The Michigan DNR's Wildtalk Podcast

Plan A: Leave Wildlife B

June 01, 2021 Michigan Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Division Season 4 Episode 6
The Michigan DNR's Wildtalk Podcast
Plan A: Leave Wildlife B
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode of the Wildtalk Podcast, find out what’s happening with wildlife habitat in the Upper Peninsula, learn about why natural resource agencies remove wildlife from people keeping them as pets or rehabilitating them without a license, and hear listener questions answered in the mailbag segment. The episode wraps up with a discussion on how to handle Canada Geese if they become a nuisance on your property.

Questions or comments about the show? Contact the DNR Wildlife Division at 517-284-9453 (WILD). You can also email dnr-wildlife@michigan.gov, and even send your question as a sound file that you record on your phone to be played on the air!

Episode Hosts: Hannah Schauer and Rachel Leightner
Producer: Eric Hilliard
Around the State Guest: Bill Scullon
Main Interview Guest(s): Dr. Dan O'Brien, Dr. Kimberly Signs and Dr. Jim Sikarskie

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

Announcer:        You know what that sound means. It's time for the Michigan DNR's Wildtalk Podcast. Welcome to the Wildtalk Podcast where representatives from the DNR's 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.

Rachel:                 Welcome to Wildtalk. I'm your host, Rachel Leightner and joining me today is the spectacular Hannah Schauer.

Hannah:               Whoo! Spectacular, I like that.

Rachel:                 Today we are excited to share in our lively panel discussion on captive wildlife with you. This episode will be a bit longer but it should be a great discussion and well worth the listen.

Hannah:               As usual later in the show, we'll answer some of your questions from the mailbag and sometime during the episode we will also be revealing the winners of our Wildtalk podcast camp mugs and you can find out how you can win one too.

Rachel:                 We'll also be talking with Bill Scullon, one of our Wildlife Field Operation Managers and hearing about the spring and summer work that's going on in the Upper Peninsula region of the state. Before we dive into those updates, let's shine our wildlife spotlight on the Canada goose.

Rachel:                 (Music)

Rachel:                 Canada geese are a common sight throughout the state and can be seen on most of Michigan's waters. In fact, Canada geese nest in every Michigan County, but are most common in the southern third of the state. You may even see or hear Canada geese all year round in some parts of the state.

Hannah:               Like several other species of wildlife, the Canada goose was probably driven to near extinction by early settlers in Michigan. In 1928 and 1964, we released geese onto several sites to try and increase the population in the state. This program was not unlike those conducted in other states and on many national wildlife refuges. Populations grew rapidly in southern Michigan due to the abundant lakes and wetlands.

Rachel:                 These large birds have a four to six foot wingspan and could weigh anywhere from six and a half pounds to almost 20 pounds depending on the individual. In addition to their large size, their long black necks and white cheeks and chinstrap make this bird easily recognizable.

Hannah:               Canada geese primarily feed on vegetation like grasses and sedges. However, in the fall and into the winter, they may consume more seeds and berries.

Rachel:                 Then in the spring, a pair will build a nest usually near the water in a location where they have a good view from all directions. Nests on muskrat lodges are common and females will build the nest and incubate the eggs while the male guards the nest. They'll lay about two to eight eggs and only have one brood a year. Those incubation periods for the eggs last about a month.

Hannah:               Canada geese are considered to mate for life, where they generally stick with the same mate throughout the year. One interesting thing that I had learned while I was looking into some of these tidbits was that Canada geese will pick a mate that is similarly sized to them. So a larger individual will pick a larger size mate or a smaller individual will pick a smaller size mate. However but in a given pair, the male is still the larger of the two sexes. Canada geese usually do not breed until they're about four years old and young geese or goslings remain with their parents for their first year. In the spring and fall, you're likely to see groups of geese flocking together and migrating in their characteristic V formation.

Rachel:                 Yes, I'm sure we're all somewhat familiar, definitely with geese. I think everybody has a goose story but also seeing the characteristic V shaped flying through the sky. Now in general, geese have benefited from human changes to the landscape. Urban areas with lakes and ponds often offer all of the resources that geese need to survive. During the summer months, Canada geese can be a problem for some property owners. Most human-goose conflict is associated with urban settings where manicured lawns are in close proximity to water and molting geese. These geese may also take advantage of large agricultural fields in the fall and winter. These areas typically provide high energy foods which allow some geese to stay in Michigan throughout the winter.

Hannah:               Yes and later this episode we'll share some tips with you on how to handle nuisance issues with geese if they are in your area.

Rachel:                 But next step we'll be hearing from Bill Scullon. So stick around to find out what is happening with habitat in the UP.

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Announcer:        (Music)

Rachel:                 Welcome back. Here with us today in our virtual recording studio is Bill Scullon, a Field Operations Manager in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Bill, welcome to the show and thanks for joining us today.

Bill:                         I'm glad to be here.

Rachel:                 So spring and summertime is pretty busy for all staff across the whole state. But you're from the UP so could you tell us a little bit about what key projects that UP wildlife staff will be focused on this season?

Bill:                         Well, it runs the gamut. We're in the spring season or the baby wildlife season, we're into full blown wildlife nuisance calls. We've had a plethora of nuisance bear calls already, dealt with quite a few road kill moose already. We're in the midst of our research trapping for wolves, the staff are all doing that. We have a new mentoring program trying to train new staff on how to do that task. We're about to approach the Paragon banding season. For us that means a couple of parrots in Marquette, some on the International Bridge in the Sault and along Isle Royale and then also on some blocks in Mackinaw. Those are fun adventures, but lots of nuisance wildlife as people are home. Last year, we had an unprecedented year of calls on wildlife observations. This year, we're dealing with that as well. We're also doing some depredation issues, things of that nature. Those are occurring now and forever. That's a kind of a constant phenomenon for us.

Bill:                         But as we approach the spring season, our staff are very happy to be re-engaging, more so this year than last year they're able to in the field work, get out doing habitat projects, working with partners and working on their projects that they had planned. They have some pretty ambitious plans across the region and people are working on. The [inaudible 00:07:02] it's a managed waterfowl area we have. We just completed a nearly $700,000 rebuild of some of the dikes and our pumping infrastructure there with Ducks Unlimited. We had a little bit of wrap up their, staff are working on putting in a drop off push out area for people to launch their boats, things of that nature and some pump structures. We have a dedication project coming up with DU this summer yet there. GEMS across the region, our staff are heavily engaged on maintain our GEMS infrastructure, so that's 100 walking trails, receding trails, fixing roads, gates, things of that nature.

Bill:                         That's a lot of work. We have a lot of them on the landscape that we are responsible for and some with our partners that we have to work with as well. They're heavily utilized and they're really important areas for us and we want to make sure that they're ready to go by fall so staff are working on those this summer. A lot of tree planting projects are wrapping up right now. We just put a couple 100 oak trees in multiple units. These are oak trees saplings so they're anywhere from six feet to 10 feet tall. The staff are planting in various areas, the idea being is we're trying to have is towards getting acorn production as quickly as possible. A lot of this area especially in the Eastern Peninsular growing areas are heavily impacted by beech bark disease so we have lost the hard mast component in those stands and now we're trying to restore it as much as we possibly can.

Bill:                         We did some apple tree planting as well and wildlife shrubs all those associated with our GEMS in other high focus, high visitation areas. In Escanaba unit, tactician [inaudible 00:08:26] has a very ambitious 150 acre warm season grass planting he's going to be doing this year. Plus that's a huge project in itself, congratulations for that. They're doing a little bit that oak tree base on the Marquette unit as well. So there's lots of habitat work. The folks on the ground in every unit, they have ambitious projects to be accomplished either through contractors or themselves. In Newberry, they have a birding trail project they're doing that encompasses multiple areas and across the three unit, which is a very high profile project and work for sure. We just concluded our... Well we haven't concluded it but we got our spring prescribed burning done before we got spring green-up.

Bill:                         So we were able to burn 800 acres this year. Two burns, one in the Sault unit and one in the Newberry Cousineau unit, 500 acres and 334 acres respectively. So we're glad to have those. We have other burns prep that hopefully this summer progresses we're able to get to those in the summer or fall. So there's a lot of work people are doing. The key thing is staff want to get back on the ground and they want to demonstrate their relevance to their constituents, to the public. They want to improve habitat for wildlife and they want to be improving recreational opportunities.

Hannah:               Yeah, there is certainly not a shortage of ambitious work to be done in UP. That's a lot of work and a lot of acreage, that's amazing. Also you totally caught me by surprise when you said road kill moose is not a species I think of them when we think about animals that get hit in the road.

Bill:                         Yeah. We had two this weekend, so we had a boar and we had an unknown animal. We also had another individual found a dead calf to the [inaudible 00:10:01] already. So we've had eight so far this winter, the spring that we've had incurred where people have hit the animals. Unfortunately, the police thought that the animals were pregnant cows. We lost the cow and even the calf more adjacent with the collision. So that affects our trajectory of our moose population significantly. That is our number one source of mortality. Usually the last couple of years, the roadkill is... The last year was very low because there was nobody driving last year in the spring, as you recall. But it has been basically exceeded our annual source of growth for their population. This is the amount of mortality we have. So this is a significant issue for us.

Rachel:                 So like with deer, we know that they're moving at dawn and dusk, do moose move the same way? Is there any particular time people should be careful or a little more observant when they're on the roads?

Bill:                         There's traditional areas where we have a lot of the collisions occurred, those areas have been posted and signed but typically it's at night. As you can imagine, this a large, very dark animal stands seven to eight feet tall to shoulder. We had one hit by truck and one was hit by a car, usually they're catastrophic collisions. Fortunately we've had no one injured this year from the public with these collisions because as you can imagine hitting a thousand pound animal, speed can be quite significant. When you travel in those countries in those roads just watch out, be cautious. And their eyes don't reflect like a deer, so you don't see that.

Hannah:               Interesting ,I didn't know that. That's excellent information to know, thanks Bill. You had mentioned some ambitious oak saplings and trying to increase acorn production. Why are you focusing on the oaks? What kind of benefits is that going to provide for, is it wildlife or hunters? What are we looking for here?

Bill:                         It's primarily focused on wildlife benefits but obviously that will benefit the user groups out there that focus on hunting species. The oak trees, we're planting primarily red Oak. If we had white Oak as a more viable source, we'd plant more white Oak because it's less susceptible to oak wilt, which we do have on a landscape across Upper Peninsular. Nonetheless planting oak provides a high energy acorn and not hard mast, we call it. It's highly valued by a wide variety of wildlife species, everything from turkeys to woodcocks, to bear, to deer and a whole bunch of other species that people value. We've had GPS collared bears, when we had high acorn production like last year, that had traveled long distances across the landscape when those acorns are hitting the ground and they'll move 60, 70 miles to a stand, be in that stand for a period of days, and then they'll move back.

Bill:                         They do this repeatedly, so they know where these resources are in the landscape and they're very valued resources. Hunters who pick up on that as well, obviously can benefit from that as well, knowing where those natural foods occur on a landscape. As I mentioned before in the East end of the Peninsula, where we had beech historically as a dominant forest type, it's pretty much gone. So we've lost the hard mast component that historical is very valuable especially for bears. What we're trying to do over time, we've been planting oak trees for the last 15 years across at least the Cousineau and the Shingleton units as well as Newberry and the Sault and Marquette and Escanaba to a lesser extent, but that's where we had beech primarily.

Bill:                         They've been planting thousands of trees on the landscape. Every year they've planted a couple of hundred trees in each unit in select areas. These are pretty difficult trees to plant. As you can imagine, it's usually a bare root tree, you've got to have either a planting crew with multiple people to shovel to dig up the hole, then you got to put the tree in the ground or a tractor with a large rotary spade to try and make the hole of tree. So it's not like sticking a seedling in the ground where you can do a thousand an hour. It's a different dynamic to get these things put on the ground.

Hannah:               Yeah, a six foot tall tree is not a small tree to be planting that's for sure.

Bill:                         Yeah, it's hard to just logistically move them across the landscape, get them on the bush to plant them let alone dig the hole.

Hannah:               Yeah, for sure.

Rachel:                 Are any of these projects things that might impact visitors to a game or wildlife area? Are there any closures that folks should be aware of while out and about this summer?

Bill:                         We don't have any closures in any of our areas that we're planting even when we're doing infrastructure work. Our goal is to have most of all our site prep with the GEMS,[inaudible 00:14:31] on places like that, where we do a historically a lot of work and those are kind of focal point areas to have that work done prior to fall. So our goal is to have that done by mid August then also the planting can take or the infrastructure preparation being done so that when visitors arrive in the fall, typically our traditional visitors drive in the fall, they'll see those places at the optimal condition. Now there's the visitors use them in those areas now but we generally do not displace them while we're doing our work.

Hannah:               Sounds like you've got a lot of work going on up there and luckily folks can pick a spot and head out and not have to worry about any kind of closures. So that's always helpful.

Bill:                         That's something we typically don't do unless it's very localized if we're doing an infrastructure project. It's usually very short time duration, it will be signed to adequately.

Rachel:                 Any other noteworthy regional items you want folks to know about?

Bill:                         Of course the biggest thing you guys always reinforce is the wildlife interactions. People are out there interacting with the wildlife, keep their distance, especially with moose. People stop to view a moose on the side of the road because they're feeding in the wetlands that are adjacent to the highways. So it'll be right there. While it may seem very placid, they can be very aggressive very quickly, especially if they're within the arm. So keep your distance, stay in the vehicle, watch out for traffic. It's significant traffic hazard when people stop, multiple cars stop. Same thing with bears. We have lots of situations where people are habituating bears by feeding them. We have issues everywhere from [inaudible 00:15:58] Keweenaw where people are feeding bears out their back door like they do with raccoons.

Bill:                         It may seem like a novel idea at the time, but unfortunately these ideas always have negative consequences for wildlife and invariably the wildlife suffer for this because they either get into trouble, significant troubles, some cases they have to be euthanized or they cause harm, cause damage, physical damage to property. So again show some restraint and appreciate wildlife from a distance if you can. If you encounter something on the landscape, you see a sick animal, we see an injured animal something like that, contact any office, call the Wrap line if you have to, and we'll deal with it accordingly.

Hannah:               Now the UP is magnificent so I suspect a lot of people will be vacationing up there over the next couple of months and while until the fall. While they're camping and at a park or just out in a wilderness area, is there anything they can do to reduce their risk of encountering wildlife?

Bill:                         Yeah. We live in bear country and it's not the same as living in grizzly country, but nonetheless it is bear country. So if you're rough camping, always keep your food separate, cooking place separate from where you're sleeping. Keep it locked up in a tree if you can. If you put it in a vehicle, we've had instances of bears breaking into vehicles. So it's a more of a problem, we have habituated spots. But generally if you're out in the countryside, disperse camping it's not as much of an issue. But again, we always ask people to respect where you're at and watch tree cutting, if you're cutting trees down for what it is, you shouldn't be. If you're gathering firewood on the ground that's permissible, watch your litter, things of that nature, your latrine issues.

Bill:                         But the bigger thing with wildlife is just be careful with your food. That's going to attract them. The scent of the food is going to attract the wildlife and maybe you may have unwelcome bitters in the middle of the night, whether it be a herd of raccoons or a bear.

Rachel:                 Those are good reminders, thank you Bill.

Bill:                         We have seen a tremendous uptick in recreational people across the landscape last year. Every state park is like the 4th of July all year round. Disperse camping is full all the time, everywhere. [inaudible 00:18:03] all over the landscape, kayaks all over the place, paddle boards all over the place, just tremendous amount of uses of the landscapes. So the other thing we tell people to do is have some patience, have some space for those other recreations that are out there in the landscape. They may be wanting quiet space and a little maybe using an ADV, sometimes you seems to be in conflict, but please tell people to have a little bit of patience, a little bit of space for those around us that are using the outdoors.

Rachel:                 Yeah, that's an excellent reminder. Just about all of the camping reservations are pretty booked throughout the rest of the summer, which is remarkable. We want people to get outside. We just want you to be considerate and respectful of both people and wildlife while you are out there.

Bill:                         You bring up a good point about camping firewood. That's a big deal, bring firewood from across the area. So if you're going someplace you know you're going to be camping, buy your firewood there. Buy it locally. Don't truck firewood across the bridge. Don't bring them across the state. Don't bring them from outside of county because Emerald Ash Borer is here for that, oak wilt is here because of that, beech park is here because of that, lots of these diseases that completely alter our forest landscape, completely alter the wildlife habitat out there or in large part because of human-induced activity, moving firewood is one of those primary backers for moving these pathogens across the landscape.

Hannah:               Excellent, all good reminders for folks getting out and about so we really appreciate that.

Bill:                         No problem.

Hannah:               So thanks so much for joining us today, Bill. It was great to hear about all of the great work for wildlife happening in the Upper Peninsula. So we really appreciate you taking a few minutes to share those with us.

Bill:                         One thing I did forget to mention is that we have Heather Shaw on staff now. So we have a new biologist in Shingleton which is great. So now we're fully staffed. We have a new person up there working with Don Brown, our technician there. We have a new team there and very ambitious both of them. So I expect great things come out of that unit now. So not that they haven't in the past, but they will be better now. So again, Heather comes to us from Ruffed Grouse Society. She was their regional biologist for the Great Lakes states for the last five years. So a lot of the work in the past in that capacity so she has a tremendous amount of familiarity with staff already and obviously with all of our issues.

Rachel:                 Thanks Bill. We'll let you go and get back to all the excitement that you have going on and hopefully no more moose calls.

Bill:                         We'll see, I hope so.

Rachel:                 So next month we'll be hearing an update from the Southwest region. Make sure you stick around because next is our panel discussion about captive wildlife. So don't go anywhere.

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Announcer:        (Music)

Hannah:               Welcome back to Wildtalk. Today, we are going to dive into some of the reasons why natural resource agencies remove captive wildlife from the homes of people holding them as pets or rehab animals without proper licenses and training. We are excited to have some great folks here to lend their perspectives on this important and sometimes controversial topic. Joining us today are Dr. Dan O'Brien wildlife veterinarian with the DNR, Dr. Kimberly Signs, epidemiologist and veterinarian for the Michigan Department of Health and Human services and Dr. Jim Sikarskie, retired zoo and wildlife veterinary professor with the MSU College of Veterinary Medicine. We appreciate you all taking the time to discuss this topic with our listeners today. So thanks for being here.

Rachel:                 Yeah, thanks for joining us. We're really looking forward to this discussion today. Occasionally it's brought to our attention that unfortunately wildlife have been held in captivity by someone who is not licensed to do so. We then have to go in and remove the animal or animals from the unlicensed person's custody. Many times people when they know this kind of encounter is happening, they'll take to social media or they'll send us their opinions on the matter. Just to give our listeners a sample of the types of comments we receive, I'll read what a typical message is, "You claim to care about animals yet you punish people for helping them. How about offering to help?" Another typical comment we can receive is, "I'm writing to you with the outmost disbelief and disgust at the actions you took. These animals were loved and were lovingly taken care of and your actions were just soulless."

Rachel:                 So as you can hear, these comments we receive are often not supportive of our actions. People often are saying that there's no good reasons for us to remove wildlife from a person's possessions and that there has to be some other action that we could take or should have taken. So my question to the panel is, this sort of situation can obviously evoke a lot of emotion, a lot of strong emotion especially in people, is it true that there are no good reasons for the DNR to remove wild animals from an unlicensed person?

Jim:                        Lots of good reasons for it. So, no it is not true that there's no good reason. One of the main reasons is the humane welfare of that animal. People can lovingly take care of them but they don't know how to train them to be a deer or to be a raccoon, to mention a couple of the common ones that end up in captivity, because they're so damn cute as babies and raising them without a mother and especially one animal alone, imprints them. That's an important term. That means that they grow up thinking there are people and then they don't fit in to the wild population when they're let go if they make it that far. That's one of the most important reasons I think, is the welfare. Feeding them the right things and training them how to find their own food and what things that they need to eat in the wild are really crucially important.

Jim:                        The DNR isn't regulating this just because they feel like they want to be mean and take these cute little animals away from these well-intentioned people, it's their responsibility. There are diseases and parasites that people can get from those animals that can seriously compromise their health or kill them. Certainly the animals themselves often suffer by these well-intentioned people.

Dan:                       Yeah. I agree, Jim. Sometimes people who don't work with wildlife all the time, we lose sight of the fact that, what makes wildlife so cool is that they're wild. They're not domestic animals, they're not pets. What we value about them is their wildness and when people take wild animals into captivity and domesticate them, they're depriving those animals of the most valuable thing that they have, which is their wildness.

Jim:                        That's their essence. I totally agree. That's so important. The way to really appreciate nature and the essence of those animals is to watch them in the wild, to study them and learn about them. Certainly there's ways to do rehabilitation right, but that's getting licensed and doing the required training. Many times if the animal is compromised and ends up in human hands, there's quite often something wrong with it. It might be that it's a disease that the population is going to be threatened by or Dr. Signs is going to talk to us about some of the diseases that wildlife harbor as a reservoir that can spill over into human populations and when you take that animal into your home, well you're inviting big problems.

Jim:                        One scary one is rabies. There's only been a couple of people survive that disease and it's still a tremendously important nationally and internationally. The reason the DNR says, "You cannot." Even the licensed rehabilitators care for skunks and bats, is those two species can actually be rabid and show no clinical signs of illness. So if the animal is sick and somebody rescues it and keeps it alive and eventually returns it to the wild, maybe they returned a carrier that put the rest of the population at risk. If it was a disease that the wild population is susceptible to.

Kim:                       Yeah. I think Jim has really provided a really nice overview of all the many reasons that there are for removing wildlife from someone who may be possessing them. From the public health side of things as he's already mentioned, anytime a person seeks to have contact with wildlife, there's the chance that they could be injured or exposed to a disease that could worst case scenario kill them or other people that they allow to have contact with this animal while they have it in their possession. So these are activities that certainly concern us from a standpoint of the health of people.

Dan:                       Then one other thing just to mention briefly is, something I don't think people think about is that what we're here to do as an agency, the DNR is to manage natural resources that belong to everybody, that belong to all the people. That's our mission and no one person has the right to take a public resource, a publicly owned wild animal and make it their own possession. That's just fundamentally goes against the way we manage natural resources in North America.

Jim:                        Hunting is a good example. You just can't go out and hunt and shoot anything. You got to follow the rules, the seasons, the bag limits, the quotas, you got to buy a license. You got to play by the rules. Wildlife rehabilitation is regulated in a similar fashion by the agencies in charge. There's so many things that we could spend hours talking about diseases and parasites and the welfare of the animals, whether it's behavioral or physical the risks of the people and the animals and the population. But it is important that somebody that knows what they're doing as far as the diseases and the parasites and the risks and the benefits helps regulate these activities.

Hannah:               People are usually well-meaning and just trying to help. But what are some of the downsides of it from the animal welfare perspective? Why isn't taking an animal and trying to take care of it always a good thing for the animal?

Jim:                        Well, I can think of a really good example of many years ago, and it was a licensed rehabilitator even that brought in a juvenile red tail hawk that had fallen out of the nest and there was no way to put it back because of the nest and so that licensed well-intentioned person took it home and they're meat eaters, right? And a cheap ready supply of meat is liver. She fed that baby hawk liver for four days and his bones turned to rubber because there's no calcium in lever and it's very high in phosphorus and that animal couldn't stand up, couldn't move it swings. Eventually, it's ribs collapsed. I tried taking care of it and treated it with calcium gluconate IV and tried to pull it back but it was too late. It only took four days on that inappropriate diet.

Jim:                        It was almost intuitive that this is meat. They eat that in the wild, but they eat the bones and they eat the muscle and they eat the stomach contents, they get all those things. So it's challenging. I used to get 700 rats a week. That's how many birds of prey we were taking care of and you feed the whole animal to the patients and it's really not just important to know, but sometimes it's very hard to get what you need.

Rachel:                 So it's much different than say taking care of a dog or a cat or a domestic animal. It sounds like it's a lot more complex.

Jim:                        Sure. Well, you could feed a baby raccoon just like you could a puppy, but then when you go to let it go in the wild, where's it going to find puppy chow? So nutritionally, you might meet its needs with a commercially available diet. And certainly when the baby, if we're talking mammals, milk. There are different formulas for milk for all the different animals, whether it's a rodent or a carnival or a herbivore, like a hooked animal, like a deer, they're all completely different. You just can't take a bottle of milk out of a refrigerator and feed it to them without causing diarrhea and other issues. Then certainly you might be able to get the right formula but then when it comes time to wean them onto what they need to find in the wild, if you don't know what the mother's going to feed the baby or what the baby's going to find in the wild, it's really hard to do it correctly.

Dan:                       And there are behavioral issues too. Wild animals are not used to being around people. There is a natural tendency to avoid people and that's an adaptation that is to the advantage of that population of wild animals. They're not used to being treated as pets. Any animal can adapt to anything to some extent, but they're not... Wild animals are never going to behave normally, they're never going to manifest their normal behavior in a situation where they're always around people and they're being treated like domestic animals. Jim has had these sorts of calls and I've had calls, while I worked for the DNR where there are what we call habituated animals, where there were animals that were either raised in the wild, because they lost their mothers they were raised by people, or they were taken by an individual and kept in captivity and they become habituated to humans and they behave in a way that-

Jim:                        It's abnormal.

Dan:                       ... it's abnormal, exactly. To use the deer example, which Jim has seen a bunch of these, it's all people love little fawns and they love having them around and they love to feed them out of their hand but then when those fawns grow up and they start to manifest their normal reproductive behavior, [crosstalk 00:33:46] They become aggressive.

Jim:                        ... they are people or they think you're a deer during the rut, that's dangerous either way. You're right.

Dan:                       And they've got antlers and then all of a sudden the people are like, "You got to get rid of this animal." Well there's no saving that animal at that point. That animal can never go back into the wild and people don't want to deal with it. People even if they were well-intentioned have destroyed the normal life of that animal. It's never going to be able to survive in the way it was intended.

Jim:                        But those bucks kill people because they are not afraid of people. Another dimension is they think that people are an adversary during the breeding season, they're territorial and aggressive. You don't dare turn your back on them and you don't dare look at them to challenge them. You just don't do it because they're going to kill you and that happens every year. Somebody gets killed by a "tamed deer."

Kim:                       I'll just jump in on this issue of well-intentioned people having these outcomes that are not at all what they had in mind. When we're talking about species like bats or skunks or raccoons, either bats or carnivore species in particular, one of the things that we have to be concerned about is rabies because it is the most fatal virus that we know of and people can survive being exposed to rabies, we have treatments, but people have to recognize that they've been exposed. So one of the situations that is so difficult for all of us to deal with and nobody in public health likes these types of situations when they come up, but people who well-intentioned take in a baby raccoon or a couple of orphan baby raccoons and decide they're going to raise them, they may have the neighbors come over and help take care of these babies.

Kim:                       They may unfortunately get bit by the animal when trying to take care of it. One way or the other, it comes to a doctor's attention or to folks in public health attention that a person has been bitten for example by one of these baby raccoons or has handled it. So then we're put in this position of trying to decide, could this animal have rabies? Could this animal be exposing people who've had contact with it to a disease like rabies? What ends up happening is that unfortunately we don't have an easy way to test an animal for rabies other than euthanizing it humanely and testing its brain, so we have to kill it. We have to take that baby animal and have it euthanized and test it and determine whether or not it was rabid and whether people might need to receive treatment to prevent rabies. So that's just another example of something that's very well-intentioned, you're going to help this animal, actually ends up causing its death. So maybe if you'd left it in the wild, it would have survived.

Jim:                        I've had people say, "Why can't you just vaccinate it like you vaccinate a dog or a cat?" Well, the vaccines that are developed for dogs and cats are not proven to be effective if it's not an animal that the vaccine was specifically made for.

Kim:                       The other point with this, because these animals often appear fine and healthy so we can't... Because species like a bat or a skunk or a raccoon, they are the natural reservoir for rabies virus. So that's the species in which this virus naturally circulates in the wild amongst other bats or other skunks, et cetera. We do know a lot about how rabies behaves in mammals and it is fatal to most mammals. But when you're talking about a reservoir species, the species that harbors the virus in nature, we don't know how long that animal might seem normal and healthy, but still be able to spread the virus to another raccoon or to a person. So just observing the animal and their health, whether they're acting fine, eating, et cetera, may not be sufficient to tell us that this animal does or doesn't have rabies.

Kim:                       The only way to know is to look for the virus in their brain. In nature viruses have to propagate themselves. So they want to be so deadly that they kill everything immediately. Strains of virus evolve to get themselves passed from one animal to the next. So that's our concern with rabies is that the animal could look perfectly healthy and be acting normal and eating, but still be sheltering the virus and so we can't tell by looking at the animal, we have to test it.

Rachel:                 Thanks everybody for addressing the treatment that wild animals have to go through. I feel like there's this huge misconception that all animals can receive the same type of treatment and that's just not the case. If you take a skunk, it's not going to receive the same treatment that your cat is going to receive, if it appears ill. It's great that you addressed that. So we've been talking a lot about animal welfare, we've talked a bit about the individual welfare of a person and potentially their families when they take in these captive animals, what about the bigger picture? Taking in wild animal into your possession without a license, does it pose risks to a greater human population? I think we were heading this way before this question. So tell us, is there bigger problems at hand?

Jim:                        Well, I think that COVID is a real good example of that, that they think it might've originated from bats. Bats are a common species that carry viruses that are dangerous to a lot of other species. Certainly the responsibility of the health departments and the agencies in that to regulate and try to prevent that is obvious and the people that don't want to listen, they oftentimes are so secure in that they think they're doing the right thing, or even though they know they're doing the wrong thing, they're not going to tell anybody. So if they get bitten, they're not going to report themselves, but technically when those animals bite somebody, you're supposed to report it to your community health department. And then like Kim said, they were going to have to test it. But if you don't tell anybody, you might just get sick and put your family at risk and put people at risk in your church or your school, if your kids take that back to school.

Jim:                        Kim could tell us horror stories about what people have done and how they have to do a trace back and find out that cute little animal potentially exposed 50 people to a lethal, fatal disease. There's parasites that you can tell or see [inaudible 00:41:05] every raccoon in the wild carries around one parasite that is very serious and the eggs in the feces will last for a year and if they're accidentally ingested in humans, they can cause blindness or death because they migrate through the brain. That's really scary stuff. That's the cutest little raccoon that is shedding thousands of those larvae in its feces every day.

Dan:                       [crosstalk 00:41:33] Yeah, and that's-

Kim:                       Go ahead, Dan. Go ahead.

Dan:                       I was just going to say that rabies and raccoon roundworm, those are just a couple of examples, but the public should understand there are literally thousands of these diseases that can be transmitted between humans and animals and there are surely a lot of diseases that we don't even know about yet. To get to your original question Rachel, if you're looking at the big picture, if you're looking at the population level, one of the reasons that the majority of the new infections in humans are coming from wildlife populations is because the circumstances of human society have changed to the point where we're making incursions onto areas that formerly used to belong to wildlife.

Dan:                       We're building into their areas or we're exploiting them for food or medicine or the pet trade or there's any number of environmental or we're destroying their habitats so they're going to come into more contact with humans than they would have in the past. All of those things increase the interaction between wild populations and humans. When you do that, you're just providing a perfect opportunity for diseases that used to just circulate in wildlife populations to spill over into humans and into our domestic animals. There are reasons that have evolved for wildlife to be separate from humans and this is just another one of them.

Kim:                       Yeah, and for those of us that work in this realm of human health and wildlife health and production animal health, there's this concept that we use. It's called One Health and Dan has described what one health is perfectly. It's considering all of the factors that are involved in a disease system based on the animals, the people and the environment. So all of these things have a role to play in how diseases are spread through any population, whether it's animals or people. For a lot of the listeners before COVID-19, most people really did not have a good understanding of these concepts. We all know about influenza because we think of influenza as a human disease but this is another disease very similar to COVID in that there's reservoirs in animals, there's strains of the virus that's circulate in animals and this is a virus that can mix and match different pieces of the virus from the different animals and humans and come up with a brand new virus that nobody has immunity to.

Kim:                       So every year we have to change the influenza vaccine because of these input from these different species into the virus that circulates in people. So that's a virus with pandemic potential that we deal with all the time and everyone's very familiar with, but I think before COVID nobody really understood very well this whole interface between people and animals, not in a real way. This has really gotten everyone's attention as to why those of us who work in this area are very concerned about these situations, where we've got people or domestic animals in contact with wildlife and that is not naturally and normally something that that should be happening.

Kim:                       We have to think about where we put our pig farms for example, or where we decide to build our houses. One thing that has come out of this is, does the general public have a better understanding of these concerns that we have as agencies, whether it's the DNR in protecting the wildlife population in Michigan or protecting the human population from the standpoint of public health. Those are the sort of the very big picture that we're trying to help people understand. The other thing I think that I want to bring up is that, people do hear these conservation messages. They're very concerned about wildlife health and the wildlife population and so that's where some of this comes from, they hear that bats are threatened or that a certain species is losing its habitat.

Kim:                       So they want to do something to help as an individual. So that's sometimes what drives people to try to help an individual animal. It's very hard to understand or maybe accept that helping that individual is not helping the population as a whole, that this little effort that you're making is not helping. Just as an example on the public health aside, we frequently learn about people who find a bat on the ground outside of their home and they've heard these messages that bats are threatened, they've lost their habitat, maybe white nose syndrome. They just had this general message that this is an endangered and threatened species and so they take this bat in. In Michigan, most of the bats that have contact with people or pets are big brown bats and then little brown bats would be the second most common.

Kim:                       These are the bats that live around us in our homes, in our attics, in the barns, around our homes. They are not threatened or endangered yet, but they're not a population that's being impacted by something like white nose syndrome. When you take that bat into your house and you try to feed it or you have your kids try to feed it, you are potentially exposing your family to rabies. Those are the most common species to test positive for rabies in Michigan. So these are situations where we're going to end up testing that bat and frequently, these bats will test positive because they're on the ground, they can't fly. They're sick and a sick bat could be a rabid bat. Then we end up having to have multiple people receive rabies post-exposure treatment, which is a treatment that it's not simple, it's not one shot, you have to return to the doctor several times to finish the treatment. It takes two to four weeks to finish the treatment and it is also expensive and can be painful.

Kim:                       So these are the consequences of people wanting to do something to help wildlife populations. They may not understand the disease risk and so I think that's probably one of the things that those of us on this discussion today are trying to get across is that there's a risk to the animal and there's also a risk to the person and the people involved.

Dan:                       Another aspect of that, that I think the public often doesn't think about too, is that these diseases don't just move one way. We tend to think about the ones that move from wild animals to humans, but it's entirely possible for humans to infect wild animals with diseases. This happens with tuberculosis. Human tuberculosis has become common in wild elephants in some places in Africa. So if we really care about the welfare of these wildlife populations, part of that responsibility is also shielding them from our diseases too.

Jim:                        I think one of the things that our listeners might be trying to decide then is, "If we do find an animal, then what should we do?" I think many times, if it looks reasonably normal, if it's a [inaudible 00:49:49] hiding under some ferns, mom hid it there and you should just leave it there and not mess with it. But if there's some animal hit by a car or something and it needs help, there are licensed rehabilitators that are all over the state, that have training. Many of them have themselves been vaccinated for rabies because you can't work with wild animals without getting bit or scratched or whatever and put at risk. So the licensed rehabilitators that I think you can just go online, right Dan? And find out who the rehabilitators are in your county or in your area. Every county has a conservation officer who inspects these licensed rehabilitators to make sure that they have the proper facilities and the training to do it safely and humanely for the people and the animals.

Jim:                        So there is a whole system out there and the agencies that are destined with the responsibility for the safety of those animals and those people are the ones who are regulating. The way to help is to do the right thing. Maybe cottontail rabbits, people don't realize that they can't even poop for themselves. Their mom has to stimulate them to do that and if you don't take over that responsibility, that animal dies a horrible death by these well-intentioned people that were putting food in one end and it wasn't coming out the other. The way people can help is to understand that the reason that these regulations are in place is to protect them, the people and the animals and to follow the law.

Dan:                       And very broadly speaking too Jim, to just pull it back to a population level, wild populations have survived for millennia without being saved by humans. It's a uniquely human characteristic for us to want to help, to want to do something to help these populations. But sometimes the best thing that we can do to help is to just leave them alone. We have in some respects our intervention as humans, the things that we do to the environment has been much more of a detriment to these wild populations than anything that we're ever going to do by just wanting to help. So sometimes the best thing to do is to just leave them alone.

Rachel:                 You took my question out of my mouth and answered it before I could ask the question. I was going to ask, what can people do if they find a hurt animal, if they find a bat in their house, if they come into contact and they want to care for it, what are the things that they can actually do for the animal? It sounds like they should just stick to finding a licensed wildlife rehabilitator or leaving it be because if they found a wild animal, it's probably got something wrong with it and it's best to let nature take its course.

Kim:                       [crosstalk 00:52:58] There's a little special caveat on bats. [crosstalk 00:53:03] So if you find a bat for example, in your home which happens all the time, a lot of people's first thought is, "I'm just going to open the door and let it go." I would ask as long as you are confident that nobody has had any contact with the bat, usually that's going to mean bites or scratches you or flies into you, other situations where we're concerned where contact could've occur and someone might not be aware of it would be waking up to finding a bat in the room where you've been asleep or finding a bat in a room with a person, an adult or a child who can't account for their time in room with that bat, they maybe impaired or they're just too young to tell you whether they had any contact with the bat.

Kim:                       Those are situations where we would want that bat collected and you should call your local health department and discuss the situation with them before you release the bat because once it's gone, we can't test it and we can't know if it had rabies. So if we don't have the animal to test, then we have to recommend that the people who may have been exposed to the bat go through the rabies post-exposure treatment. So that's sort of the special situation with bats and that's true too if they've had any direct contact with say a raccoon or a skunk or some of these other wild carnivores, we would want you to try to collect the animal, if it's gone to contact your local health department and your healthcare provider about particularly with the bite, getting care for that bite. So that's just a little caveat.

Hannah:               That's great. Dan you had brought this up earlier with tuberculosis as one of those diseases that not only can pass from animals to people but from people to animals. Here in Michigan, we deal a lot with bovine tuberculosis in deer and it impacts our cattle industry, so potentially a food source for people as well as sometimes we've had cases where hunters have been infected after handling a sick deer that they harvested. Could you talk a little bit more about bovine TB and how that interacts with humans, our food source, the cattle industry as well as the wild population?

Dan:                       Bovine tuberculosis is a disease that the US department of agriculture has been trying to eradicate for over a century. One of the reasons for that is that there was a time before pasteurization was common for milk from cows, that TB was quite common especially in children, because there were cases of dairy cattle that had TB and they would shed the bacteria that causes bovine tuberculosis in their milk and then infect children. So there's a long history that from a public health perspective that Kim could elaborate on. But at this point, it is a disease that is very important to the cattle industry. It has a huge economic implications for the cattle industry and for global trade. As you mentioned, now that we can do what's called whole-genome sequencing of the bacteria that causes tuberculosis, it makes it possible for us to make inferences about who infected whom, for example.

Dan:                       We have at least six cases now of TB in humans in Michigan that we know came from deer sources. So a couple of those were people that were infected from cuts in the skin when they were gutting or working with infected deer. There were some respiratory infections in older people who had hunted deer in the past but most recently we have a situation of a patient who was actually sick with bovine tuberculosis. They went into an emergency room with a respiratory infection and the staff at the hospital thought it was COVID. They presented with a collapsed lung, but actually when they worked up the case, they found out it was bovine tuberculosis. Now that Kim's group and others in the Department of Health and Human Services have done their epidemiology, the evidence suggests along with the whole-genome sequencing that we've got that, person was infected in their youth when they were exposed to a deer in the TB area that was being rehabilitated illegally.

Dan:                       So we don't have these regulations that restrict what animals people can own or rehabilitate for no reason. We're not just trying to be kill joys or to constrain people who want to help. There are real reasons and real diseases that spread between animals and humans and TB is just one of them, its here.

Jim:                        I think it's a good example when you say, where did they get it? They got it from the cattle. So it's the livestock and the wildlife and the human populations that tuberculosis is a prime example of a zoonotic disease. That's a disease that goes from people to animals and animals to people. That's why the DNR regulates. You can't put out big bait piles for deer hunting, because you congregate the deer and potentially spread tuberculosis or chronic wasting disease is another one of the big concerns that has a devastating impact on the population level and can certainly impact them a very important resource for Michigan hunting.

Dan:                       Yeah, absolutely. It isn't just baiting either Jim like you say, feeding is one of the things people get mad because they say, "Why can't we feed the deer or why can't we feed these animals because we just want to see them well?" The reality is when you feed wildlife like that, you're creating the conditions that make it way easier for these infectious diseases to be transmitted from animal to animal both directly and indirectly when uninfected animals eat contaminated feed. So again, feeding is another one of these situations where it's not that we're trying to just be kill joys, but there are reasons, there are good scientific and public health and animal health reasons that we implement these regulations and it's not just done to be kill joys.

Hannah:               Wow! We've heard so many great insights, had some great discussion on why keeping wildlife in captivity or even trying to help an injured wild animal without proper permits and facilities is not beneficial for people or the animals. We really appreciate all the insights that our panelists have brought to us today. Just a final recap for folks listening, if you do find a wild animal that looks injured, please contact a licensed wildlife rehabilitator for assistance or better yet just leave it be. A big thank you to our panelists today, Dr. Dan O'Brien, Dr. Kimberly Signs and Dr. Jim Sikarskie. Thanks so much for being with us today.

Announcer:        Did you know that you can take your hunting and fishing regulations with you wherever you go? Have access to the information you need when you need it right on your smartphone. Just visit michigan.gov/dnrdigests to download the applicable hunting digest before you head out to the woods or the Michigan fishing guide before you hit the water. Download the most up-to-date regulations available today at michigan.gov/dnrdigests.

Announcer:        (Music)

Rachel:                 Now is your opportunity to win a wild talk podcast mug. As the thank you to our listeners, we'll be giving away a mug or two every episode.

Hannah:               Our May mug winners are Michael [inaudible 01:01:47] and Noah [inaudible 01:01:48]. Check your email as we'll be getting in touch with you soon. They answered the softshell turtle is the only turtle species in Michigan that has a tubular snout. The hint that went with that is it's also the only species that has a flat scutes carapace.

Rachel:                 Congratulations Michael and Noah. That is my favorite turtle in Michigan so I'm so glad you knew it. To be entered into the drawing this month, test your wildlife knowledge and answer our wildlife quiz question. This month's question is, what plant generates heat around its flower to melt the snow? And the flower stinks and not in a good way, which might give you a clue to its name.

Hannah:               All right. You know what to do folks, email your name and the answer to us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov to be entered for a chance to win a mug. Be sure to include the subject line as Mug Me and submit your answers by June 15th. We'll announce winners and the answer on next month's podcast so be sure to listen in and see if you've won and also to find out what the next quiz question will be.

Rachel:                 Good luck. Now, back to the podcast.

Rachel:                 (Music)

Rachel:                 Welcome back to wild talk. Now let's dig into the mailbag and answer some of your questions.

Announcer:        One, two, three.

Rachel:                 Hannah, did you have a question for us today regarding pheasant hunting?

Hannah:               I do. James emailed in saying they purchased their hunting license today and are not sure if a pheasant endorsement is needed. They will be hunting pheasant this year.

Rachel:                 That's an excellent question James and the free pheasant endorsement that was required in 2019 and 2020 has been discontinued and no longer required for hunters pursuing pheasants. However new this year in addition to the Base License House Bill 4313 three passed in 2020 by the Michigan legislature, now requires all pheasant hunters 18 and older, hunting pheasants on public land in the Lower Peninsula or on lands enrolled in the hunting access program to have a $25 pheasant license. So if you are hunting pheasant on private land statewide or public lands in the Upper Peninsula, if you are a lifetime license holder or 17 years of age or younger or are only hunting pheasant at a game bird hunting preserve, you do not need the new pheasant license.

Rachel:                 Now pheasant hunting information and regulations will be in the 2021 hunting digest which will be available online and at DNR licensed retailers around July 1st. You can also visit michigan.gov/smallgame for the 2021 pheasant release information.

Hannah:               I received a question from Julia who is trying to plan her summer camping trip. She wants to go up to Northern Michigan this summer and she's been wondering about wildlife while camping and if or what actions she can take to prevent attracting wildlife to her campsite. This is an excellent question. There are a few tips you can take to your camp site to try to prevent critters really from crashing your campsite and being attracted to your food. So just a few things you'll want to keep in mind. The first one is to not keep food in your tents. You'll want to store any type of food in an airtight container. This includes foods that you plan to eat but also if you bring pets, any pet food you want to make sure it's in the vehicle trunk or suspended from trees so that it's out of reach of wildlife both high enough to be out of reach of a curious bear because do have bears in Northern Michigan and the UP so it needs to be up high enough to be out of reach of a bear, but also away from the tree enough to be like a raccoon on a limb can't reach out and grab it.

Hannah:               I can tell you from personal experience if you put a backpack on a limb, raccoons can probably reach it and they'll get into your backpack and steal your marshmallows. So make sure that no animals can reach your bags or your food sacks or anything like that when you string it up from a tree. Second, you want to keep your camp clean. Clean up any trash and wipe down picnic tables or chairs, anything that might have food debris or spill on it because those wrappers and odors can still attract wildlife. Something else to consider is to cook at a distance from your camp site and wash your utensils shortly after eating and again store your trash as you would your food. So making sure your trash is in an airtight container or in your vehicle because burning or burying your waste can also attract wildlife.

Hannah:               Just keep in mind that while you're camping, wildlife may wander through your campsite. You're out in nature, you want to spend some time outdoors, that's where the wildlife lives. So it's very common for animals to walk through your campsite in the middle of the night and if there are no enticing food rewards to grab their attention, they should just continue on through. You can visit michigan.gov/wildlife for additional tips, preventing encounters with wildlife while camping.

Rachel:                 As we zip the segment to a close, remember if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call 517-284-WILD or email us at DNR-Wildlife@michigan.gov and your question could be featured on our next mailbag.

Announcer:        Did you know that Michigan lies where the Atlantic and Mississippi migratory flyways intersect? This brings over 340 species of birds to Michigan each year. Follow MI Birds on Facebook to learn more about our feathered friends, year round guided bird walks, stewardship events and community science opportunities near you. MI Birds is an education and outreach program created by Audubon Great Lakes in the Michigan DNR. Search MI Birds on Facebook, that's M-I Birds.

Announcer:        (Music)

Hannah:               We'd like to wrap up this episode with a few quick tips for you to try if you're experiencing issues with Canada geese on your property this summer.

Rachel:                 Yes, as we mentioned earlier geese are especially attracted to lush lawns that are heavily fertilized, watered and mowed. So if you live on a lake and you have geese frequently visiting your yard, try to make your lawn less attractive to them by allowing your grass to grow longer and not fertilizing or watering it, especially don't mow all the way to the water's edge. This tall grass along the edge of the water can create a natural barrier and the geese may be less likely to move through the tall grass into the rest of your yard.

Hannah:               And make sure you're not feeding the geese on purpose, especially if you don't want them hanging around. Feeding them can cause them to get used to hanging around people which could make them harder to scare away and may make it harder to get them to leave the area in general.

Rachel:                 They very quickly become expectant and expect you to show up and feed them. So just avoid that altogether by not starting. You can also employ some scare tactics to frighten them away. Using a combination of loud noises such as shell crackers, bird alarms, or bird bangers, distressed cries, screamers, electronic noise systems, along with visual deterrents like a bird scare balloon, Mylar scare tape and plastic flags and these things used in any combination can often eliminate any conflicts with Canada geese but also lots of other types of waterfowl.

Hannah:               And yelling and running after them can work well too. I had some migrating geese stop by after we put down some grass seed one spring, and that's what I did to chase them off repeatedly for a few days. Then they got the message and moved on. Thankfully they didn't eat all my grass seeds. I do have a lawn, but they were quite hungry. Thought it was a good place to stop by for a snack. But I do this with all the critters that come through the yard that I don't want around, chase after them yelling and screaming, acting a fool and it seems to work every time, it does. I've scared away coyotes and fox, geese. It does work, especially if you come out of nowhere and surprise them.

Rachel:                 Keep in mind that in June and July, Canada geese are molting and are unable to fly. During this time you may want to try putting up just a temporary barrier between your yard and the water to help keep the flightless geese out of your yard. I hear snow fence can work well in this type of scenario. Additional information on how to handle conflicts with geese including some population control options are available at michigan.gov/wildlife.

Hannah:               And of course there's always the hunting season. So if hunting is an option in your area, waterfowl seasons aren't far away. You can find out about the Canada goose hunting season dates and bag limits and the 2021 waterfowl hunting digest which will be available in the next month or two at michigan.gov/waterfowl. Well, folks that does it for this episode of Wildtalk. Thank you so much for joining us today and we'll see you back here for our next episode in July.

Announcer:        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 517-284-9453 or DNR-Wildlife@ michigan.gov.