Weekly News Archives

                         or

       New Product  Archives

USFWS wants Silver carp on hit list

Importing and Transporting Live Silver Carp to be Banned Under Rule

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service proposes to add all forms (diploid and triploid) of live silver carp, gametes, eggs, and hybrids; and all forms (diploid and triploid) of live large scale silver carp, gametes, eggs, and hybrids to the list of injurious fish, mollusks, and crustaceans under the Lacey Act.

This listing would have the effect of prohibiting the importation and interstate transportation of any live animal, gamete, viable egg, or hybrid of the silver carp and largescale silver carp, without a permit in limited circumstances. Available information indicates that this action is necessary to protect the interests of human beings, and wildlife and wildlife resources, from the purposeful or accidental introduction and subsequent establishment of silver carp and large scale silver carp populations in ecosystems of the United States.

A petition to the Service signed by 25 Members of Congress

outlined impacts of silver carp to humans and native species in waters of the United States. The proposed rule - advanced under the injurious wildlife provisions of the Lacey Act - addresses these concerns.

Comments may be submitted via e-mail to [email protected] . Include "RIN number 1018�AT29" in the subject line of the message, or by fax to 703-358-1800

The proposed rule to add silver and largescale silver carp to the list of injurious wildlife under the Lacey Act was published in the Federal Register on September with a 60 day comment period. Comments on the proposal must be submitted on or before November 6, 2006.

Below is the PDF file of the proposed rule:

http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20061800/

edocket.access.gpo.gov/2006/pdf/E6-7416.pdf

Coast Guard extends comment period for firing ranges

U.S. Coast Guard proposing live firing ranges in Great Lakes

Two CG vessels fired machine guns in Lake Superior, off Two Harbors. MN Sept. 12

The USCG is proposing 34 firing zones to accommodate 57 USCG units in the region to help guardsmen train in maritime defense. Although the Coast Guard has extended its comment period another 60 days, their most recent announcement did NOT include a suspension of their intentions.

Great Lakes boaters will probably soon be hearing more small arms fire in other parts of the Great Lakes as part of a US Coast Guard program to hone up for military preparedness.  Contrary to some regional tabloids erroneously announcing the Guard�s suspension of their intention to implement live firing pending the completion of the new 60 day comment period, the Guard on Sept 12 did just that in Lake Superior.  Specifically, the live firing took place eight miles offshore of Two Harbors, and 20 miles NE of Duluth.

In an original 30 day Federal register announcement that expired on August 31 the Coast Guard is �proposing� 34 live-fire training zones on the Great Lakes to help guardsmen train in maritime defense � and public safety - on the lakes. Now, The Coast Guard, at the request of U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland, MI has extended by 60 days the public comment period on the proposal.

Uncharacteristic of the friendly relationship the angling and boating communities have had with the Coast Guard, none of us were notified that the agency had posted an "Advanced notice of Proposed Rulemaking� in the Federal Register.  Nor did the Coast Guard give adequate notice for comment, considering their original comment period was only 30 days.

The Ninth Coast Guard District re-opened the time for public comments concerning those proposed Great Lakes safety zones saying,  "In an effort to have full consideration of all issues prior to finalizing these zones, the public comments time period will be extended an additional 60 days once published in the federal register."

Basically, "the Coast Guard proposes to establish safety zones throughout the Great Lakes. These zones are intended to restrict vessels from portions of the Great Lakes during live fire gun exercises that will be conducted by Coast Guard cutters and small boats. These safety zones are necessary to protect the public from the hazards associated with the firing of weapons."

The USCG says three (3) zones will be in Lake Ontario, four (4) in Lake Erie, six (6) in Lake Huron, fourteen (14) in Lake Michigan and seven (7) in Lake Superior. The Federal Register announcement also includes the coordinates of

those zones.

The "Guard is proposing to establish these safety zones to conduct training essential to carrying out Coast Guard missions relating to military operations and national security. Accordingly, these proposed safety zones fall within the military function exception to the Administrative Procedure Act."

What this little known Federal law means is the Coast Guard does NOT have to give 30 days notice or a starting date when they intend to begin their firing exercises.  As part of the Department of Homeland Security, they are not required to seek comment, hold public hearings or develop an environmental impact study.  The Coast Guard presently has no plans to hold hearings. 

An Important factor to remember is it was our elected federal officials that approved and signed into law the �Administrative Procedure Act�. The Coast Guard is just following that law.

The announcement adds: "These safety zones will only be enforced during time the safety zone is actually in use. Furthermore, these safety zones are located in places known not to be heavily used by the boating public. Hence, this determination is based on the minimal amount of time that vessels will be restricted from the proposed zones and that the zones are located in areas which vessels can easily transit around."

The USCG says they will give "notice to the public via a Broadcast on channel 16 to Mariners that the regulation is in effect."

In the April 3, 2006 online Weekly News segment, the GLSFC reported that for the first time since 1817, U.S. Coast Guard vessels on the Great Lakes were being outfitted with weapons � machine-guns capable of firing 600 rounds a minute. Until then coast guard officers had been armed with handguns and rifles, but the vessels themselves hadn't been equipped with weapons.

The War of 1812 saw violent battles on Lake Erie and Lake Huron between U.S. troops and British forces, which were largely composed of militias from Britain's colonies in what is now Canada. After the war, the United States and Britain � and later Canada � agreed to demilitarize the Great Lakes waters.  Both countries recently reinterpreted the treaty to allow more modern weapons by considering them weapons of law enforcement.

Maps of the proposed firing zones, by lake, can be viewed at:  http://www.great-lakes.org/cg_firing_ranges.html

The full text of the Coast Guard announcement can be found in the [Federal Register: August 1, 2006 (Volume 71, Number 147)], Pages 43402-43406. 

http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=43402&dbname=2006_register

National Hunting & Fishing Days Sept 23-24

Visit the National Hunting & Fishing Days web site to view the extensive list of activities available for families and children during this annual festive occasion commemorating our right

to hunt and fish.

www.nhfday.org/html/eventcalendar.htm

Quote of the day

Washington, Sep. 13 � "There can never be full and absolute security for potential terror targets in the United States", says

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff speaking to the

Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

Fish Study Continues in the Detroit River Int�l Wildlife Refuge

The USFWS Alpena office has teamed up with state and other federal agencies to conduct the second fishery survey within the recently established refuge. The Refuge boundary includes Michigan waters of the Lower Detroit River and Lake Erie. The last time a similar fishery survey was conducted in that area of the Great Lakes was back in the early 1980�s. Since that time many changes have taken place, specifically the addition of exotic species that have likely displaced or reduced the numbers and diversity of native species.

The first part of the survey took place last year in September with efforts focusing on wetland areas located along western Lake Erie. The second part of the survey was conducted this year to identify wetland areas being used as nursery areas during the month of July.

The primary goal with this project was to provide baseline information about what species, both native and exotic, are using the remaining wetland complexes found within Refuge waters in the lower Detroit River. The Refuge provides some of the last remaining natural wetland areas available in the Detroit River and Western Lake Erie. Refuge manager John Hartig and DNR Biologist Joe Robison continue to meet with landowners within the Refuge Boundaries seeking management agreements to protect the remaining wetlands. Those nursery areas are critical to the early life stages of many species of sport fish as well as some state listed species. Historical records from past surveys have identified over thirty species of fish using those wetland habitats for either spawning or nursery areas.

At a planning meeting in March 2006 researchers and

managers met to identify locations in the lower Detroit River that were considered important nursery habitat and to identify the dates to sample. During the September 2005 survey along western Lake Erie (using both electro-fishing and seining) 46 different fish species were collected. We were able to demonstrate that some state listed species as well as many economically valuable sport fish species (walleye, largemouth bass, smallmouth bass, northern pike, and other sunfishes) were using those locations as nursery areas. In 2006 sampling took place in July, earlier in the season with the rational that many of the species spawn early in the spring and would still be residing in the nursery areas. With the exception of one location in western Lake Erie all sampling took place in the lower Detroit River.

Small mesh fyke nets were used in 2006 in addition to electro-fishing and seining gear. Sampling consisted of 14 seine hauls, electro-fishing at 24 locations, and 29 fyke net sets. We caught a total of 11,814 fish representing 55 species from 15 families. Two species, the silver lamprey and the state listed silver chub, were collected last year but not found this year. Ten new species were captured this year that were not represented in last year's catch including alewife, muskellunge, rainbow trout, striped shiner, horneyhead chub, black buffalo, smallmouth buffalo, silver redhorse, northern hog sucker, and white crappie. Again this year a number of economically important species of sportfish were using the limited number of wetland areas as nursery grounds. This effort is a critical first step in identifying the current status of fish species within the newly created Detroit River International Wildlife Refuge and will aid the refuge with establishing its Comprehensive Conservation Plan.

California bill will restrict ballast dumping of invasives

Rules would be toughest restrictions in the nation

California is on the verge of adopting the toughest restrictions in the nation on non-native aquatic species that harm state waterways, threaten water supplies and clog water pipes.

State lawmakers last week sent Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger a bill to require ships entering California ports to treat their ballast water to kill the aquatic species that hitchhike from port to port around the world.  Just one state, Michigan, has passed a rule that will make ship ballast water treatment mandatory, but it doesn't spell out how thorough the treatment must be, California officials say.

Under the state bill given final approval last week on a 50-28

 Assembly vote, ships would have to treat ballast water before dumping it in ports or coastal waters.

The San Jose Mercury News reports treatment standards would be phased in, starting in 2009, to provide time for systems to be developed to kill the organisms. By 2020, no discharge of organisms larger than 50 microns -- about the size of a grain of sand -- would be allowed.

Effective controls on the biological invaders are overdue, said the author of the bill, Sen. Joe Simitian, D-Palo Alto. ``These invasive species have already caused a nightmare in terms of local ecosystems, but their impact is not limited to the environment,'' he said.

Trail of Tears route study under way

The National Wildlife Refuge System has begun a study of federally designated Trail of Tears routes through the Tennessee National Wildlife Refuge, Wheeler National Wildlife Refuge in Alabama and White River National Wildlife Refuge in Arkansas.  The project, expected to take some two years, will include field work and studying archival records to determine if visible evidence of the trail, boat landings or camp sites still remain at those three refuges.

The Trail of Tears commemorates the 1838 forced removal of some 16,000 Cherokees from their ancestral homelands in the mountainous southeastern woodlands of Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama. An estimated quarter of the Cherokee died on the trail to the Indian Territory, in what is now Oklahoma.

Choctaws, Chickasaws, Creeks and Seminoles, among many other tribes, were similarly uprooted and displaced.

Currently, 2,200 miles of land and river �Trail of Tears� routes through nine states are maintained by the federal government

as a national historic trail. Those routes pass through eight national wildlife refuges in Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois and Oklahoma: Chickasaw, Lower Hatchie and Tennessee Refuges in Tennessee; Wheeler Refuge in Alabama; Holla Bend and White River Refuges in Arkansas; Cypress Creek Refuge in Illinois; and Sequoyah Refuge in Oklahoma.

In July, the House of Representatives passed legislation requiring a six-month study by the Department of the Interior on the proposal to expand the trail by some 1,400 miles. The proposed expansion would include two other routes by which Cherokees were herded through Arkansas and Tennessee into Oklahoma. The Senate has yet to act on the measure.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Archaeologist Richard Kanaski says new interest in the Trail of Tears could provide an avenue for educating the American public more broadly about all those first residents of the �new� world.

For more info: [email protected]

Judge rules hunting on National Refuges may be illegal

Federal Court ruling puts onus on USFWS

A District of Columbia federal district court judge has ruled that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service must examine more fully the environmental impact of hunting on 37 National Wildlife Refuges before issuing regulations that open or expand hunting opportunities on those refuges.

The suit was originally filed in 2003 by anti-hunting groups seeking to thwart hunting on refuges, and several sportsman's organizations aided in the defense of the suit. One of them, the U.S. Sportsmen�s Alliance, through its Sportsmen's Legal Defense Fund, is urging the USFWS to appeal the court's decision.

The Sportsmen�s Legal Defense Fund is urging the USFWS to appeal the judge�s decision handed down that could outlaw hunting on 37 units of the Refuge System.  Preliminary indications are that U.S. District Judge Ricardo Urbina�s decision will require the FWS to perform costly and lengthy studies on the environmental impact of hunting on the entire refuge system before it can expand hunting opportunities on any refuge.

The USFWS already studies the impact of hunting on refuges through the required refuge plans it completes as well as national migratory bird studies.  Adding more studies only succeeds in miring down the process so that no one will be able to hunt on refuges.

The decision also runs contrary to current law.  In 1966, and again in 1997, Congress expressly recognized the legitimacy 

of hunting on units of the refuge system and directed the USFWS to facilitate and increase these opportunities whenever they are determined to be compatible.

The U.S. Sportsmen�s Alliance (USSA), which manages the Sportsmen�s Legal Defense Fund, will seek from Congress redress on this baffling decision.  �The court�s decision is bad for the refuge system,� said Rick Story, senior vice president for the USSA.  �We are urging the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to appeal the judge�s ruling.  I can assure you that the Sportsmen�s Legal Defense Fund will back them 100 percent.�

The Sportsmen�s Legal Defense Fund collaborated as defendant interveners in the case with Safari Club International, Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl, Izaak Walton League and the California Waterfowl Association. 

The case was filed in 2003 in the Washington, D.C. Federal District Court by the Fund for Animals, which has since merged with the Humane Society of the United States. It originally sought to ban hunting on 39 units of the 100 million-acre National Wildlife Refuge System.  The case claimed that the USFWS, which manages the refuges, failed to comply with the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires extensive Environmental Impact Statements, prior to establishing hunting programs.

In September of 2005, Judge Urbina granted a motion for partial dismissal of the anti-hunters� case, ruling that since the goals outlined in the USFWS strategy are not final agency action there is no need for comprehensive environmental studies.

Weekly Great Lakes Water Levels for Sept. 15, 2006

Lake Level Conditions:

Lakes Superior is 7 inches lower than it was a year ago, while Lake Michigan-Huron is 2 inches below last year's level.  Lakes St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario are higher than the levels of a year ago by 2, 4, and 5 inches, respectively.  All of the lakes are in their period of seasonal decline. Over the next month, Lakes Superior and Michigan are expected to fall 2 to 3 inches. During this period, Lakes St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario are projected to drop 6 inches.  Over the next few months, Lakes Superior is expected to remain below last year�s levels, while Lakes Michigan-Huron, St. Clair, Erie, and Ontario are predicted to remain near or slightly above the water levels of a year ago. 

Current Outflows/Channel Conditions:

The Lake Superior outflow through the St. Marys River into Lake Huron is expected to be below average in September.  Flows in the St. Clair and Detroit Rivers are also expected to be below average during September.  Flow in the Niagara River is expected to be near average in September, while flow in the St. Lawrence River is expected to be above average in

September.

Alerts:

Users of the Great Lakes, connecting channels and St. Lawrence River should keep informed of current conditions before undertaking any activities that could be affected by changing water levels.  Mariners should utilize navigation charts and refer to current water level readings.

Canada Cuts Kyoto Funding

The Government of Canada has pulled back from a $1.5 million pledge to the United Nations to support the Clean

Development Mechanism (the Kyoto Treaty.)  Canada�s contribution towards the administration of the scheme was to have been the largest of any country.

Tree Stand Safety A Must For Hunters

We received this from the N. Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission and are passing it on in the interest of public safety.

RALEIGH, N.C. (Sept. 11) - More North Carolina hunters will be injured this year in accidents involving a tree stand than from any other cause, according to statistical forecasts. In an effort to help prevent hunting accidents, the N.C. Wildlife Resources Commission is urging particular caution when using a tree stand or elevated hunting platform.

"The leading cause of hunter injuries in North Carolina, including fatalities, is falls from tree stands," said Capt. Chris Huebner, the hunting safety coordinator for the Wildlife Resources Commission.   Tree stands are among the most popular hunting equipment used during deer season but, when not used properly, they can be among the most dangerous. Capt. Huebner offered the following advice:

Tree Stand Dos

-         Always wear a proper safety harness (fall arrest system) when using a tree stand.

-         Always use a rope to raise and lower a bow, an unloaded gun or other equipment.

-         Always read and understand tree stand instructions and practice at low heights before hunting.

Tree Stand Don'ts

-         Don't use homemade tree stands, especially those of nail and wood construction.

-         Don't use a decaying, leaning or slippery-bark tree for your tree stand.

-         Use precaution or avoid using a tree stand in rain, snow or icy conditions.

-         Never climb with a weapon.

Hunters should carry a whistle, flashlight and a cell phone, if possible, Capt. Huebner added. "Also, you should always tell someone where you are hunting and when you expect to arrive home."  One safety precaution is so important that Capt. Huebner repeated it:  "We advise using a full-body safety harness each and every time you are sitting in, or climbing up or down from a tree stand." When worn correctly, a proper safety harness will not restrict breathing, if there is a fall.

Veterans Lose GI Bill after 10 Years

Many veterans are unaware that their GI Bill benefits will expire after ten years and just over 50% of eligible veterans use their GI Bill at all. You only have ten years to use your GI Bill from your date of discharge. Since the GI Bill currently pays out over

$1000 a month, or $37,000 over 36 months, you could be missing out on a huge benefit. To learn more about your G.I. Bill benefits, visit the Military.com Education Center. To learn more about GI Bill benefits and military-friendly schools, request free information today