9/26/2011
By Tim Lundgren, Water Law Attorney
Michigan officials are releasing 100 sturgeon that are the product of the first successful sturgeon hatching and rearing program by state, federal, tribal, and local partners. The sturgeon will all have embedded tags identifying them as Kalamazoo River fish. In addition, thirty will have embedded transmitters allowing state biologists to track them.
Young sturgeon are fed and reared in a facility where they swim in tanks filled with Kalamazoo River water and learn to imprint on that water so they return to the home river to spawn. The new releases are expected to migrate down to Kalamazoo Lake and spend most of the fall and winter there feeding before moving out into Lake Michigan and migrating around for the next 12 to 15 years before returning to the Kalamazoo River to spawn.
7/20/2011
By Tim Lundgren, Water Law Attorney
U.S. EPA and Michigan have announced a $2.1 million restoration effort for the shoreline of White Lake, near Muskegon. The White Lake project will restore fish and wildlife habitat at seven public and private sites along the lakeshore. Field work for the project is now under way and will be completed in 2012. The work will be performed by local firms.
The project, funded under the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI), will ultimately result in the lake being taken off a binational list of U.S.-Canada “Areas of Concern” or AOCs. “We’re looking for other partners to identify matching funds so we can accelerate cleanups in other AOCs in Michigan and around the basin, ” said Cameron Davis, Senior Advisor to the EPA Administrator.
The GLRI habitat grant will be used to restore 5,158 feet of shoreline, to create 35 acres of wetland and aquatic habitat, to reconnect and restore 8 acres of riparian and upland habitat corridors, and to remove 27,134 cubic yards of shoreline debris. White Lake flows into Lake Michigan via the White River.
7/12/2011
By Tim Lundgren, Water Law Attorney
One of six mobile sturgeon rearing facilities on Lake Michigan is now stationed at the New Richmond Bridge Park on the Kalamazoo River. There are now two mobile facilities in Wisconsin, two in the U.P., and two on Michigan’s West Coast (the other in Manistee), paid for by federal Great Lakes Restoration Initiative funds.
Great Lakes Sturgeon - USFWS Photo
The mobile facility has capacity to handle 2,000 young sturgeon. In its first year, it’s planning to release approximately 100 eight- to ten-inch sturgeon into the Kalamazoo River in September, with hopes to double that in future years. Sturgeon surveys indicate that there are only 60 mature sturgeon left in the river and it is hoped that the population decline can be reversed through these restocking efforts.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service offers a website with links to research and other information on Great Lakes sturgeon. More information on efforts to restore a healthy sturgeon population to the Kalamazoo River can be found on the Kalamazoo River Sturgeon for Tomorrow website.
12/22/2009
by Bruce Goodman
Developers Havgul Clean Energy and Scandia Wind Offshore are considering a 100 square mile area of Lake Michigan near Ludington for a $3 billion, 1000 MW offshore wind farm. After meeting with Mason and Oceana county officials, the team held a well-attended public meeting on December 15 to explain the details of the proposed project which would be located approximately 2-4 miles offshore between Pentwater and Ludington. Relying on wind statistics collected from lighthouses, they selected the location for its combination of grid access (Ludington Pumped Storage Plant), wind resource, proximity to major load centers, and favorable water depths.
