Harsens Island, mallards and muskrats

In this episode of the Wildtalk Podcast, Eric and guest host John Darling talk about water control structures at Harsens Island. That's followed up with a chat about the mallard duck, before diving into the world of the muskrat. 

Episode Hosts: John Darling and Eric Hilliard
Producer/editor: Eric Hilliard

• All things habitat
  • Harsens Island
• All things feathers
  • Mallards
  • Mississippi Flyway
• All things fur
  • Muskrats

Questions or comments about the show? Contact the DNR Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 (WILD) or email dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov.

Transcript

Speaker 1
You know what that sound means. It's time for the Michigan DNR WildTalk podcast. Welcome to the WildTalk podcast where representatives from the DNR Wildlife Division chew the fat and shoot the scat about all things habitat, feathers and fur. With insights, interviews and your questions answered on the air. You'll get a better picture of what's happening in the world of wildlife here in the great state of Michigan.

*Transition music

John
Welcome, everybody. Thanks for joining us this month on the WildTalk Podcast. You may have noticed I am not Rachel Lincoln. My name is John Darling. I'm filling in for Rachel this month. I'm a wildlife technician over in southeast Michigan and usually operate my day job at the Harsens Island managed waterfowl area. But I'm happy to step in and help these guys out this month with me is Eric Hilliard. Howdy Eric.

Eric
Hey, John. Thanks. We you know, we really appreciate you stepping in and filling in those big shoes that are that Rachel has here.

John
Definitely definitely big shoes to fill Rachel is one of my favorite people. So I was really happy when she asked me to come join you for the day. There's a growing number of us, but still a small number of extroverted wildlife professionals, so it's good to show up and be able to talk in the microphone for a while. There was an exciting trip getting over here today. Eric. We had a pretty big snowstorm on, I think most of the state, but especially southeast, got hit pretty hard. I saw three or four different accidents on my way in. Hopefully those folks are okay. I did stop at the biggest where a semi hit a guardrail and made sure they were 89911 and still managed to get here only an hour late. So we're doing great.

Eric
Yeah, I mean, you know, honestly, as much as we love the podcast, we would much rather you be alive. So if that ever happens in the future and you find yourself in the thick of winter and you're, you're headed into the studio to to do some recording, feel free to just, you know, reschedule as needed.

John
I'll take that into consideration the next time Rachel is off on leave.

Eric
So what do we have lined up? I mean, I understand you brought some some pretty interesting topics with you.

John
Yeah, we're we're going to do a deep dive into shallow water. I am a wetland guy at heart I like waterfowl. I like wetland species. I operate a managed waterfowl area. So we're going to talk about a few of my favorite things. We've got a big project. We're working on, the Ducks Unlimited. And then we're going to slip over and talk about the mighty Mallard, the driver behind most of the Mississippi flyways waterfowl work. And then I'll probably end up with my favorite wetland species, the the little muskrat. We're going to do a deep dive on some cultural importance.

Eric
Are we going to find out what makes a muskrat guard their musk?

John
Must we not might not find out why they are there musk, but we are going to find out how you get rid of its musk.

Eric
Fascinating, I can't wait.

John
A very important step in the consumption of a muskrat. As always, we'll give our listeners an opportunity to win a WildTalk mug. But before we get into all the fun, we'll have a word from our warblers.

Speaker
Hey, Michigan drivers, a little bird told me your license plate can do more than just tag your car. The wildlife habitat plate featuring the iconic Kirtland's Warbler, helps protect Michigan's non-game fish and wildlife through the non-game Fish and Wildlife Trust Fund. But hurry, this plate is changing soon. Want to keep the warbler flying? You can even get one as a collector's item. No car required. Support Michigan's wildlife and get your plate before this bird flies away. Visit michigan.gov/SOS.

*Transition music

John
I'm very excited to talk about this project because what I've been working on for a long time, joining us in the studio to talk about it today is myself.

Eric
Welcome, John.

John
Welcome, John. And it's a nice of me to join you. Today. We're gonna talk about a project we've been working on with Ducks Unlimited for a few years here over at the Harsens Island managed waterfowl area. And how it's going to impact our fur and feather species we're going to talk about later. So that's all very fun how we can tie this together.

Eric
Oh, you've got it all interconnected and like woven tapestry.


I Would go so far as to say it's like an ecosystem.

Eric
Oh.

John
Yes. So we have four pump stations on Harsens Island that we use to manage our water levels and manipulate habitat for wetland species across the area, and they have worked very well, but most of them are 40 or 50 years old now.

Eric
What does a pump station look like exactly?

John
They can all look a little bit different. Ours are a large impeller, about a 16 inch wide impeller that sucks water up and dumps it into a box or a ditch next door.

Eric
So unlike a propeller, like, I'm assuming this runs in reverse.

John
Yes. So imagine a, giant tube sucking water out of a source, and we're using that water to move it to where we want it to be, either through and usually through a series of ditches with tubes that have control control structures on them, where we can manipulate where that water is going.

Eric
So you guys aren't there with a bunch of straws, like. You know.

John
Straws got replaced by buckets a while ago. 

Eric
Okay.

John
And when the buckets fail us, that's when we go to the pump. 

Eric
Okay, gotcha. 

John
Our pumps are run between 25 and 50 horsepower. My biggest pump can move about 11,000 gallons of water a minute, which sounds like a lot. And it is, but there are pump stations, much, much bigger on some of the federal refuges and some of our other partners. So ours are very well suited for what we do. But they're starting to show their age, and we're in the place where we need to, both replace them, but also make them a little better as we're moving towards some more modern management on a couple of our units.

Eric
Interesting. So things like controlling them from an app on your phone?

John
Not to that extent. I'm just old school enough that I really like being able to check on them every day, and things can happen. They can, you know, stuck in a log or get blocked by something else, or the water levels are lower than expected. There are a lot of ways you control these remotely now, but we're fortunate at the place I work that all of my stations are within a mile of our office. So it's easy for us to keep an eye on them. Some of our more remote sites on the mainland, we do have set up for remote manipulation we have on our phone. We can send a text and say stop, start, slow down, but we won't have that probably set up on this pump station. 

Eric
Okay. 

John
So this original station was put in over 40 years ago. It's done a great job, but when they built it, they assumed it was going to last forever, as sometimes we do and it's not serviceable. The issues that it's having are not going to be something we can fix without replacing it. So it's a good chance for us to do a full rebuild and modernize a little bit. As with most of our big waterfowl and wetland projects, Ducks Unlimited is going to be our primary partner on it. We work closely with Ducks Unlimited on our waterfowl stuff, and they both provide engineering and they help us find the funding. These are expensive projects. We work together to get these done. So this pump station is going to be responsible for an 800 acre marsh. We call it our East Marsh unit, as well as about 400 acres of our other impounded units, which are usually in and flooded crops, but have, some other opportunities around them as well.

Eric
800 acre marsh, that's just a massive marsh. I mean, I think about like walking it out, you know, I know people that have fairly sizable chunks of land, like 60 acres and you're like, oh, that's, that's that's pretty big. Going out like, I think you think about an 800 acre marsh. It's impressive.

John
Yeah. Our whole area on the island that that we manage is just over 3,000 acres. We have two 800 acre units too the west marsh and the east marsh, very creatively named. But these marsh, all of our units are pretty unique in that they have some pretty significant topographical differences from north to south. So the north end of the marsh is actually quite dry outside of the deepest slews and channels, whereas the bottom and the south end of the marsh will have 2 or 3ft of water in places. So it's a lot of difference between it. And that's what this, this new station is going to help us with a lot. The main goals we're trying to accomplish here is, number one, just to maintain the the service that we already have. But by reconfiguring things and changing how pump is made, we'll be able to provide better water level management and really start to set us up for being able to do more active management on an 800 acre unit. It's very difficult to do a drawdown where we're trying to draw the water out and let new plants get established and change Pike Community before we put water back on, to try to mimic the natural ebb and flow of a lake. It's difficult to do with 800 acres because just so massive, like we just talked about. One of my favorite sayings, and I say it to everybody, it's a good takeaway, is that stability is the enemy of a marsh, meaning if a marsh or a wetland stays in the exact same condition for a long period of time, it'll degrade, starts to have less habitat quality, less plant diversity, less species diversity unless used by water—by all wildlife, but especially waterfowl. So we're going to be setting this up so it's a little easier for us to be able to do drawdowns and pumping at a, a much faster way than we currently have the ability to do. So. Along with that, we have a sister project that's tied to it where we're going to be changing how our water is discharged from this unit by putting in a bigger structure that has better fish passage. This marsh is adjacent to some really important historical shore fishing areas. We get a huge influx of people that are fishing for shore fish in the spring, and a lot of the panfish that are running up these basically ditches that people are fishing are looking for a place to spawn. So we're going to increase our fish passage into this unit, hopefully try and facilitate some better, fish production as well as part so it won't just be a wildlife thing. We'll be supporting our fisheries, brothers and sisters as well, here and in the fishermen as well.

Eric
So do you have any fisheries biologists that are working with you on that project as well?

John
Generally we've we've run this through a couple of them, generally fisheries division stances, anything that improves fish passage to nesting areas is good with us. So we'll be replacing a 24 inch culvert with a four foot wide open structure, where we'll be able to just run boards in it as much as we can, stop plugs where we can pull them up, and basically have a four foot wide creek going in and out of this marsh instead of a 24 inch buried in the ground tube. That fish have to try to find their way up and down.

Eric
Nice. So so you've received the blessing to move forward from the Fisheries Division and do good things.

John
Yes, they are supportive of us trying to increase our panfish production in the east marsh unit. Excellent. And along with that will be trying to install a walking bridge to access this unit a little better. The entire unit on two thirds is surrounded by a ditch which you can get across easily if you want to put a kayak in and hop across. But for the average person or someone who's a little more mobility challenged, it's difficult to get to some of the best viewing that we have on the area. There's some really good, especially in the spring, places to see, waterfowl, to see wildlife coming into some of these ponds. So along with this, habitat restoration will have an access component to where we're trying to increase our foot traffic to the backside of this unit.

Eric
So would you say most of the areas there are best accessed via kayak or some other boat or, you know, is it wader access? Does it depend on, you know, the pump level of the.

John
Most of our unit, our two marsh units are normally in flooded condition. So they're best accessed by boat in the springtime. They're very fun to paddle. So April, May, June you can get around in a kayak canoe pretty well. But once June hits, and especially into July, we start to get more emergent vegetation or submerged vegetation gets a lot thicker and it can get really hard to paddle, but early in the spring, definitely fun to paddle around a couple of those units. A lot of the area is actually dry for most of the growing season. We we draw down a lot of our areas, and we actually plant and flood crops for the ducks to feed on during the fall. So a roughly a third of our acreage is in dry conditions during the growing season. So it's walkable. Our area is open from January 2nd through August 31st. Anybody can be out there. They don't need a permit. They don't need to check in with us. It's definitely a fun place to, to hike and be able to watch some wildlife, especially in the spring. But those two, those two areas are definitely at their peak. April, May, June.

Eric
Yeah, I can imagine. So it's been a while since I've been out there to Harsens island. One thing I should mention, and maybe that's good to mention for our listeners, just so they're not as surprised. You do have to pay a ferry a toll to get out there.

John
Yeah, I should do a quick deep dive on on the island. Harsens Island is located in the Saint Clair Flats Delta, where the Saint Clair River meets Lake Saint Clair. It is the largest freshwater to freshwater delta in North America and arguably in the world. There is a car ferry that goes across it runs pretty regularly during most of the year.  During the winter time, it's every 15 minutes and it's every half hour from midnight till 6:00. So you really don't want to miss it when it's late at night. Car ferries, 16 bucks round trip and you can get a little bit of a discount if you buy 20 trips at a time. But you've got to be pretty committed to come across to burn 20 of them in two years. But the car ferry runs regularly. It's very safe. It's a cool experience.

Eric
Is it still cash only?

John
It is still cash only, and you are still responsible for your driving skills. According to the sign.

Eric
Yes. So I'll just I remember they're not super keen on letting you go across without paying upfront.

John
Correct. I have seen the ferry back up to the ramp more than once.

Eric
Yeah, so just be forewarned. It's a great place to visit. I've been there myself. Harsens Island is beautiful. I can imagine in the springtime. If you are somebody who enjoys kayaking, go out there and have a good time. Just make sure you've got some greenbacks on you before you drive on up to that ferry.

John
Yeah, it is a cool place to visit. It's we are one of the most well recognized waterfowl hunting destinations in the country, but we're growing in recognition as a birding destination as well. We're in that flats environment. We don't get quite the same diversity they get at Point Mouillee. Something about that Western Lake Erie basin is really special. They get a lot of vagrant birds there. We are getting to be more and more on the map, and especially that that spring migration, we see some interesting stuff there. It's a cool place to visit. 

Eric
Cool. 

John
So this this project, as with a lot of the things Wildlife Division does, wouldn't happen without the support of our partners. So Ducks Unlimited is our primary park partner there. The project manager and the grant administrator for us. But we also have support from a couple of my local conservation groups Harsens Island Waterfowl Hunters and Saint Clair Flats Waterfowlers. And we have a lot of really great support for what we do there from Audubon Great Lakes and Detroit Bird Alliance as well. So we've got a pretty good group of people working together on this. Most of this funding is coming from a federal grant through the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. We have got some funding from the DNR Wildlife Habitat Management grant. So this project has been we've been working on this for a few years. As as everyone probably knows, it's tough to pull together funding for a project of this size. This is going to be over a $600,000 project when it's all said and done between all these different components of it. And so we are finally going out to bid for the large portion of construction. Ducks unlimited is finalizing that bid package, and probably by the time this podcast is live, we will be facilitating bid bids from contractors. And we hope to see this first half of this project completed before this fall. So it's exciting. 


Eric
Wow. 

John
We'll be able to, get some work done on this and hopefully get this pump back to back on its feet as it were, because every year I've worked on it, I'm a little more scared it's not going to work this time. So we'll be breaking ground sometime, hopefully in May or June on the first half of this project, with expected completion and operation before October, because I'll be starting to flood those hunting areas and that marsh come October for the fall migration. I'd really like to have water moving by earlier than that, if we can. The second half of that project, the water control structure in the fish passage and the access bridge where we're waiting on funding for that, that's in the same pipeline. Once that clears, will be, you know, starting this process over to get the second half of this project moving as well. But we want to get water in there and get ready for the fall when our next guest starts to make their appearance. The mighty mallards stick around for our all things feathers segment.

Speaker
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*Transition music

John
We're going to get right into some some nitty gritty and kind of really interesting parts of some emerging research on the mighty mallard. So for anybody who's not familiar, mallard is the most popular and numerous duck in the Mississippi Flyway. Everybody has seen a green headed mallard, and her his little mottled brown hen friend. Pretty much every park and wetland in Michigan you can find a mallard at some point during the year.

Eric
I would almost think that if you said to somebody, hey, when you think of a duck, what do you think of? The thing that's going to be in their head is probably a mallard.

John
Yeah, correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the Mallard is the official iPhone emoji for a duck.

Eric
You know what? I think you're correct.

John
That is that is a high endorsement. So what I'm going to talk about this month, because it's some really interesting emerging research, is some of the changes in mallard numbers in the Great Lakes and especially in Michigan. We're very fortunate to have recently hired Doctor Ben Luukkonen and as our waterfowl research biologist for the state, our waterfowl research specialist, and Ben did his PhD work on some really fascinating genetic changes in mallards in the Great Lakes and some work in primarily work with GPS monitoring what those birds were doing and trying to learn; why are mallards behaving a little bit different than they used to?

Eric
Are they like singing and dancing now? You know, when we talk about them behaving differently, what exactly are they, are they doing?

John
Yes. So anybody who's paid attention in the last 25 years may have noticed a little bit of an uptick in mallards nesting in places, maybe they didn't used to nest. So we're starting to find more and more mallards that are very comfortable in urban environments and rose bushes on top of pools under people's bay windows. Now we're finding mallards in places they weren't traditionally in. And along the same times that we've seen some very shocking declines in the overall mallard numbers in the Great Lakes. So the data is showing that as as these mallards are changing, there's change in their behaviors, but there's also less of them. So we have seen.

Eric
So we're talking about an actual population decline. Not just not just we're not seeing them there. They're just not there anymore?

John
Yeah. So it's a little bit complicated as all things are with wildlife. So our our spring breeding waterfowl survey is done all across all across country by biologists that fly in the spring. We fly the same transects at the same time on the same areas, and count how many birds and how many ponds are there. U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses that data to estimate how many waterfowl are on the landscape. Michigan mallards have declined according to our Spring Breeding Waterfowl Survey, by 56% from long term average. The Great Lakes mallards, so this includes Wisconsin, Minnesota and Ontario have declined 67% since 2000 over the last 25 years.

Eric
Do we know why this is?

John
We don't. And that's where Ben's research kind of kicked off. There's all sorts of guesses, but right now the primary driver that we think is driving this is an increase in hybridization in mallards. So especially in the Atlantic flyways so along the Atlantic coast, it is still legal, is still legal in the Mississippi Flyway for anyone to release game farm raised mallards. You can release them as pets. You can really seem to think you're helping the wild population, similar to how farms raise pheasants and release pheasants. The only problem with that is that a mallard can fly away and a pheasant can't migrate. So over the last 25 years, we've seen an increase in hybridization of these game farm mallard genetics showing up in wild mallards.

Eric
So is that why we have more mallards in some of those places that you were talking about, just because they're kind of used to being in those areas, those more domesticated ones.

John
That's largely the assumption is that these hybrid mallards, we have shown they are not as good of nesters, they're not as loyal to their nest. They don't nest as well. They tend to not be afraid of humans the same way. And then as that, hybridization increases some more and more generations away from that original crossbreed, those trends tend to get worse and worse. So not only are we seeing less mallards, but they're not acting quite the way they used to either. A lot of times they're migrating considerably less distances. They're only migrating as far as they need to. And we're seeing some pretty significant changes in how they're acting up and down the flyway.

Eric
Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting and also a bit sad just because those numbers are obviously, you know, that's a significant decline over a relatively short period of time.

John
Yeah. And, you know, we should say that there are other changes that have occurred in the same time, right? We've seen the emergence of invasive Phragmites all up and down the Saginaw Bay, Lake Saint Clair, Lake Erie parts of the flyway. So there have been changes and habitat changes in invasive species. But when there's also genetic changes going on to the species as well, it kind of all leads to this situation where we're seeing these dramatic declines. At the same time for comparison's sake, mid-continent mallards. So what we would call the duck factory, the Prairie Potholes in Canada and North Dakota have only seen a decline of about 17% from long term average. So mallards have declined throughout our flyway. But the decline in the Great Lakes in the Atlantic Flyway is much more significant, which is what makes us come to the conclusion that it's largely related to this hybridization.

Eric
And like, why don't those places have the same level of hybridization? Is it simply because the laws aren't the same there to where people can just release those captive mallards?

John
It's largely just due to remoteness. So the Prairie Pothole Region is pretty desolate. There's not as many people that are raising domestic ducks that are potentially hybridizing. There's not as many clubs that are releasing ducks for their own enjoyment, so there's just less of a potential for input in those areas compared to the Atlantic Flyway has kind of a longer tradition of these duck shooting clubs that kind of function like like a pheasant release farm where they put pheasants out hunting for the day. There are still areas that do that, but with farm raised ducks. That's not nearly as common as you get closer to the Mississippi, and especially as you move north, that's more of a Atlantic Coast tradition.

Eric
Gotcha.

John
So some of that is bleeding over into the Mississippi Flyway, where the closest flyway to the Atlantic. But you know, more in the Great Lakes areas where we're starting to see that problem. So we're at about a 56% hybridized based on the samples that Ben took, I think, then took close to 550 samples when he did his his genetics work in the Great Lakes, compared to 44% were purely wild. So no hybridized genetics showing up in their bloodwork.

Eric
So now we have a larger population of hybridized mallards than what we do of just the wild ones. And that's kind of shocking.

John
Yeah. To to be in a position where we're seeing more hybrid birds than truly wild birds is, is a concerning trend if we're seeing these changes in behavior, changes in nesting success. And now you're potentially on the other side of that coin where more of those birds are showing that that takes even longer to recover from. There's not a lot of immediate differences when you look at these birds. You know, they look very similar to a wild mallard. As they get more and more hybridized, they do start to show a little bit of a difference. So you'll see mallards that have a little bit smaller body, a little bit shorter wings, a little bit shorter bill. But to just see one flying by, you usually can't really see a difference in them. But those are some of the traits they started to notice. The more hybridized the genetics were showing up. The reason this is important is...

Eric
Yeah. 

John
Number one is the decline in mallards. Mallards are the straw that stirs the drink in waterfowl management in the Mississippi Flyway. We're we're part of the Mississippi Flyway. So our birds are managed cooperatively all the way from Ontario to Louisiana. These states and provinces work together to, monitor and set regulations and make sure that we're treating this population sustainably. So to see these changes in behavior, as far as how far they're migrating, if we're raising hybridized mallards in Michigan and they're only migrating as far as Tennessee, that has an impact on hunters and birdwatchers that are in Louisiana and Mississippi and and in Arkansas as well. And we can show that you our banding returns on mallards that we have captured and banded, we almost never see band returns farther south than Tennessee anymore.

Eric
Wow, that is shocking.

John
And  the behaviors of some of Ben's hybridized urban mallards line up with that. They migrate shorter distances than they used to. They hop from safe refuge to safe refuge, and they're not pushed by weather quite as much. So it has changed a lot with how the mallards are migrating up and down the flyway. We are always continuing to kind of put importance on nesting success and brood rearing success for our mallards. You know, they're very important species to us. It's ties back to why we're doing all this work in the East Marsh is try to provide some a better brood rearing situations where we have more plant diversity, more aquatic insects for hens eating in the spring when they need a higher protein load, things like that. But it also is something we are, you know, increasingly aware of when we're doing our surveys, when we're doing our flights and our transects, that there's a possibility that a lot of these birds that we aren't seeing are in cities. A lot of the mallards we banned anymore are urban ducks. And if you look back in the early 1990s, at Harsens Island, we banded primarily mallards, hardly any Wood ducks. And those were birds that were all quote in wild areas on Harsens Island. Now, I would be hard pressed to get 20 mallards into a trap during our banding efforts in August and September, but I can go to Macomb County in the middle of a subdivision and band 200, no problem.

Eric
Wow, they've got that many mallards there. Because, I mean, I've seen some some mallards here local around, you know, Lansing downtown and things of that nature. But we've even had some outside of the office building here nesting in a big planting pot. But I wouldn't have thought like, oh, there's 200 mallards just running around in. I mean, are these in a tight knit area or are they spread out a bit?

John
So what happens a lot with these urban mallards is every flower, if every flower pot has a hen and three ducklings by the end of the year, you multiply that across the whole subdivision.

Eric
Yeah, I can I can see the math now.

John
And the best example of that I can give is we had a site, we banded it for a long time. Great partners of ours, Ginger and Don and one year we banded over 300 mallards in this, this couple's backyard in the middle of the subdivision. My cousin's house, a mile and a half away. He would have 200 ducks in his yard, and not a single one would have a band on. We know of a third place that was feeding mallards about a mile from him would have 150, not a single band. So on one circle we knew for sure, of close to 800 mallards that were living in the middle of the city in absolutely hyper-developed corner of Macomb County.

Eric
Wow, that is fascinating.

John
It's a pretty drastic change from from where these mallards were found 30 years ago. And we're seeing that all across the state. You know, our banding team is seeing a lot of the same changes and a lot of the same locations where they're banding in Lansing and Southwest as well.

Eric
So like, what is the what is the solution for all this? I mean, you kind of touched on it a little bit as far as like, you know, that's sort of the reason why you're, you're doing that pump replacement work out there at Harsens Island to help kind of like improve that, that habitat. But, I mean, is there much else beyond that that can be done right now?

John
There's not a great solution to the hybridization question. You know, there's talk about the flyway making that an illegal act to release birds that are highly likely to hybridize with wild mallards. So your average domestic duck and your average wild mallard aren't really going to be that interesting to chart, but a but domesticated mallard and a wild mallard are very closely related. It would be very easy for them to hybridize. So there is some discussion about whether the flyway should prohibit that activity. Outside of that, right now, it's largely just to know what may be driving these changes in mallards and is it is it a quote population collapse, or is it a just change in how they're acting and where they're going and what they're doing? So we're still in the information gathering stage of this, but it's something that is increasingly an important question for biologists up and down the flyway.

Eric
That's really fascinating, John. Are we in any danger of, you know, every closed mallard, you know, duck season, the mallards or anything like that? Do we still have enough mallards? Kind of, if for an open hunting season, are we in any risk of of our regulations changing to a great extent?

John
Yeah. Thankfully those questions are way above my pay grade. But I do know that based on the modeling that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service uses were still pretty comfortably in what we call a liberal framework. So where where duck numbers are good, wetland areas are good. They're still pretty confident in our duck numbers. Duck hunting is, you know, especially for mallards, still extremely popular, very successful all across the state. Like I said earlier, you can find mallards in almost every pond and park all up and down the state. So our mallards are doing well. They just might not be doing as well as they were in the late 90s and early 2000s. And we we want to figure out why so we can try and return to those glory days. Speaking of migrating, we're going to migrate over to our all things fur segment here. Right after this.

Speaker
3,300 miles of Great Lakes shoreline. 11,000 inland lakes, 56,000 miles of rivers and streams. Fish? Too many to count. All you need to do is grab your gear, buy your fishing license and get out there. Get your Michigan fishing license in store, in the Michigan DNR Hunt Fish app, or online at michigan.gov/dnrlicenses.

*Transition music

John
This is one of my absolute favorite animals in the state of Michigan. We are going to do a cultural dive on the mighty muskrat today. Now correct me if I'm wrong, Eric. I think you guys talked about muskrats, a year or so ago. Correct? You and Rachel.

Eric
They come up periodically every now and again, usually every time muskrats are brought up. I have to talk about the time that I saw muskrat running through my neighborhood, and I was like, oh, cool, a muskrat. I'm going to get out and get some photos of it. And I went up and the thing immediately turned around and charged me like it was crazy.

John
Well, feel feel comforted knowing that you're not the only person who's ever been charged by a muskrat. Muskrats for their, tiny stature are more than willing to to throw hands at any moment. They they will run only as far as they want to. I'll say that for a muskrat. But muskrat is very near to near and dear to my heart. I am a proud alumni from Algonac High School, whose mascot is the mighty muskrat. So. So go rats. But muskrat is very important to Michigan, very important to southeast Michigan, especially. And was very important historically for the fur trade. So very excited to talk about them. Things have changed a lot in fur bearing species and how we interact with them and how we've interacted with them historically. So there's a lot of really cool things going on with the muskrat. We're going to talk more about kind of how they fit into culture and society and less about their, actual biology here. But there are lesser known wetland engineer. And of course, they're always overshadowed by their larger cousin, the beaver. But they accomplish a lot of the same things, but on a much, much smaller scale. So we're beavers are well known for changing waterways and creating ponds with their dams and things like that. Muskrats are having similar effect, but on a much smaller scale. So because they feed on wetland vegetation, especially cattails, one of their most important jobs is they create openings in otherwise dense stands of vegetation.

John
One of the metrics we look for in a healthy cattail marsh is what we would call a hemi-marsh, which is half water, half emergent vegetation. But you don't just want a line driven right down the middle with a huge lake and the solid stand. In an ideal world, we have a lot of what we call interspersion, where we have small pockets mixed in with small pockets of open water mixed in with small pockets of emergent cattails. And if you took a map and drew it out and imagined exactly how I want that to look, that happens to be almost exactly how muskrats tend to feed. The small areas where they then pile all their cattails to create their hut and create a little tiny pond in an otherwise pretty solid area of cattails. So they have a very important role for maintaining these healthy cattail marshes. And those openings are terrific because it creates an area where other plant species can grow and other species can use it. That dense stand of cattails otherwise doesn't really let a whole lot of other plants grow most of the time. And a lot of times these openings are where you can find species that are either producing a seed that other species can eat, or one of my favorite little plants, duckweed, which is very important to waterfowl babies, ducklings, goslings consuming early on tends to grow in these little openings as well. So their openings are very important. The huts they create are also very important because it creates a nesting and resting site for all sorts of species. You'll find reptiles and amphibians on top of them. You'll find geese nesting on top of them, ducks nesting on top.

Eric
I've seen wood ducks standing on them before.

John
You'll find eagles eating muskrats on top of them. That's a real circle of life moment. But also their burrow.

Eric
And that's harsh. You build a house and then you get eaten by something else on top of your house. That's just dark.

John
It feels like a real slap in the face. So you'd like to hope the rest of the muskrat family isn't home while that's going on. And one of my absolute favorite stories about a muskrat hut is years and years ago, we were out doing some Black tern surveying and looking for Black tern chicks, and I found stumbled upon a muskrat hut, and we'd had a huge storm  a huge increase in lake levels in a very short amount of time. And I found on top of this muskrat hut, multiple baby muskrat that's eyes were still closed, and presumably their hut had partially flooded and mom had moved them on top of the hut and got them out of the chamber. And I have never seen this before, and I probably never will again. But they apparently also have rooftop sunning on top of a muskrat hut. They can, they can apparently move up there to get out of the water if that's what they want to do.

Eric
Interesting.

John
But muskrats also are well known for burrowing, and this is where they can start to come into conflict with humans sometimes. But their burrows can create micro topography when they collapse, create little edge structure in shallower water in other right other areas, areas that would be very steep sided banks. So even though their burrows can be used by other species. But when the muskrat is burrowing into the side of your own lawn, that can be a little frustrating. I know of at least one of my friend's dads who once rolled a lawnmower into a pond because he hit a muskrat tunnel when he didn't expect it. 

Eric
Oh, no. 

John
Not ideal, but are, you know, an important wetland engineer, they accomplish a lot for us. They're an important prey species for a ton of predators, especially mink. Some birds of prey like Bald eagle, Northern harriers eat them quite a bit. So they're very important, very central to our ecosystems and our wetland food chains. They also are a very central figure in the creation story for several native tribes, which is cool. Muskrat was very important to the fur trade, definitely not as highly regarded as the beaver, to the point that at one time they try to rebrand on muskrat. You have any guesses what they rebranded muskrat for, as in the 19th—in the early 20th century, 1900s?

Eric
Little Beaver?

John
No, the Hudson seal.

Eric
The Hudson.

John
Hudson's seal fur. So.

Eric
Why?

John
Well, nobody likes wearing a rat is my...

Eric
Oh, yes. So if you say you fill it with something more palatable, like, you know, clubbing seals to make...

John
I think there was less questions in the early 1900s about where did this exactly come from?

Eric
Probably, probably.

John
And muskrat was introduced into Europe in the early 20th century, around the same time. And they're now considered an invasive species there. So we spent a lot of time talking invasive species on our side of the pond. It's very interesting to imagine one of our critters going back across and now being invasive over there. I, I apologize to our European listeners.

Eric
Yeah. You almost wonder if like like starlings were payback.

John
Right, yeah. Did those two ships cross each other on the Atlantic? Muskrat for it does share a lot of qualities with beaver fur as far as being very durable here and having high water resistance, but it is less durable leather than beaver. And so beaver is still largely the preferred fur historically and even today for for making garments out of. But one of the best cultural stories about the muskrat; Are you aware that muskrat can be consumed during lent? Yes. So in the late 1700s early 1800s, French settlers in the Monroe County area were largely facing starvation at times. These are some of the original settlers. They had moved south from Detroit and settled that downriver area. Father of the local parish at the time, lobbied for a special dispensation with the Catholic Church to allow the consumption of muskrat during lent, at a time when otherwise these people were functionally starving. They had this food source available to them. Yes, it was meat, but can you cut us a little slack here, it lives in the water, and it was approved. And ever since then, muskrat dinners have been a tradition in downriver portion of Southeast Michigan. So muskrat dinners still go on down there. We make lots of jokes about an animal that lives in the water and has scales on its tail, so it's close enough to a fish. But that's where the history of the muskrat dinner in southeast Michigan comes from.

Eric
And how many muskrat dinners have you personally cooked?

John
I have never gone to a large scale muskrat dinner. There are some that serve as many. The island usually serves 500 rats, and one night there's a couple downriver that do 900 to 1,000 rats in one night. I have cooked enough muskrat dinners at my own house.

Eric
Yeah?

John
Yeah. So, muskrat, this is one of my this is this is another cultural question with muskrat. If the muskrat had a different name, everybody would eat it. I'll say that.

Eric
Yeah?

John
It's a it's a very sweet, light flavored meat. And when I've cooked it, it's pretty comparable to beef or venison. It's a dark red meat. That's pretty nice. But as its name implies, it does have a gland you absolutely have to get rid of, or you will be filled with regret. It has a musk gland in the rear legs that will ruin everything if you don't remove that gland.

Eric
And I would imagine there's probably some sort of technique. There's probably some sort of technique video or something on YouTube that somebody could watch to properly remove a muskrat gland.

John
Yeah, thankfully there's a YouTube video for everything these days, and I'm sure there's a YouTube video for for cleaning a muskrat for the table. A lot of times these dinners do a large scale parboil and and you're trying to mass produce things. But when I've cooked rat, we've done it in stew, we've pan fried it. It comes out pretty well, it's darn good meat.

Eric
Delicious.

John
We are coming fully into muskrat dinner season as lent is approaching. So if you are interested in joining a lot of your neighbors at a cultural meal, there are all sorts of churches, KFC halls, VFWs, several, VFWs is downriver, do dinners. It's a good opportunity to to say you've tried something new. I can recommend muskrat, but you gotta you gotta have it cleaned and prepared the right way.

Eric
And you gotta try it for yourself. And then. And then you can be a muskrat meat convert.

John
Yep, yep. There are very few that that stick with it long term. I'll say that it's a it's a little bit of extra work, but it's it's a good thing to do. So the the fur industry is definitely still going on these days. A lot of the fur is trapped in the US and Canada is sold internationally. Given some of the political climate with Russia and China, it's not a great time to be an international fur seller. And so the prices on a lot of furs are down right now. But with the, you know, functional collapse of the international fur market in the last couple years, there has been a really cool explosion in independent kind of boutique makers all across country and all across Canada. Unfortunately for the muskrat, as I said, it's still not highly desired compared to a beaver or a raccoon or coyote. Some of these nicer, fluffier furs, but there are still people using muskrat. So.

Eric
I could imagine some nice muskrat gloves.

John
I do have a pair of muskrat gloves, I will say as much as I defend the muskrat, I prefer my beaver mittens, but muskrat especially their bellies are very, very soft, so sometimes used for liners and things like that. They have some some kind of really specific places where they're, they're pretty ideal. But that means that in some places the muskrat population is growing very rapidly. In other places it's pretty stable. And there are places you know, similar to the mallard where we've seen declines and we don't necessarily know exactly what that's about yet. And that's all across the Great Lakes where we're seeing these, these kind of changes. But when it comes back to, you know, a lot of times we we are biologists use the phrase that we rely on our fur trappers as partners, even more so than some of our other hunting communities, because these are species that otherwise are very hard to monitor, hard to learn anything about.

Eric
Because they are so reclusive, right. You don't see them a whole lot.

John
Reclusive, hard to access and in muskrat and beavers case, they're literally underwater and in the side of a bank. So it's hard to really study an animal like that. So we do rely on, you know, getting reports from trappers and from the Trappers and Predator Callers Association to try and keep tabs on what's going on with some of these populations. And unfortunately, as the as the fur market tanks, we it's harder and harder for us to kind of keep a thumb on that pulse of what's going on.

Eric
So let me ask you this. If you if somebody were to make muskrat stew, do you think it would be delicious if eaten out of a WildTalk podcast camp mug? 

John
Ooo! An absolutely wonderful device for holding a cup full of muskrat stew would be a WildTalk podcast mug.

*Transition

John
Now is your opportunity to win a WildTalk Podcast mug, as a thank you to our listeners will be giving away a mug or two every episode. Our January mug winners are Dennis DeKuyper and Brian Frick. They correctly answered the question; Some freshwater turtle species can breathe through their butts. This allows them to absorb oxygen underwater during winter hibernation beneath the ice. What is this physiological process called? It is cloacal respiration.

Eric
Oh, I was waiting with bated breath for that answer.

John
To be entered into this drawing. This month's drawing. Test your wildlife knowledge and answer a wildlife quiz question. This month's question is; how soon after hatching can mallard ducklings leave the nest? Email your name and the answer to us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov. To be entered for a chance to win a mug, make sure to include the subject line as "Mug Me" and submit your answers by February 15th. We'll announce winners and the answers on next month's podcast, so be sure to listen and see if you've won. And for the next quiz question. Good luck everyone!

Speaker
There are many camping and lodging opportunities available in Michigan State Parks. When you choose state park campgrounds, you get more than just a campsite. State parks offer a diverse range of recreational opportunities, including hands-on instructional classes, nature programs, places to fish, boat launches, family-friendly events, and much more. Reservations can be made six months in advance, so why wait? Visit my MIDNRreservations.com or call 1-800-44-PARKS to make a reservation.

John
Well, thanks for joining us for another episode of the WildTalk Podcast. Remember, if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call (517) 284-9453 or email us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov. If you'd like to support some of the wetland conservation work that we talked about in this episode, please support partner organizations like Ducks Unlimited, Delta Waterfowl and Audubon Great Lakes. Please support programs like the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative. If you can purchase federal waterfowl stamp to support the Federal Refuge System, we hope you can get out and explore some of our waterfowl and wetland areas across the state, including our wetland wonders. And we'll see you back here in March.

Speaker
This has been the WildTalk Podcast, your monthly podcast, airing the first of each month and offering insights into the world of wildlife across the state of Michigan. You can reach the Wildlife Division at (517) 284-9453 or DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov.