Dave Orrick, St. Paul Pioneer Press
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A key water-quality initiative of Gov. Mark Dayton last year — vegetative buffer strips along streams and drainage ditches — is returning for an encore performance at the Capitol in St. Paul this week. On Wednesday, a Senate committee will hold a hearing on a series of proposed revisions to the not-yet-year-old law, which was signed by Dayton after a spirited battle that pitted environmentalists against some farm interests.
WINONA, Minn. — James Yerhart has caught only one sturgeon in his life. But it was the sturgeon of a lifetime. On Friday night, Yerhart, a 34-year-old truck technician from Brownsdale, Minn., found himself in a Hemingway-esque struggle with a prehistoric monster: a lake sturgeon as long as he is tall, and perhaps twice his age and 10 times the weight for which his rod and reel were designed. Once nearly wiped out by overfishing (caviar is sturgeon eggs) and habitat alteration from dams, sturgeon have been staging a steady comeback in the Upper Midwest for decades.
Minnesota Senate Majority leader Tom Bakk suggested Tuesday that state Legacy Amendment funds could be used to pay farmers cash to make it more palatable to enact a clean-water proposal...
ST. PAUL -- Fresh off a legal victory over bear-feeding researcher Lynn Rogers, Minnesota wildlife officials want to outlaw feeding wild bears. Under a proposal moving through the state Legislature and supported by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, feeding a bear, "by hand or other physical contact," would become a misdemeanor.
INTERNATIONAL FALLS, Minn.. -- A wolf has been following, running alongside or possibly chasing snowmobiles in Voyageurs National park, prompting officials to reroute several miles of trail Tuesday. The wolf hasn’t attacked anyone and officials don’t think it’s dangerous, but the behavior is rare — unheard of in the northern Minnesota national park.
ST. PAUL -- A panel of Minnesota lawmakers Wednesday told state wildlife officials they wanted to see more deer in the woods, especially up north. A House committee hearing room served as the setting for what amounted to a stern talking-to by lawmakers echoing a refrain among many of the state’s half a million deer hunters: Deer populations in many areas have fallen unacceptably low, and the quality of a fall tradition is suffering. “The deer hunters out there understand,” said Rep.
ST. PAUL -- Has the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources violated the state constitution in how it regulates fishing for the state’s most popular fish on one of the state’s most popular lakes? That’s the question three Minnesota appellate judges are weighing after hearing oral arguments Thursday from attorneys for the state and groups of resort owners and anglers from Lake Mille Lacs who accuse the DNR of ignoring the state’s “walleye heritage.” That heritage, the groups argue, is guaranteed by a constitutional amendment overwhelmingly approved by voters in 1988.
GENOA, Wis. — Any invasive carp trying to swim up the Mississippi River through the shipping lock here will get an earful. Five underwater speakers blare out the racket of roughly 20 outboard motors — a sound unpleasant to humans, unnoticed by native fish, and super-annoying to invasive bighead and silver carp, so much so that they swoosh tail and swim back downstream, researchers hope. The “acoustic deterrent system,” designed to slow the upstream rampage of the non-native fish often known as Asian carp, is activated every time the downstream gates of Lock and Dam No.
ST. PAUL -- The carp invading Minnesota up the Mississippi River can be stopped — at least for several years. It’ll only cost $60,000. But the man with the plan — University of Minnesota researcher Peter Sorensen — doesn’t have the money. And he needs it now for it to work. Any donors? “We’ll take money from wherever we can get it,” said Sorensen, who heads the Minnesota Aquatic Invasive Species Research Center at the university’s St. Paul campus.