Hi First name / Subscriber! We’re thrilled to have you read this month’s edition of the MCD Newsletter! There’s so much exciting content inside – from a recap of our Annual Meeting to updates on stormwater management, our Perennial Sale, and so much more!

 

We truly appreciate your continued support and are always exploring new ways to benefit our local community through meaningful conservation efforts. We’re so glad to have you with us on this journey!

     The 87th Muskegon Conservation District Annual Meeting provided a wonderful opportunity to reflect on the year’s outstanding projects at MCD while also looking ahead to both ongoing and new initiatives for the upcoming year.

 

     During the meeting, MCD staff introduced themselves to attendees and shared highlights of the key projects they had been involved in over the past year. Attendees also had the chance to learn from distinguished speakers, including Kali Rush from Ducks Unlimited and Mark Peterson from Worldwide Trophy Adventures.

 

     In addition, Muskegon County residents were able to vote for new board members for the coming year. We are pleased to announce the re-election of Kevin Strychar, John Jurcich, and George McLaughlin, who will continue their service on MCD's Board of Directors.

 

The Muskegon Conservation District extends its deepest gratitude to those who attended, those who continuously support MCD, the Gnarly Heifer for providing delicious food, and to Mark Peterson and Kali Rush for sharing their valuable insights and knowledge about the world of conservation.

     Kali Rush, a Regional Ducks Unlimited Biologist, presented on the critical role wetlands play, particularly within river ecosystems. She highlighted how these wetlands not only provide vital benefits to a diverse range of species, including mammals, fish, birds, reptiles, and amphibians, but also contribute significantly to flood resistance and resilience. By stabilizing water levels, wetlands help prevent drastic fluctuations that could damage infrastructure. Kali emphasized that the value of wetlands extends far beyond wildlife, offering essential benefits to people as well.

 

     Kali also shared exciting news about a new collaboration between MCD and Ducks Unlimited: a feasibility study on the White River Celery Flats. This study aims to explore the best ways to reincorporate this historically important wetland back into the river system. The project will include a hydrological analysis and the development of a restoration plan.

 

      As part of the project’s introduction, Kali also shared the fascinating history of the approximately 190-acre property. Until 2019, the land was used for specialty crop operations, relying on large water pumps and a dyke system to keep the land dry. However, after the pumps were turned off and the dyke system breached during the recent Great Lakes high water events, the area has been flooded year-round. This has transformed the property into a pond-like ecosystem, rather than a functioning wetland.

 

     MCD and Ducks Unlimited are eager to continue their work on this project, with the goal of reincorporating the land into a thriving, resilient ecosystem that will benefit both the river’s health and its fish and wildlife.

Mark Peterson, owner of Worldwide Trophy Adventures, host of the Journey Within Podcast, and host of various television and YouTube series, shared some encouraging words centered on the idea that conservation and hunting benefit not only wildlife, but also help develop and challenge youth in a world where distractions are greater than ever.

 

Mark reflected on his upbringing, working on his family’s fruit farm in Shelby, Michigan, from the time he was old enough to drive a tractor. He explained that this experience shaped his strong work ethic and the family-centered life he continues to value. While his true passion was not in fruit farming, it was in the outdoors—a passion instilled by his father, who sacrificed time and energy to take Mark on many of his hunts.

 

After working at his family farm for over a decade, Mark decided to leave the business and pursue his dream. He founded Worldwide Trophy Adventures, a service that helps hunters and fishermen book once-in-a-lifetime hunting and fishing experiences. Through this venture, Mark acquired Cabela's Outdoor Adventures and Tags, and became the owner of several outfitting companies worldwide.

 

In his work in the outdoor industry, Mark has pushed himself in ways that the modern world might not always demand. He shared how hunting places individuals in situations that promote growth, both physically and mentally, through voluntary adversity. Mark emphasized that such experiences are especially formative for youth today, who face an abundance of distractions that prevent them from enjoying the fresh air and natural beauty of the outdoors.

 

Mark expressed his deep love for wildlife and wild places, stating that his passion for hunting is closely aligned with his commitment to conserving the natural environments where these creatures live.

     As spring arrives, many homeowners and gardeners begin to prepare their lawns and gardens for the warmer months. One of the most common practices during this time is fertilizing plants to boost growth. However, when fertilizers are used improperly or in excess, they can have significant environmental consequences—one of the most pressing being stormwater runoff.

 

     Stormwater runoff refers to the rainwater that flows over impervious surfaces, such as sidewalks, streets, and driveways, instead of being absorbed into the ground. This runoff often carries pollutants, including fertilizers, into storm drains, which eventually discharge into rivers, lakes, and other bodies of water. Fertilizers, typically rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, are essential for plant growth but can be detrimental when they enter natural waterways.

 

     The problem arises when fertilizers are over-applied or when they are applied just before or during a rainstorm. This increases the likelihood that excess nutrients will wash away, rather than being absorbed by plants. In turn, this excess nutrient load can lead to water pollution, contributing to algal blooms, oxygen depletion, and fish kills in nearby water sources.

 

     Algal blooms are one of the most visible effects of fertilizer pollution. When excess nitrogen and phosphorus enter the water, they promote the rapid growth of algae. While algae are a natural part of aquatic ecosystems, too much can be harmful. Algal blooms block sunlight from reaching underwater plants and consume large amounts of oxygen, creating "dead zones" where aquatic life cannot survive. This disrupts the balance of ecosystems and harms both aquatic plants and animals.

 

     To prevent these negative outcomes, it's crucial to adopt best practices for fertilizer application. Homeowners should apply fertilizers in moderation, following the manufacturer's instructions and only when necessary. Fertilizer should be spread evenly, avoiding application near storm drains or water sources. Additionally, it's beneficial to use slow-release fertilizers, which release nutrients over time, reducing the risk of runoff.

 

     Another effective strategy is to create buffer zones—areas of vegetation around water bodies that can absorb excess nutrients before they reach water sources. These natural filters help prevent fertilizers from washing away and improve water quality.

 

     In conclusion, while fertilizer use is an essential part of maintaining healthy lawns, it is important to be mindful of its environmental impact. By applying fertilizers responsibly and taking steps to reduce runoff, individuals can contribute to healthier waterways and a more sustainable environment this spring.

     If you did not get the chance to place a pre-order for our spring seedling sale please make sure to attend the sale in person. Here, you will be able to purchase overstock seedlings, bird houses, t-shirts, bat houses, seed mixes and much more. This will take place on April 17th from 8:00AM to 1:00 PM. If you had made a pre-order purchase, you MCD staff will reach out to you with specifics on what time you can come pickup your pre-order. 

 

     If seedlings don't get you excited and you are more interested in wildflowers and perennials, our spring perennial sale is for you! You can pre-order garden kits until May 1st. If you are not interested in any of the garden kits we have available, don't worry! If you attend the perennial sale in person on May 17th, you will be able to purchase flats with the species that you desire. 

 

     The garden kits available are listed below. Please be sure to read the descriptions prior to ordering to ensure that you are going to be getting what best fits your needs and wants with the garden kit. 

 

 

Both of these events will take place at our offices at 

4735 Holton Rd, Twin Lake, MI 49457. 

 

If you have any questions about the perennial sale please reach out to our office at (231)-828-5097. 

We want to hear from individuals, neighborhoods, businesses, and local government, your input is essential in shaping the future of our watershed plan! This survey will help us identify community concerns, recommendations, threats, vulnerabilities, and priority actions that can guide future funding opportunities and resource allocation.

 

Your feedback will be directly incorporated into the watershed management plan to ensure it reflects the needs of our community. Take a few minutes to share your thoughts and help shape the future of our watershed!

We have many exciting workshops coming up in the next few months and we hope that you can attend. From more education centered workshop to more hands on, MCD is offering a very comprehensive schedule of workshops come May!

 

From 5:30-7:00PM MCD will be holding a Capture, Cleanse, Conserve Healthy Watershed Workshop will take place at the MCD office. This workshop is great for those who are interested in learning about how to make a watersheds and how they, even at home, can make them healthier. The workshop will explore how to evaluate your property for watershed concerns, how to design and implement rain gardens and sustainable landscapes. This is a free workshop, but registration is still required. 

At 5:30PM MCD will be holding a Spring Foraging: How to ID, Harvest, and Eat the Weeds Around You Workshop. This workshop will take place at the White Lake Community Library. This workshop is a great way to learn how to ID and utilize the plants around you in the spring. This workshop will provide some simple recipes for these heavily pervasive plants that are available in the spring. The class will be lead by Lea Sevigny, the owner of Joyful Wildcrafting. Lea loves connecting with nature and is heavily involved in the conservation efforts. One of her biggest passions is empowering others to embrace the natural world. 

 

If this workshop sounds of interest to you, please click the button below to sign up. The registration fee is $10. 

From 5:30-7:00PM MCD will be putting on a Perennial Workshop. This workshop will take place at the MCD office and will cover everything perennials. This workshop will discuss the benefits and applications of planting native perennials. Attendees will learn to design gardens that benefit pollinators, wildlife, and water quality. Additionally, how to select plants that are best suited for your yard!

 

The cost of the workshop is $10. With this attendees will receive planting guides, a $5 coupon for the perennial sale and early access to perennial sale stock. 

 

If this sounds like a workshop you would be interested in attending, please click the button below to register!

 

Forest Bounty

 

        Timber harvest sometimes conjures-up perceptions of lost forests, damaged environments, and greed.  While each of these things have occurred, and still do in some cases, timber harvesting is actually one of the most environmentally-friendly ways to extract raw materials, especially when done using effective planning and “best management practices” for soil and water protection.  

        Raw materials are what human society depends upon.  Wood is the raw material that not only has the least amount of negative environmental impact, but is often used to improve and direct future forest resources in a positive manner, to re-build forests into a healthier condition.  Healthy forests provide a myriad of goods and services, including wood.  Combined environmental and economic benefits of timber harvest are not immediately intuitive to some folks.  

        How, you might ask, could this be?  An excellent question with multiple-faceted answers.

        First of all, our forests are not pristine to begin with, despite what might look like “wilderness” to some, and despite the tourist marketing.  They’ve been ferociously altered by historic logging and subsequent wildfires.  Fortunately, the Lake States temperate forests are highly resilient.  Many of our forest types are “designed” for catastrophic disturbance, although not quite at the scale of the Paul Bunyan era.  

        These “secondary” forests that have grown over the past century are not the same as the pre-EuroAmerican forests.  We’ll not see them again.  Additionally, forests are currently threatened by climate change, exotic species, and record-high deer overbrowsing.  

        Some environmental ethicists insist that the responsible course of action is to actively manage these altered and threatened forests to the best of our collective ability.  Aldo Leopold built to this idea into his “land ethic” essay.  This is where forest management steps onto center stage.  And, timber harvest is a key tool in the forest management arsenal.  

        There seem to be two major barriers to the social acceptance of the many ecological benefits of timber harvesting.

        Firstly, visual quality changes hobble public perception of timber harvesting, especially clearcutting.  Despite all the science and experience showing otherwise, any forest that has undergone significant visual change is frequently labelled as “damaged” or “degraded”.  Visual quality is an especially poor measure of ecological integrity.  

        Secondly, wildlife populations are assumed to be harmed, and wildlife are near and dear to the hearts of many.  However, a timber harvest creates wildlife winners and losers, just the same as not harvesting.  These futures are our choice, with benign neglect as one choice.

        It’s sometimes a bit of a stretch for some people to appreciate wildlife population dynamics on the landscape level and over the course of time.  Given the overall aging of Lake States forests, and decline of young forest wildlife populations, timber harvest is a marvelous boon to many species of wildlife.  

        Regardless of the massive volume of knowledge about timber harvesting, scheduling a harvest on one’s own woodland can be a bit scary.  The same is often true with appreciating a harvest that has occurred in a favorite place on either public or private forestland.  

        Working with a professional forester goes a long way to help ensure forest practices are implemented “for the good” and done in a sustainable and thoughtful manner.  Foresters will help explain the “whats”, “hows”, and “whens” of building a desired forest future through management.  And, one should not be afraid of generating income from a forest.  It is only through this financial and economic system that management can happen.  

   Most forestowners are not particularly interested in trees as timber (cords and boards) until sums like $50,000 or more are batted around, or college tuition money is needed, or a woodland is about to be sold.  Too often, forestowners jump at the first offer.  A management plan, that charts the trajectory of a forestowner’s wishes, should include rough monetary estimates of timber value and what ought to be harvested, and what should not.  It should also be made clear that these “stumpage” values can wildly fluctuate in as little as a year, or less.  

        Finding a forester is not as daunting as some might think.  At least four organizations can help forestowners along this pathway; Conservation Districts, the Association of Consulting Foresters, Tree Farm Program, and the Michigan Forest Association.  There are others, too, and similar groups in most states.  And then, the Internet also has a wide range of resources, some of them good, some of them, well, less than good.  

        However, for most family forestowners, the word-of-mouth will often generate a good contact or two.  

 

     While store-bought and restaurant-served fish can come from around the country (or around the world!), one chemical to be aware of in all fish is mercury. Mercury can cause health problems in people of all ages. Too much mercury can impact heart function, limit your body’s ability to fight off illness, can cause problems with the nervous system and brain growth in children. This chemical cannot be seen or tasted, and some fish can have higher levels of mercury than others.

 

     While eating a fish that has a small amount of mercury doesn’t cause immediate health issues, it is important to remember how small amounts of mercury can add-up, and unlike other chemicals sometimes found in fish, cleaning and cooking can’t reduce the amount of mercury. Mercury collects in the muscle tissue of the fish, which forms the filet that we eat.

MDHHS’ Eat 8 tool helps you choose fish lower in mercury and higher in heart-healthy omega-3 fatty acids. Eat 8! is safe for everyone to use, including children, people who are pregnant or may become pregnant, and people with health problems.

 

     So how does ‘Eat 8’ work?

1. Look on the back of the brochure and find the fish you plan to eat. The lower the points, the lower the amount of mercury in the fish.

2. Estimate how many ‘MI Servings’ you are going to eat.

One adult’s MI Serving of fish is a filet about the size of their hand (8 ounces of cooked fish).

A child’s MI Serving is about the size of the palm of an adult’s hand (2-4 ounces).

3. Add up the points.

 

     For example, one dinner, you have 16 ounces of salmon (2 MI Servings) for 2 points. The next week, you have one MI Serving (8 ounces) of halibut for 4 points. That’s 6 points, so far, for the month. Keep track of your ‘MI Serving’ points during the month. Eat no more than 8 points total of fish each month.

 

     The Buy Safe Fish brochure will help you choose seafood that is lower in mercury from your local grocery store, fish market or restaurant. If you're buying fish caught in Michigan waterbodies, use the Eat Safe Fish Guide to choose safer fish.

 

     Spring is a wonderful time for many reasons—new greenery, sunshine after a long winter of gray clouds, warm southern breezes, and the air filled with the sounds of songbirds returning from their warmer winter homes.

 

     Many of the songbirds we see in Michigan during spring are called neotropical migrants. This means these birds breed in the northern United States and Canada but migrate to more tropical climates for the winter, often in Central America and the Caribbean. Common neotropical migrants include warblers, thrushes, vireos, and swallows.

 

     Some of the first neotropical songbirds to arrive back in Michigan are the black-and-white warbler (Mniotilta varia) and the Eastern phoebe (Sayornis phoebe). These birds won’t be found at your bird feeder in late spring since they only eat insects. However, just because you don’t see them doesn’t mean you won’t hear them. The black-and-white warbler makes a distinct squeaky, wheel-like call that sounds like “wee-see, wee-see, wee-see." You’ll often find these warblers in mature forests with a mix of conifer and deciduous trees.

 

     The Eastern phoebe, a member of the flycatcher family, also has a distinctive call. You’re more likely to hear it than see it. Its song is similar to the Eastern wood pewee’s, sounding like “pe-wee, pee-WEE.” By mid-summer, when both species are present, you may need to listen closely to their songs to tell them apart.

 

     Physically, the Eastern phoebe and Eastern wood pewee look very similar—both are gray and about the same size (6-7 inches). One key difference is their bills: the phoebe has a completely black bill, while the wood pewee has some orange on its bill. Behaviorally, the two are also different. The Eastern phoebe often nests in rafters of barns and other man-made structures, whereas the Eastern wood pewee prefers mixed-conifer forests.

 

     So, while these birds may be hard to spot, their songs and behaviors can help you identify them and appreciate the beauty of spring’s return.

 

     Along with these, some bird species that aren’t considered neotropical migrants begin to make their appearance. Among them are the Eastern bluebird (Sialia sialis) and the red-winged blackbird (Agelaius phoeniceus). These birds are unlikely to visit your bird feeder, as their diet primarily consists of insects. In rare instances, however, Eastern bluebirds have been seen consuming larger prey like salamanders, shrews, or even tree frogs.

 

     The Eastern bluebird is often easier to spot than to hear. This is likely because they prefer open fields and pastures, often near nesting boxes along the edges. In their natural habitat, they are found in patchy open areas with trees that provide suitable nesting cavities. Their song is soft and brief, lasting only a few seconds, with a series of “phrases” that resemble “tu-a-wee.”

 

     On the other hand, red-winged blackbirds are very visible and audible in the spring. You can often spot them perched on shrubs and cattails along roadsides or near wetlands. While these blackbirds may occasionally visit your feeder in early spring, as seeds make up their winter diet, they shift to a diet of insects come summer. Known for their bold presence, their distinctive “conk-la-REE!” song can be heard from a distance, especially near wetlands. Red-winged blackbirds are also quite territorial and aggressive, often fighting over high-quality habitat to attract a mate. Although some might find their loud bumptious, it’s a sure sign that spring is on its way.

 

     If you spot any interesting or unusual birds this spring, make sure to let someone know! If you can muster the strong winds off Lake Michigan, spring is a wonderful time to get outside and observe these avian vocalists!