New video:
Aquaponics
The McGraw Way
McGraw photo by Alex Garcia
Great things are happening at McGraw’s Ken Wegner Family Center for Aquaponics Research! Gordy Gotsch, our director of fisheries research and management, and the fisheries team are working to learn more about raising hardy, resilient walleyes for stocking in the Foundation’s lakes, and the delicious lettuce they grow is a highlight of the Pond Cottage menu.
But that’s not all. Over the past year, Gordy has developed a small-scale aquaponics system designed to bring aquaponics into school classrooms. He’s already worked with several schools to teach aquaponics, and now we are releasing a new video to demonstrate “The McGraw Way” of aquaponics to teachers and students outside our immediate area.
You can see the video on YouTube, the Center for Conservation Leadership’s website, or by clicking below.
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Meet the wonderful
saw-whet owl
By Scott Weidensaul/Living Bird
Photo by Richard Bonnett/flickr
There is something wonderful about an autumn night; the sharp bite to the air, the rustle of a north wind in the last leaves clinging to the tops of the oaks, Orion shining in a moonless sky over the central Appalachian ridges of Pennsylvania—and echoing over it all, a repetitive, mechanical beep that reminds most people of the warning alarm when a garbage truck is backing up.
That sound—in this case, an audio recording played through a pair of bullhorn speakers—isn’t automotive. Instead, it’s the
toot-toot-toot
call of a Northern Saw-whet Owl, the male’s breeding song that’s used by scientists to lure migrating saw-whets out of the star-shot sky and into mist nets.
I’ve spent close to a thousand autumn nights like this over the past two decades, in my work as a researcher capturing and studying this mysterious little bundle of feathers. Yet as I climb the lower slope of the ridge that leads to our nets, I’m still as excited as I was back in the 1990s, embarking on our studies of the unseen evening migrations of these most enigmatic raptors in North America.
Learn more about owls at McGraw’s annual Owl Prowl on Saturday, Nov. 16! Call Pond Cottage to register, (847) 741-8000.
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Florida desperately seeking python hunters
By Jack Brook/Miami Herald
Photo by Chad Sparkes/flickr
When Florida issued a call for python hunters, applications came in from near and very, very far — Iran, for instance, where one man sees a chance to fulfill his childhood dream.
Mohammad Asghari is one of 2,600 applicants worldwide hoping to become a “python removal agent” with the South Florida Water Management District, an effort that aims to control the state’s booming Burmese python infestation. The
python elimination program
tripled its budget earlier this year to approximately $1 million, expanded to include six counties and
will double its contracted hunters to 50.
Asghari spent his youth catching vipers in the mountains by his home in Tehran. He kept the venomous snakes in a plastic box and enjoyed playing with them.
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Record number of ducks? Where are they?
By Dennis Anderson/Star Tribune
Photo by Kevin Squeak/flickr
Recent reports citing the aggregation of as many as 900,000 ring-necked ducks at Rice Lake National Wildlife Refuge had radar watchers all atwitter, including those at the National Weather Service in Duluth. But conflating this interesting but not unexpected phenomenon with Minnesota's, and the continent's, otherwise relatively anemic duck populations would be a mistake.
I say this knowing most state and federal waterfowl managers, upon reading the last sentence will 1) immediately assume the head-buried-in-the-sand crouch long familiar to those in perpetual denial, and 2) nearly as immediately log on to their laptops to seek the comfort of their co-conspirator brethren (and they are mostly men).
Ringnecks first: The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, to the degree its counting methodology can be trusted, eyeballed 693,500 breeding ringnecks during this spring's continental survey, a figure similar to past counts.
Meaning if the folks at Rice Lake were correct in their assessment on Thursday of some 900,000 ringnecks on site (including young of the year), most of that breed's continental population were present on the 18,000-acre sanctuary again, an interesting but not unheard of occurrence, because these ducks typically migrate through Minnesota.
However, to infer from it that the continent's ducks are in good shape, or that duck management in this nation is on track, would be wrong.
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Hunting families try to live
with CWD
By Christine Peterson/High Country News
Photo by David Williss/flickr
The fall sun warmed my face and a breeze rustled the leaves of a nearby aspen as my husband returned from a morning elk hunt.
“Any luck?” I asked.
He nodded, describing elk bugles and a clean kill as he headed to the truck for his pack, saw and knives.
I scooped up our 1-year-old from a nap in our tent.
“Daddy got an elk,” I said softly. “He needs our help.”
The three of us stepped up a southeast Wyoming hillside covered in pines and fall grasses. The elk died not far from where Josh, my husband, shot it with his bow. It would fill our freezer for a year.
We were passing this tradition on to our daughter, who toddled up in her fox-and-rabbit-covered snowsuit and felt the elk’s smooth antler and coarse fur. I spoke of gratitude for sustainable meat, then I loaded her in a pack on my back, wrapped my arms around one of the elk’s shoulders and walked down the hill to our truck.
Leaving camp, the thought hit me: Would we test this elk for chronic wasting disease?
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To read past McGraw Reports click
here.
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