DNR asks bear hunters not to shoot radio-collared bears

Hunters participating in this fall’s bear hunt, which opens Sept. 1, should avoid shooting radio-collared or ear-tagged animals, according to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR). Taking a bear with a radio collar is legal unless the bear is accompanied by a researcher who has identified the bear to the hunter as a research animal.

DNR researchers are monitoring about 35 radio-collared black bears, most of them in northwestern Minnesota, especially near Thief Lake Wildlife Management Area and the Agassiz National Wildlife Refuge. Additional radio-collared bears reside in and around the Chippewa National Forest, Camp Ripley, Cloquet Forestry Station and Voyageurs National Park.

Bear research also is being conducted between Ely and Tower near the Eagles Nest chain of lakes in northern St. Louis County.

“Hunters near these areas should be especially vigilant for collared bears,” said Dave Garshelis, DNR bear research biologist. “However, bears travel widely in the fall, sometimes 50 miles or more, so collared bears can turn up almost anywhere.”

Most of the monitored bears have brightly-colored ear-tags to make them more visible to hunters. Some bears also have brightly-colored tape or streamers on their collars. Photos of some of these are available on the DNR website.

“We’re asking that if hunters see ear tags or a collar on a bear, they refrain from shooting it” Garshelis said. “Researchers have invested an enormous amount of time and expense in these bears. Many of the collars have global positioning units that collect and store data, which is downloaded when we visit the bears in their dens and helps us monitor and manage the bear population.”

DNR officials recognize that a hunter may not be able to see a radio collar or ear tags in some situations.

Any hunters who do shoot collared bears should call the DNR Wildlife Research Office in Grand Rapids at 218-327-4146 or 218-327-4133.

Usually about dime to quarter size in diameter, freshwater jellyfish are white to opaque in color and spend most of their lives living as polyps near the bottom of freshwater lakes and wetlands. It is only occasionally that the jellyfish mature from their polyp form into the recognizable, dome-like jellyfish shape of their salt-water relatives and move into surface waters. Researcher believe this change in morphology is intimately linked to increasing water temperature.

Warmer water allows for the development of surplus zooplankton, meaning a surplus of jellyfish food, and thus a larger population of resident jellyfish in Minnesota lakes. Additionally, researchers believe that the warming trend of earlier ice-outs and prolonged lake warmth into the fall, means that warmer temperatures are reaching further down into lakes—allowing more jellyfish polyps to develop into their mature form. As larger numbers of polyps mature, more and more make their way to the surface, creating what has been deemed jellyfish “blooms.” Each bloom lasts only a few days, and occur usually at the end of the summer during peak water temperature.

Sightings of freshwater jellyfish this summer have also been recorded in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and in Winona County. Researchers believe that as the warming pattern continues in Minnesota lakes, the frequency of jellyfish blooms will increase as well.

For more information, and to the view an original article from the Duluth News Tribune, visit http://www.duluthnewstribune.com/event/article/id/177547/publisher_ID/36/

Three of the park’s 239 developed visitor use camping and  houseboat sites, near bald eagle nest sites occupied by breeding pairs were  temporarily closed to campers and other human activities in early May.  After the young leave the nest, which usually occurs by the middle of August, these temporarily closed park areas are reopened for public use. The sites affected by the temporary closures:  Namakan Lake –Sexton Island (N 62) campsite; Rainy Lake-Skipper Rock Island (R45) and Sand Bay South (R25) houseboat sites are now reopened to visitor use.

The park is obligated to follow the conservation management actions of the Bald Eagle and Golden Eagle Management Act (16 U.S.C. 668-668c, 1940 as amended). Each year since 1992, the park has temporarily closed the land and water areas around active bald eagle nests to visitor use during their critical nesting periods. 

Voyageurs National Park biologists found 34 occupied bald eagle nests within the park boundary this breeding season. Adults were observed incubating at 33 nests compared to 38 in 2009, 29 in 2008, 30 in 2006, 26 in 2004 and 2005, and 20 pairs in 1999. Active incubation occurred at 13 park nests on Kabetogama, 11 on Namakan, 2 on Sandpoint, 1 on Crane and 6 on Rainy Lakes.  Twenty six young fledged from 20 park nests. Four young fledged from the three nesting areas temporarily closed in May.

Superintendent Mike Ward said, “We really appreciate the cooperative actions of our visitors in this effort to ensure the continued success of a sustainable bald eagle population.”

In the past, Voyageurs National Park held silent bid auctions or live auctions for surplus property. Today, the park must use an online surplus government property website called GSA Auctions. This website gives individuals or companies the opportunity to bid on surplus property. Voyageurs is currently working on disposing of surplus property and has begun to use the GSA Auctions website.

Parties interested in viewing, but not bidding on, surplus property can go to www.gsaauctions.gov and browse the website.

Parties interested in bidding on surplus property must register online at www.gsaauctions.gov. Once at the website, the register button is located near the top right corner of the web page. Interested parties simply follow the registration process to gain access to bid on property. The frequently asked questions posted on the website provide helpful information.

Successful bidders on GSA Auctions have two calendar days to pay for the item and 10 calendar days to remove the item. All payment is by credit card.

The park will set up a notification email list for those who wish to receive an announcement when an item is posted to GSA Auctions. If you want to be on this list please send an email to Kathleen_przybylski@nps.gov with GSA Auctions in the subject line. Unless otherwise noted in the email, the email address from which the email is sent will be the one added to the notification list.

Voyageurs National Park’s fifteen Visitor Destinations are in the process of development. Learn from Park Naturalist Andrew Fitzpatrick what makes these sites worth visiting and their unique history.

Meet at the Woodenfrog State Forest Campground Refectory on Friday, August 20, 2010. The program runs from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and is recommended for ages 6 and up.

This program is sponsored by the Friends of Voyageurs National Park. No fee or registration is required to attend.

Lost Hiker Located During Multi-Agency Search

On August 5th at 1:23 a.m., Voyageurs’ Park Rangers received a call about a hiker failing to return to his campsite in Lost Bay on Kabetogama Lake in Voyageurs National Park.  Shortly after, Park Rangers and St. Louis County Deputies began a land and water search.  At 6:30 a.m. they were joined by the St. Louis County Volunteer Search and Rescue Squad, additional park staff, the park’s airplane, and a Forest Service Officer.  Overall, 25 individuals from multiple agencies were deployed on land, water, and air.  At 12:08 p.m., Jeremy Brands of Minnesota was spotted by the park’s pilot approximately ¾ of a mile from his campsite near a swamp.  He was contacted by park rangers shortly after and returned to his campsite and family in good condition.  Brands had lost his way after darkness fell and was off the trail.

Park Superintendent Mike Ward said, “We are pleased Mr. Brands was located in good condition.  I would like to remind visitors to be prepared for even short hikes and have a plan in place that details their route and time they plan to return.”  Ward further stated, “I value the close working relationship we have with St. Louis County and the Forest Service and the well coordinated search that provided this positive outcome.”

Sturgeon research outlined at meeting

Ongoing research on lake sturgeon in both the Rainy Lake and Namakan systems was one of the main highlights at the Rainy Lake Conservancy’s annual general meeting this past Sunday at La Place Rendez-Vous.
Lake sturgeon have existed in this region for 136 million years­—and through multiple ice ages, marveled the afternoon’s guest speaker, Brian McLaren, an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources Management at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay.
“It’s just interesting to think about this scale,” he said about the fish which currently is considered a species at risk.
McLaren first became involved with research on Rainy Lake years ago through Voyageurs National Park’s research on beaver, as well as taking students on field trips.
From there, he became involved with the joint project between VNP and the Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources to study the lake sturgeon population and migration routes with implanted transmitters.
Interested in lake sturgeon habitat, McLaren told those on hand for Sunday’s meeting how RLC funding to purchase a $2,000 underwater camera has helped with this research.
“The camera has a pressure rating—that’s what makes it expensive­—a pressure rating that allows it to go down to hundreds and hundreds of feet,” he explained.
“We allowed it to go down to about 100 feet because, as you know, this lake is pretty shallow.”
Using the camera, which is set to take a photo every two seconds, McLaren and the other researchers are able to see what kind of substrates—or lake bottom—exists.
“We know, for example, that this sandy substrate, this sand here,” he said, pointing to one photo, “is what’s more attractive to lake sturgeon because it’s what supports the insects, mussels, crayfish, and things that are the typical part of the lake sturgeon diet.
“So we’re able to count the amount of gravel, count the amount of sand,” he noted.
This type of research is connected to taking good care of the lakes and oceans of the world, McLaren argued, speaking as a Canadian from the East Coast.
“If you don’t know [what’s underwater], you don’t know how to protect it,” he stressed.
McLaren also has been supervising two graduate students—Matt LeBron and Cam Trembath—on lake sturgeon research, another area he spoke about Sunday.
As an honors thesis student, LeBron had “developed maps—and took the Rainy Lake shoreline and modeled slope and exposure and so on and actually did a really good job of predicting where the most likely lodges were that would house beaver colonies for four, and five, and six years in a row.”
This is something he’s now applying to the foraging areas of lake sturgeon, noted McLaren.
LeBron has been “surveying different features of the shoreline in the south arm, both the Canadian and the U.S. side, and matching up the lake bottom to physical features that he can read from digital air photos or topographic maps, and trying to get an idea of what’s living under the water,” McLaren explained.
McLaren said we’ve got a unique opportunity to study juveniles here.
“For one thing, they’ve never been netted here,” he explained, noting that the Minnesota DNR, Ontario MNR, and park services in the area put out the gill nets in the areas where they are more likely to catch walleye and other sport fish.
Trembath has been able to find where juvenile sturgeon reside—not along the shorelines like the adult sturgeon do but at deeper, 20 metres in depth often, since they are more vulnerable to predators.
With this, they have been throughout the lake systems collecting data on the juvenile sturgeon, said McLaren, presenting a slide show of pictures they have been taking alongside this project.
“Just last week, 132 fish were eventually caught—all under or about a pound,” he noted, adding that Trembath’s “criteria” for juveniles are that they’re less than 550 grams and at least a year old.
It was during this research they also discovering the significance of High Falls on the Namakan system when it comes to juvenile lake sturgeon.
“In fact it’s right here, just below the falls, that most of the juvenile sturgeon big enough for Cameron to connect the transmitters to—most of them hang out just below the falls,” McLaren said
“In fact, most of his captures—90 of 132 captures—were at Bill Lake, just below at Quetico Rapids, and just about High Falls, and that was very interesting.
“He visited Kettle Falls, he checked many places around Namakan Lake,” McLaren added.
“The only place he [Trembath] could catch juveniles in the lake was below the Namakan River.”
High Falls is one of the proposed sites for the Ojibwe Power Corp.’s proposed hydroelectric dam project—a project the RLC and other organizations have spoken out against.
McLaren also touched upon the history of Lake Agassiz—the ancient lake that covered this whole region before draining away 7,500 years ago, leaving behind Rainy Lake, Lake of the Woods, Lake Winnipeg, Lake Winnipegosis, and others—and the effect this lake has had on the area’s geography and habitats.
As a part of the RLC’s business meeting Sunday, members elected its board of directors—with Candy Ginter and Christopher Causey as new faces to the board joined again by Don Dickson, Kay Larsen, and Ginny Sweatt.
Taking over as president this year from Dale Callaghan will be Stephen Challis.

Come explore the night sky with Park Naturalist, Kim Reich, without the city lights to affect your view. The presentation will include discussions of the Aurora Borealis, several constellations, the Milky Way Galaxy, our solar system, and the many phases of the moon. 

Meet in the Woodenfrog State Forest Campground Refectory on Friday, August 13, 2010. The program runs from 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. and is recommended for ages 6 and up.

This program is sponsored by the Friends of Voyageurs National Park. No fee or registration is required to attend.

Let’s Move Outside: More Action, New Rewards For Junior Rangers

We dare you to try to keep up with the Junior Rangers at Voyageurs National Park! It’s fun and healthy to play in the parks and now National Park Junior Rangers get an extra reward for movin’ it outside.

Today Voyageurs National Park becomes one of 36 national parks that offer the Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger program. Let’s Move Outside, led by the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture, provides tools and information to parents to make it easy to enjoy the outdoors and be active and healthy. This program is part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s nationwide campaign to end childhood obesity within a generation.
“Young people inspire us; we want to help them be healthy and curious for life. It starts with family fun. We want to help parents learn the skills they need to enjoy the outdoors with their kids,” National Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said.

Young people who complete at least one physical activity in pursuit of their Junior Ranger badge receive a special sticker that designates them as a Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger.
“Voyageurs National Park’s Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger program offers kids and parents the chance to hike one of the many trails in the park. Hiking is not only great exercise, but also an incredibly fun way to see and learn about the park,” Tawnya Schoewe Chief of Interpretation said.

By summer’s end, 50 national parks will offer Let’s Move Outside Junior Ranger programs. Young people can become Junior Rangers at more than 200 national park service sites nationwide. Before heading out, families can look at www.letsmove.gov/letsmoveoutside.php for more information about activities and participating parks. This website hub will link families to the great outdoors and give tips and ideas on how to best plan for and enjoy an active adventure. The National Park Service provides 84 million acres to explore, so there are many places and ways to move outside!