Conservation

LINCOLN, Neb. – Nebraska children can learn about the importance of monarch butterflies and milkweed in the Monarchs on a Mission project. Monarchs on a Mission aims to educate children by inviting them to color a monarch of their own. The colored monarchs will be collected and used in an exhibit at the Nebraska State Capitol this summer during Pollinator Week 2017. Monarchs across North America are disappearing. Pesticide and herbicide use, deforestation of their wintering grounds in Mexico and …

Yesterday was a holiday, President’s Day, and I had the day off.  Never fear, I went fishing, actually got on the ice one last time for this season.  Don’t worry, George Washington would have approved! Actually, I recently learned that President Washington liked to fish!  He did some profitable commercial fishing at Mt. Vernon, and took opportunities to fish other places too.  However, I doubt he dried off any stripers while crossing the Delaware. Tomorrow evening I will be in …

CHADRON, Neb. — The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission got up-close and personal with 20 bighorn sheep ewes this week in an effort to track their future offspring. The goal is to get a handle on the species’ population struggles in the Pine Ridge area of northwestern Nebraska. With the help of a helicopter wildlife capturing crew and others, Commission staff on Tuesday through Thursday, Feb. 14-16, equipped 20 pregnant female sheep with a device to immediately detect when lambs …

I am afraid the threat from aquatic invasive species requires all of us to do what we can to prevent their spread.  We have advertised these workshops before, but I want to give them some more publicity: Two watercraft inspection workshops scheduled LINCOLN, Neb. – Watercraft inspection workshops are scheduled for Feb. 22 at Lake McConaughy State Recreation Area Visitor Center and March 1 at Ak-Sar-Ben Aquarium. The workshops, which begin at 7 p.m., will provide an overview of the current …

A couple of days ago I told you that last week was a busy week, and I told you about one of the things that made it busy–the MidWest Fish & Widlife Conference.  During that conference I took a break to do an orientation session with a couple of our new commissioners here at the Game & Parks Commission, and then I headed out of town to help with another little project. . . . I have referred to some …

I had a busy week last week; want to give you a quick report on what I was doing.  First. . . . Many times I have been asked why Nebraska fisheries biologists are not doing what biologists in some other state are doing.  The implication behind those questions is that we do not know what biologists in other states are doing.  I suppose a pointy-headed fisheries biologist could live under some rock, but there are no good biologists who …

This week has been the week after the Super Bowl.  The game was fantastic, certainly one of the best ever, so there has been a lot of talk about actual football.  In addition to that, and after many Super Bowl games, there is as much talk about the commercials as the actual game.  So, on the topic of TV commercials, it has been awhile since I posted a good fishing commercial.  Here is one I saw recently that I kinda …

Recently I got “tagged” on FaceBook with a picture of a channel catfish that had been caught through the ice. The fish was a little over 5 pounds, a very respectable channel cat, especially through an ice hole, but the big surprise came at the cleaning table when the stomach contents were examined: Look close, it has been digested a bit, but laying just in front of the catfish’s head is a bullfrog that came out of that fish’s stomach! …

I have a hard time convincing ice anglers nowadays that there actually was a time when we caught fish through the ice WITHOUT A DEPTH-FINDER!  Certainly, many of the “millennials” or “Generation Z-ers” or whatever, cannot even imagine being on the ice without that technology.  But, as the Sonic commercial jokes, some of us are “perennials”–thought we were dead, but we just keep coming back–and we can remember when we caught fish, lots of fish, through the ice while fishing …

The months following the first of the year are what I call “sport show season”.  Even the folks who like to ice-fish will find some time to visit a sport show or “Expo” or two this time of year.  We all like to dream about the open-water fishing and camping to come, maybe make plans to visit one of the hot spots on our “bucket list”, ogle pictures and mounts of big fish and big bucks, and maybe learn a thing …