From the Traverse City Record-Eagle:
The State Department of Natural Resources is used to taking its lumps. It gets its share and more in the media, in deer hunting and fishing publications, from bloggers and even on this page in the form of editorials and letters to the editor.
It comes with the territory. The DNR, after all, is a taxpayer-supported agency and deals with some pretty volatile issues and individuals.
The agency oversees fishing, hunting, trapping and outdoor activities of all sorts, all of which have passionate adherents not shy about their opinions.
Too often, however, the agency and individual DNR officers don’t get the credit they deserve. Many spend untold hours in the heat and cold watching for poachers or monitoring fishermen. They’ve been shot at, punched and worse in the line of duty. They don’t often hear someone say “thanks.”
But without their efforts there’d be a lot fewer deer and fish for those who pay for the privilege of hunting and fishing.
Recently the DNR, with help from officers from the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians, said they would charge six men with running an illegal commercial fishing operation on Lake Michigan’s Little Bay de Noc. The poachers may have claimed more than 20,000 pounds of walleye in just the last two months and thousands more over several previous winters.
Turtle Talk 