Michigan officials are reminding fishermen -- and women -- that bait restrictions apply in some waters as a way to slow the spread of a viral fish disease.
Gov. Snyder signed legislation aimed at improving Internet access in Michigan's rural areas.
According to Snyder's office, the new law will allow easier access for telecommunications companies to install Internet infrastructure.
More from Gov. Snyder's office:
Senate Bill 499, sponsored by state Sen. Tom Casperson, will allow easier access for telecommunications companies to install facilities along state-controlled rail-trails – former railway lines converted to walking and bicycling paths. Companies will pay not more than $500 in application fees to the Department of Natural Resources, plus a one-time fee of 5 cents per linear foot used. Revenues will go into the Michigan Trailways Fund or the Natural Resources Trust Fund.
“Keeping costs low will encourage more companies to expand wireless Internet access to Michigan’s rural areas, essential to continuing our economic reinvention,” Snyder said.
There's been a spate of black bear sightings in West Michigan over the past few days with at least one birdfeeder as a casualty.
Residents in Greenville, about 25 miles northeast of Grand Rapids, saw a bear wandering around a residential neighborhood and sightings have also been reported in nearby Lowell and Vergennes Township this week.
Wildlife authorities with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources don't know if it's the same bear being spotted, or more than one.
Bear sightings in general in many parts of the Lower Peninsula have become more common over the past few years.
[Bump] said a lot of the time, the bears are young males that get pushed out during the breeding season. They’ll head down looking for new territory.
“It’s not that we’re completely full up in the north – it can’t take one more bear – it’s just that we’re getting more taking the chance and moving south.”
He said bears like to travel along rivers and forested corridors and they appear to be finding good routes to travel...
Bump said some female bears appear to be moving south too. And some might be setting up camp... and having babies.
“We think we have an established population now as far down as Grand Rapids, possibly into Ionia County. We're getting more and more reports of bears in southern Michigan, even bears that are too young to have moved, so they had to have been produced in southern Michigan.”
This past February, Williams and producer Mark Brush got the chance to tag along with MDNR biologists in Oceana County as they tranquilized a black bear to replace a radio tracking collar.
Now that the warm weather is here, the collared bear is likely loping around in search of food.
You can see the bear in a deep sleep in the video below.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources auctioned off state-owned oil and natural gas drilling rights on more than 90,000 acres yesterday.
Here’s a recap of the auction results:
Total acres up for auction: 108,164.70
Total acres leased: 91,225.42
Total money raised: $4,118,848.60
Average bid per acre: $39.90
These auctions are typically held twice per year, in May and October.
The money raised from these biannual auctions has been steadily increasing since 2000, hitting peaks in 2008 and 2010.
In the first auction of 2008, the state leased all of the 149,000 available acres for more than $13 million. The last time the state had a 100 percent lease rate was in 1981.
The first auction in 2010 had a 99.6 percent lease rate and raised an unprecedented amount: more than $178 million.
The average bid per acre for that auction was $1,507, which far exceeds the average bids at any other auctions over the last 10 years, all of which have been under $100.
Protesters are expected Tuesday morning outside of a planned auction of oil and natural gas lease rights on public land.
Lease rights on more than 100 thousand acres of public land will be available in the auction in Lansing.
Mary Uptigrove is the acting manager of the Minerals Management Section of the Department of Natural Resources. She says much of the land on the auction list is there by the request of the drilling industry.
“They may know…areas where… current development is occurring….and they want to explore for additional development,” says Uptigrove.
The Department of Natural Resources has started a program to help people resolve issues of encroachment on public land.
MDNR officials say they want to work with people who are trespassing, by having either a permanent-structure or historical-encroachment.
They say they're writing to property owners with known encroachments on public land, telling them they're eligible to resolve their cases without penalty.
Applications will be accepted through December 31.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has filed its first legal action under an order that outlaws some breeds of exotic swine.
The Michigan DNR has filed a legal action in Cheboygan County against the Renegade Ranch Hunting Preserve for refusing entry to state inspectors and harboring prohibited breeds.
This is the first legal action taken by the Michigan DNR since the state started enforcing the order on April 1.
*Correction - An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that the Michigan DNR is banning "some species of exotic swine." The MDNR is banning certain breeds not species. It has been corrected above.
The antipathy toward wolves might change now that the species is no longer federally protected, but it also might change as more research is done on other predators in the UP.
So far, the research is showing a somewhat surprising result: that coyotes are a top predator of fawns in parts of the western UP.
From the Grand Rapids Press:
...what researchers found this past winter, the third year of a western U.P. deer mortality study, is that coyotes were the No. 1 predator followed by bobcats. Wolves came in fourth after a three-way tie among hunters, unknown predators and undetermined causes.
“I was somewhat surprised to see coyotes play as large a role in fawn predation as they did...,” said Jerry Belant, an associate professor of Wildlife Ecology and Management at Mississippi State University.
It's not quite Hitchcock movie territory, but it's close.
Luckily for her, Edna Geisler doesn't have to deal with thousands of malevolent birds, but one particularly ornery fowl is making life rather difficult for the Commerce Township resident.
As the Associated press reports, Geisler has been facing daily bullying from a wild turkey "willing to bump, scratch and harass her" if she so much as sets foot in her front yard.
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