Conservation

The air is crisp and cold. Hardwood trees stand motionless and silent — faint brush strokes against the slowly lightening predawn sky. Small sounds begin to carve the creek bottom. A raucous calamity of crows can be heard in the distance. An assertive blue jay appears on a limb. Two fox squirrels squabble amid the leaves on the woodland floor. In the grass beyond the trees, a rooster pheasant cackles; greeting the first full rays of the sun. Suddenly, and …

About 250 Boy Scouts of the Longs Peak Council will gather at Chadron State Park this weekend to plant trees in areas burned by the 2012 wildfire that entered the popular northwestern Nebraska tourism attraction and burned much of its ponderosa pine forest and surrounding areas. The public is invited to assist in the planting of 3,000 trees in the park Saturday morning. Participants will begin planting trees after an education session at 8 a.m. and are expected to finish …

Halloween draws attention to them! Movies like Arachnophobia also draw attention to them. Looking back in history, they have been revered in hundreds of myths, stories, folk tales and art pieces all over the world. The mere thought of them can make the hair stand up on the back of your neck! And, walking into one of their webs this time of year makes a person absolutely freak out! Eeeeeekkkk! Spiders, they are creepy. They are members of the Phylum Arthropoda, the Class Arachnida and the Order …

You probably are not going to see or hear anything about this, probably not going to be parades and news conferences like there should be, but tomorrow, September 26, 2015 is National Hunting and Fishing Day!  Governor Ricketts signed the proclamation! So. . . what does that mean?  This will give you a little bit of an idea. . . . Here is why it is worth a proclamation! You have probably heard me say that hunters, anglers and trappers …

As a longtime hunter, landowner and natural resources professional, I still just don’t get why some hunters feel the need to bait areas with artificially made materials/substances to bring game animals in to a particular area to be harvested within the confines of our laws/regulations (for info on Nebraska’s new baiting laws/regulations with reference to hunting, click here.) Why? Is it because it involves minimal effort and is cheap? Is it because you saw the flashy advertisement for the product …

If you were watching, there was a very positive announcement on the water front last week:  State entities working on first-of-its-kind water sustainability plan Historic agreement to ensure lasting uses of Niobrara River for Nebraskans LINCOLN, NEB. – A historic agreement has been negotiated to preserve the future of the Niobrara River Basin between the Niobrara basin’s Natural Resource Districts (NRDs), the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission (Commission) and the Nebraska Public Power District (NPPD). Formal action on a memorandum …

It is that time of year again, time for our annual review of fishing rules and regulations.  This is an ongoing process that involves many different folks on many different levels here at the Nebraska Game & Parks Commission.  Typically, the October commission meeting is the one where changes in fishing rules and regulations are discussed.  We do not have a lot of time to meet deadlines before that meeting, but we want to give our anglers and idea of …

Professors lead squirrel studies with broader applicability.  By Sarah Kocher You could say Wesleyan biology professors Cody Arenz and Gary Gerald have gone a little nuts. Nevertheless, the pair has been radio-tracking campus squirrels since a revamped entry-level biology course debuted in the spring semester of 2015.  The goal: field biology in an urban setting. “Being at Nebraska Wesleyan… it’s a challenge to just dart outside, watch some mountain lions and dart back inside in a three-hour lab period,” Arenz …

The public is invited to get up-close and personal with bird populations at two parks in the Nebraska Panhandle this weekend and next. Bird banding stations have been set up at Chadron State Park near Chadron and Wildcat Hills State Recreation Area near Gering. Attendees of special public banding days will watch and learn as biologists retrieve birds from nets, collect data, and fit each with a lightweight metal leg band before releasing it back to the wild. The first …

Every spring I try to update you on the pallid sturgeon brood stock collection efforts on Nebraska’s Missouri River (e.g. 2015 Pallid Sturgeon Broodstock Collection).  Here is a follow-up, here is why our crews and a host of volunteers put in that effort: Recovery Efforts Continue with Stocking of Pallid Sturgeon in Missouri River Posted by: Jerry Kane, August 26, 2015 LINCOLN – More than 2,000 5- to 6-inch pallid sturgeon were stocked in the channelized portion of the Missouri River …