-desist order when landowners violate wetlands laws. Local Soil and Water Conservation Districts also receive a copy of the order and ultimately work with the landowners to reverse the impact of wetland or lakeshore work.“Some of them can get pretty hostile,” Bollum said.In Hubbard County, a lake-rich area of northern Minnesota, working with the violators often falls on the shoulders of Darrin Moe. An environmental specialist for the county, Moe spent a recent afternoon in the air with Murray. Moe says he handles anywhere from 80 to 100 violations a year. The most common, he says, involve lakeshore owners hauling in sand while trying to turn lowland areas into sandy beaches.Usually, he says, landowners agree to reverse the impact.“We’ve had very good success rates,” he said. “Most have been brought into compliance. Generally, it’s just lack of knowledge of the law.”Bollum says the DNR will continue to use aerial surveillance to target wetlands violations throughout the summer and into this fall. The need definitely is there, he says, as more people move to the country or the lake hoping to carve out their little pieces of paradise.The challenge, he says, is keeping them from destroying what lured them in the first place.“I think we’re at a really critical time in the state with the development pressures we’re getting now,” Bollum said. “It’s critical to slow this assault on wetlands.”
What Is the Bird Flu?The bird flu is making noise around the world. This is quite a deadly virus that is moving from country to country making its rounds. But, what is it and where in the world did it come from? Having the knowledge you need about this virus can help you to better understand and prepare for it, should the time come. The bird flu is actually the H5N1 virus. It is a subtype of the Influenza A virus. It is also well known as the avian influenza or avian flu. It all means the same thing.The bird flu is a virus. A virus is one of the most difficult of all illnesses in the world to treat because it is continuously mutating. By the time you take medications or antivirals to fight it off, it may have changed enough to become immune to the medications. This is the problem with the common cold. While it may be something many of us face, it is impossible to cure it because of how fast it mutates. The cold is a virus as well.What Makes Bird Flu So Bad?Now, the common flu and the common cold are things that most of us will deal with on a regular basis. But, serious flu strains, as they are called when the virus has mutated and is different from others, can also be deadly. The bird flu happens to be one of those deadly cases of flu. It is believed to be strong enough and fast enough moving in the body to cause a person to become sick quickly and then worsen until it becomes fatal.That does not mean that you need to be worried about the bird flu just yet. The bird flu currently only has been able to be transmitted from bird to bird and bird to human. This means that those that have birds or come into contact with birds of large amounts on a regular basis are the most vulnerable. Yet, even this does not mean that you may be able to ‘catch’ the bird flu. Currently, most of the cases that have been found have been in Asia, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. What worries many is the possibility that the bird flu could mutate enough to become a virus that spreads from human to human. If it does this, there is a great possibility of a worldwide pandemic. It is possible that up to 150 million people world wide can die from the bird flu if it reaches this level. There is not way to know if this will happen or when it will. The bird flu has yet to unfold into something much bigger as it could possibly do.