To the editor:

On Oct. 4, 2019, the Michigan DNR reported that two Houghton men were apprehended after illegally shooting two trumpeter swans in the Sturgeon Sloughs Wildlife Area south of Chassell. I commend the courageous DNR Conservation Officer, Cody Smith and the citizens who provided the tip to catch these law breakers. As the DNR slogan says: “Poachers steal from everyone”.

The careful management and population monitoring that have accompanied the waterfowl hunting season means that in North America, we have been able to sustainably maintain hunted duck and geese populations for over a century after they were nearly wiped out by year-round unregulated market hunting. Such protection came too late for the trumpeter swan however and it disappeared from the Great Lakes states around 1900 as a result of hunting and habitat loss.

Beginning in the mid-1980s, several local states including Michigan undertook regional efforts to restore trumpeter swans, drawing on a large population in Alaska; I had the good fortune to work on the Wisconsin restoration campaign in the early 1990s. Dozens of breeding pairs now nest on U.P. lakes each summer. Three weeks ago, I took my MTU students to the Sturgeon Sloughs at dusk to watch sandhill cranes staging for migration. We were fortunate to see a pair of mated adult trumpeter swans and to hear their soft resonant bugling. Although poaching is abhorrent, it remains a relatively rare activity in most of the U.S.; we have century-old laws designed to control it. In contrast, today in the U.S., most human caused bird deaths are the indirect result of habitat loss, window collisions, and outdoor cats.

Last month, a remarkable paper published in the journal Science presented convincing evidence that since 1970, almost 30% of all birds (about three billion individuals) in the U.S. have disappeared. This means that there are on average, our country contains 30% fewer individual birds than there were 50 years ago. The reasons behind these bird losses are diverse, but here in the U.S., we should take comfort in the fact that sound science-based wildlife management and law enforcement can offer long-term protection for hunted species. I commend the citizens and conservation officers that protect our wildlife and provide all of us with rich opportunities to enjoy nature whether through binoculars or from a well concealed duck blind.