Michigan Department of Natural Resources

It's actively reviewing options to manage the local deer population.

Uh, the pres- presentations have been made by the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, and then they've had community input.

That happened at a September 8th meeting.

They heard from the DNR biologist.

My favorite thing in the outdoor world, bear hunting.

But I'm watching the Michigan bear hunters from the sidelines because the Michigan DNR once again made a mistake in their draw.

I know it wasn't intentional.

I'm not blaming them.

Yes.

Yes, I am blaming them.

I'm blaming the Michigan DNR because I didn't get my

bear tag.

Great Lakes, which may live upwards of 200 to 300 years.

This new study published in the Journal of Fish Biology from the Michigan Department of Natural Resources at Michigan State University puts them among North America's oldest freshwater fish and brings their lifespan up to one of the poster fish for longevity, the Greenland shark.

Scientists have long recognized that lake sturgeon are among North America's longest-lived freshwater fish, says Scott Colburn, assistant professor in Michigan State University's Department of Fishery and Wildlife.

But the new study suggests they may live far longer than previously appreciated.

called One Michigan Outdoors, which is looking across all the different public land entities in a six-county region.

So Ottawa National Forest, Michigan Department of Natural Resources land, as well as local and county public lands to say, okay, what are our shared priorities? We know that sort of separately, we don't have the resources we need to steward these recreation opportunities.

There's, yes, some new development that's needed, but there's also lots of deferred maintenance and the organizing principle or the thesis behind it is that by working together, by leveraging the different authorities that counties, local economic development agencies have, that a state has, and that the Forest Service has, if they can come up with some shared principles about what a strong project looks like, they can be more effective in sharing resources and in pursuing funding if they're kind of singing off the same song sheet, if they do it together, right? And so what we've done there is beyond establishing an MOU between the entities involved that are really leading the initiative, It's winnowing down a list of nearly 200 potential projects and needs across that six-county area, down to about three dozen that felt like they were of the highest order, that they met the sort of priorities of those groups involved.

Now down to three that we're actually seeing progress on this year, right? So there's investment happening on the Black River Recreation Corridor.

So there are other states in the Great Lakes.

The Michigan DNR equivalent of Minnesota is promoting just short of 1,000.

The Wisconsin state number is 1,250.

So if we're to assume that there's 3,000 reported by government in Minnesota, and we know that that's double, we're gonna t- say that there's roughly just short of 10,000 in those, in the Great, three Great Lake states.

Well, the typical way that fish age is determined is by counting annual rings on a bony structure, something like a scale.

Ed Baker is a research manager with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.

For lake sturgeon, their growth is so slow that, uh, we just simply can't accurately count annual rings.

So researchers tried something different, measuring lake sturgeon, then catching the same fish years or even decades later and measuring it again.