MAFWA Directors’ Meeting

Save the date! The 85th Annual Midwest Association of Fish & Wildlife Agencies Directors’ Meeting will be held Sunday, June 24 – Wednesday, June 27, 2018 at the Ramkota Hotel and Conference Center in Bismarck, North Dakota. The MAFWA Directors’ Meeting is for senior level management of natural resources professionals in the fields of wildlife and fisheries management, information and education, licensing and administration, law enforcement, and conservation engineering. Learn more.

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Monarch butterfly migration to Mexico jumps after years of decline

Associated Press in Mexico City

February 26, 2016

Monarch butterflies have made a big comeback in their wintering grounds in Mexico after suffering serious declines, investigators said Friday.

The area covered by the orange-and-black insects in the mountains west of Mexico City this season was more than three and a half times greater than last winter. The butterflies clump so densely in the pine and fir forests they are counted by the area they cover rather than by individuals. Continue reading

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Policy Re-affirms Federal-State ESA Collaboration

February 19, 2016

Contact: Brian Hires, Brian_Hires@fws.gov, 703-358-2191

Connie Barclay, Connie.Barclay@NOAA.gov, 301-427-8003 

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service (together the Services) have updated a long-standing policy on the role of state fish and wildlife agencies in implementing the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The updated policy, developed in coordination with state fish and wildlife agencies, re-affirms the commitment for engagement and collaboration between the Services and state agencies on many aspects of ESA implementation. Continue reading

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Study shows sharpshooting can control CWD

February 12, 2016

Beckie Joki Outdoors Writer

While there are many unknowns about Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), several studies have been done that may shed some light on which control efforts seem to be most effective. CWD was found in Illinois and Wisconsin at approximately the same time. In 2002, there was a scramble to try to control an outbreak of the disease in both states. Both states implemented a ban on baiting and feeding deer located in areas where the disease had been detected. The translocation of deer was also banned. Sharpshooting was seen as a viable control measure in both states as well. However, in 2007, largely due to negative feedback from the public, sharpshooting was eliminated as a control measure in the state of Wisconsin. In Illinois, however, the specific, targeted sharpshooting continued. In a study called “The importance of localized culling in stabilizing chronic wasting disease prevalence in white tailed deer,” Mary Beth Manjerovic, Michelle L. Green, Nohra Matews-Pinilla, and Jan Novakofski looked into the differences in CWD prevalence in deer herds in southern Wisconsin and northern Illinois from 2002 to 2012. The researchers were from the Illinois Natural History Survey – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and the Department of Animal Science – University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. While culling of game species by government agencies is one means of disease control, it can be met with some resistance from the public, they said. That was the case in Wisconsin. Beginning in 2007, the state decided to use only traditional public hunting as a means of control, while Illinois continued using sharpshooters to target specific areas and parts of their herd. Continue reading

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Can Our Moose Be Saved

When a moose goes down in the North Woods, it’s hauled out to a U lab. Researchers are finding hope for saving moose, but with tough tradeoffs.

Story by Josephine Marcotty, photos and video by Brian Peterson Star Tribune

February 7, 2016 — 12:00AM

TOWER, MINN.

The death of moose No. 161 was written in the snow.

Emaciated and sick, he had bedded down deep in the North Woods. In his final struggle to rise, he plowed a dark furrow across the white ground before collapsing beneath a towering white pine.

Ordinarily, his carcass would have melted slowly into the earth. But within 24 hours, it was hoisted away by helicopter — one of 47 dead moose that scientists have airlifted, dragged or tobogganed out of the woods in an extraordinary project to find out why the massive animals are disappearing from Minnesota.

Now, answers to that mystery are at last beginning to emerge — as are some of the dilemmas they will present to the state. Continue reading

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