 DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife - Spring 1998 Around the State Recent reports on fish, wildlife, and native plant activities throughout Minnesota Baudette Dennis Topp, assistant fisheries supervisor, says that once the walleye season temporarily closed on April 14, anglers turned their attention to lake sturgeon. "With fishing pressure increasing every year, we need to learn as much as we can about sturgeon and the people out fishing for them," Topp says. The big fish, which can reach 7 feet long and live for more than a century, have made a big comeback in recent years. Reductions in fibrous sludge piped into the river since the 1970s from pulp and paper mills upstream at International Falls and Fort Frances have corresponded with increasing numbers of lake sturgeon. The long-lived fish, which don't spawn until age 20 to 25, had never recovered after being decimated by aggressive commercial fishing in the late 1800s. "What seems to have happened over the past 30 years is that the young sturgeon are surviving better due to the improved water quality," says Topp. "Most of the fish being caught are 40 to 55 inches, which are roughly 20 to 30 years old." As more anglers fish for sturgeon, biologists need to know if anglers are more interested in keeping and killing fish, or in letting them go to grow. "If it lives long enough, a lake sturgeon can eventually reach 200 or even 300 pounds," says Topp. "We need to know if anglers are willing to release more sturgeon for a chance of someday catching a fish of that size." St. Paul Though 20 percent less than what Governor Arne Carlson requested, the passage of the governor's Habitat Initiative provides $41 million for various habitat-related programs, including such programs as: Reinvest in Minnesota (RIM)* $11 million * Includes the Critical Habitat Match Program, wildlife development, and fish hatchery rehabilitation. "This is terrific news for hunters, anglers, and wildlife watchers of this state," says Roger Holmes, director of the DNR Division of Fish and Wildlife. "It provides money for critical projects that will improve fish, wildlife, and native plant habitat throughout Minnesota." Red Lake All of Lower Red Lake and 54 percent of Upper Red Lake are within the Red Lake Indian Reservation. The angler walleye harvest on the portion of Upper Red Lake outside the reservation dropped from 237,378 in 1978 to 10,561 in 1996. The primary reason, say biologists, has been overharvest. The Red Lake Band of Chippewa closed its commercial fishery in 1997 to protect walleye stocks. The band plans for a complete moratorium on walleye harvest for 1998. However, walleye numbers are so depleted that it will take at least 10 years for the fishery to recover. At a meeting held March 12, members of a technical committee composed of representatives from the Minnesota DNR, Red Lake DNR, Red Lake Fisheries Association, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Indian Affairs, and University of Minnesota agreed that the only way the lake's walleye population can recover is for the harvest to be substantially reduced as soon as possible. The band will likely end subsistence harvest in 1998, and the Minnesota DNR will reduce the bag limit to two walleyes for the 1998 season. Band and state conservation officers plan to meet this summer to beef up enforcement of the new regulations, which biologists say are essential if the lake is to recover. "Red Lake shows what can happen to a walleye population subjected to over- harvest," says Bob Strand, DNR regional fisheries supervisor at Bemidji. "We're hoping that it can also show that a fishery can recover and gain long-term stability if harvest is reduced and a carefully thought-out long-term management plan is put into place." Fergus Falls Most of the negative comments, similar to those opposing CRP, contended that the program would force people off the land and take important farmland out from production. The USFWS responded that it would buy land only from willing sellers, and that only 7,000 acres of existing farmland spread out over 85 counties in both states could be affected. The remaining 70,000 acres are existing prairie. Peter Buesseler, DNR prairie ecologist, compares the grassland proposal to efforts by the USFWS to preserve wetlands and waterfowl. "The program would essentially work the same way," Buesseler says. "The Fish and Wildlife Service would be able to purchase prairies like they do with waterfowl production areas." Buesseler adds that if federal officials decide to proceed with the program, it would be an important boost to prairie conservation efforts in Minnesota. "We're real excited about the possibility of a greater federal presence being added to the private, local, and state efforts going on now to protect and preserve the state's relatively few remaining prairies," he says. St. Cloud "What we'd hoped for was that the group would successfully adopt ground rules for future meetings, and it did so," says Don Carlos. The gray wolf could be taken off the federal endangered species list in Minnesota as soon as 2000, which would put its management under state control. Recommendations of the roundtable will guide DNR wolf management. (Editor's note: As this issue went to press, the second roundtable meeting was held on May 1 in Ely. The meeting consisted of several presentations on wolf biology and research methodology, including a talk by Dr. David L. Mech. "It went extremely well," DonCarlos told me. "I think most members were impressed by the quality of the science.") Camp Ripley If they pass the rigorous training period and examination, the three men and one woman will become the first Minnesota COs of Southeast Asian descent. At 40,000 and growing, the Hmong (an ethnic minority in Laos) are the state's largest Southeast Asian group. Allies of U.S. troops in the Vietnam War, the Hmong first arrived in Minnesota in the mid-1970s and were bewildered by the concept of hunting and fishing licenses, seasons, and limits. Another puzzle was the demarcation of public and private property boundaries. "Many Hmong, Cambodians, and Vietnamese immigrants have ages-old hunting or fishing traditions that they wish to carry on here in Minnesota," says Ray Hitchcock, DNR assistant commissioner of operations. "But language and cultural barriers have created problems that we hope these new recruits can help solve." Josee Cung, who created the DNR's Southeast Asian Outreach Program in 1991, says the agency has translated hunting and fishing regulations into several languages. The program has also held meetings bringing Southeast Asian hunters together with landowners, and it has graduated more than 300 Southeast Asian youth from firearms safety classes. "These efforts have helped, but there is an immediate need for conservation officers who speak Hmong, Cambodian, and Vietnamese languages," she says. |
