Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Does Michigan need a moose hunting season?

1,000-2,000 moose live in the Upper Peninsula, so they passed a bill requiring Michigan to consider instituting a moose hunting season.
Those numbers are a surprise to Brian Roell, the state moose expert, who said the last count showed 420 in the western UP. No one knows how many live in the eastern UP because the Department of Natural Resources and Environment hasn't tried to count them, but it's nowhere near 500.

"I don't know where they're getting those numbers," said Roell, who works out of the DNRE's Marquette office. "Our last count in 2009 was about 420 moose in the western UP. We don't have a count for the eastern UP, but we estimated the total (UP) population at 500-600."

This latest bit of legislative inanity is why the people of Michigan passed Proposal G 15 years ago, to ensure that such decisions are made based on principles of scientific game management rather than the short-term interests of politicians -- or shortsighted hunters, for that matter.

The Legislature gets to decide which animals may be legally hunted in Michigan, which is what that body did last week when it added moose to the list. But the more important question -- if they should be hunted -- is left up to the Natural Resources Commission.
The NRC has shown a great deal of common sense and guts in dealing with thorny issues such as shutting down baiting in the Lower Peninsula and mandating antler-point restrictions in the UP. Those decisions weren't popular, but they were the right ones at the time.

The DNRE's original moose plan was "2,000 by 2000," and had the moose population reached the 2,000 mark by that year we'd probably have a limited lottery moose hunt today, much like the limited lottery elk hunt in the Lower Peninsula.

But moose numbers are lagging behind projections, perhaps because of wolf predation, perhaps because of habitat and disease problems, or maybe a combination of factors we don't understand yet.

Whatever the reason, there's no reason to hunt Michigan moose until they triple their numbers.

Too cold: I'm beginning to think this might be the first deer season in 20 years that ends without my putting venison in the freezer. A few years ago I began my own version of quality deer management by passing on smaller bucks, and so far this year the bucks I've had close enough to stick an arrow in didn't make the cut.
It might also end as a disappointing season for the DNRE. A week of brutal winter weather chased a lot of muzzleloader and archery hunters out of the woods, and with Christmas on the horizon it might be a tough time to get many to go back.

"I have a doe tag left, but if I'm going to fill it, it will have to be this week," Jerry Mille of Saginaw said as he shopped for broadheads at Jay's Sporting Goods store in Gaylord. "I can hunt through Saturday night, but we have family arriving on Monday and I promised my wife I'd be home Sunday to help her get ready."

New director: Because I've written about the DNRE for 21 years, several people called to ask what I knew about Rodney Stokes, the career bureaucrat who has been named director.

Mostly I remember that he allowed a policy change in 1993 that let energy producers hoodwink Michigan out of millions of dollars in royalties from oil and gas produced on state-owned land. And a Free Press story in 2005 named him among the highest-paid state employees who retired with government pensions and then were rehired to work for the same agency.

I put in a request for an interview with Stokes, but he left on vacation Friday and won't be back until after Jan. 1.

I'm convinced that Stokes' appointment is part of a well-thought-out plan by our new governor, Rick Snyder, to make it easier for businesses to get permits for things they might not have been able to do before.

In 1993, the Michigan Oil and Gas Association asked for changes in the way producers were allowed to deduct post-production costs from the royalty they paid to the state of Michigan.

Stokes, then head of the DNRE's real-estate division, accepted MOGA's proposal without protest or comment. Post-production costs that had run about 10% of the royalty suddenly increased to 45%. In some months, instead of getting a royalty check for a well that produced gas worth tens of thousands of dollars, the oil producers sent the state a bill (although those bills weren't paid).

Critics said the change cost the DNRE at least $10 million. Stokes later said that Gov. John Engler and DNRE director Rollie Harmes both approved the proposed changes in advance but used him as a fall guy.

But what he hasn't explained is why he agreed to something like that in the first place, no matter who wanted it done.

Contact Eric Sharp: 313-222-2511 or esharp@freepress.com . Read more in his outdoors blog at freep.com/outdoorsblog
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)