By Emilio Perez Ibarguen
For students hoping to become conservation officers for the state Department of Natural Resources -- tasked with enforcing fish, game and natural resource protection laws -- one Northern Michigan University class gives a glimpse into their day-to-day work.
The post Dead deer and small fish: Michigan students learn to investigate poaching first appeared on Great Lakes Echo.
By Maya Moore
If Congress approves President Donald Trump’s proposal to cut hundreds of millions of dollars from the operations and science budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, the scale and intensity of Great Lakes environmental restoration will be significantly diminished, experts say. Among the programs that could be dismantled entirely is the 70-year-old program to control sea lampreys, an exotic parasitic fish that attacks game fish and has caused billions of dollars in damage to Great Lakes fisheries.
By Donté Smith
Butterfly populations are in decline across the continental U.S., dropping by 22% between 2000 and 2020 according to a study in the journal Science. Almost a third of the 342 species studied have seen their numbers fall by more than half. To help combat that trend, the John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids, Michigan, launched its Great Lakes Rare Butterfly Program in 2021 to protect the region’s most threatened species.
