U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service - Midwest

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features waxwing sightings, cute caterpillars, good neighbors and more!

Despite snow holding strong, the King Power Plant in Bayport, Minnesota was abuzz on March 14. Representatives from Xcel Energy, the Friends of St. Croix Wetland Management District and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service - St. Croix Wetland Management District met to celebrate Xcel Energy’s commitment to conservation. Standing near a 5-acre pollinator project site on Plant grounds, Xcel Energy staff were recognized by the Friends of St. Croix Wetland Management District for their continued partnership and support for conservation programs and efforts.

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features vibrant colors, herons on the hunt, returning wrens and more!

In Wisconsin, conservation and wildlife groups answered the call from residents to reintroduce elk into the state, restore historic populations and revitalize the tradition of recreational elk hunting. On March 7, 2018, the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources Elk Advisory Committee recommended the first managed elk harvest in 22 years! The planned harvest will take place in the Clam Lake elk range of Ashland, Bayfield, Price and Sawyer counties.

Amidst catastrophic population declines leaving fewer than 200 known pairs in existence in the early 1970s, the Kirtland's warbler seemed to be rapidly heading towards extinction. But after decades of partnership efforts among federal and state agencies, industry and conservation groups, this songbird has rebounded, and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is now proposing to remove the Kirtland's warbler from the list of endangered and threatened species. The proposal opens a 90-day public comment period that will help inform a final decision.

Dave Murphy doesn’t remember the first time he seriously thought about bats. Maybe it was the memories of bats occasionally entering the old farmhouse and flying around inside. “I don’t remember us ever killing one, just catching it and putting it outside.” Perhaps it was knowing they were catching insects after nightfall. Whatever it was, those experiences turned Murphy into a bat ambassador.

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features ruffled feathers, owl pairs, loon sightings and more!

We have some sad news from Neal Smith National Wildlife Refuge in Iowa. Sparky, the bison that survived a lightning strike in 2013, died this week. Sparky was born at the National Bison Range in Montana and moved to Neal Smith when he was 2 years old. He spent 12 years roaming the Iowa prairie.

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features heron lures, woodpecker snacks, salamander sightings and more!

In a recent fishing exercise at Creve Coeur Lake in Maryland Heights, Missouri, our biologists worked with the Missouri Department of Conservation, U.S. Geological Survey, and the St. Louis County Parks Department to remove 47,000 Asian carp from the lake. The lake is primary infested with silver carp, a type of Asian carp that jumps out of the water when agitated by the sound of a boat motor. With conventional fishing methods unable to efficiently and effectively capture thousands of these unwanted fish, the team of partners looked to China, the country of origin for silver carp and other Asian carp species, for inspiration.

It pays to work as a team when it comes to something as complicated as monarch conservation. Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig presented four Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Leader Awards at the Iowa Agriculture Leaders Dinner held in early March. The winners were recognized for their leadership, innovative solutions and commitment to serving Iowans through collaboration and hard work across all communities.

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features wildlife safety, sandhill sightings, nuthatch snacks and more!

We are pleased to share the news that Friends of Necedah National Wildlife Refuge has been selected as the 2018 Molly Krival Refuge System Friends Group of the Year. National Wildlife Refuge Association President Geoffrey L. Haskett announced the news today, along with the rest of the 2018 award recipients. The is the second year in a row that a Wisconsin-based Friends group has been honored.

On Saturday, March 17, Neosho National Fish Hatchery in Missouri hosted Rainbows for Veterans, the first of three public fishing events to be held at the hatchery 2018. More than 300 people, including 182 veterans, participated in the seventh annual veterans fishing derby. This year, the event coincided with St. Patrick’s Day. The luck of the leprechauns brought sunny skies as participants dipped their nets into a hatchery pond stocked with a few thousand rainbow trout. Most participants reached their catch limit by the time the ending whistle sounded at noon.

Today U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke traveled to Horicon, Wisconsin, where he announced more than $1.1 billion in annual national funding for state wildlife agencies from revenues generated by the Pittman-Robertson Wildlife Restoration and Dingell-Johnson Sport Fish Restoration (PRDJ) acts. The Secretary presented a ceremonial check to the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources for $34,966,603 while visiting the Horicon Marsh State Wildlife Area. State-by-state listings of the final Fiscal Year 2018 apportionments of Wildlife Restoration Program fund can be found here and the Sport Fish Restoration Program fund here. Allocations of the funds are authorized by Congress. To date, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has distributed more than $20.2 billion in apportionments for state conservation and recreation projects.

Spring is here and we’ve been seeing a lot of tips for providing food and nesting materials to animals. Unfortunately, many of those tips end up being detrimental to the species we all want to help. Here are a few pitfalls you should avoid and some great alternatives that will help keep animals safe!

Spring is here and we’ve been seeing a lot of tips for providing food and nesting materials to animals. Unfortunately, many of those tips end up being detrimental to the species we all want to help. Here are a few pitfalls you should avoid and some great alternatives that will help keep animals safe!

As part of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment for the Superfund site along the Kalamazoo River in Kalamazoo, Michigan, trustees are working to remove the Alcott Street Dam and restore about 3,000 feet of Portage Creek.

Check out our best stories from around the web and social media. This week features monarch migration, nesting doves, songs of spring and more!

Trustees for Natural Resource Damage Assessment and Restoration in Missouri, including the Missouri Department of Natural Resources and the Service, have begun another project in the southeast Missouri lead mining district. In December of 2017, trustees started work on the restoration of the Little St. Francis River chat pile, planting more than 550 container-grown trees at the site of a remediated lead mine in Fredericktown.