Most people can correctly identify photographs of common animals such as deer, raccoons, skunks and squirrels.
A mink at Shiawassee National Wildlife Refuge in Saginaw County, in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Minks are members of the mustelid family of fur-bearing carnivores. In the University of Michigan wildlife study, volunteers had trouble telling apart various mustelids, which also include the fisher, the American marten and weasels. Image credit: University of Michigan Applied Wildlife Ecology Lab.
But can you distinguish a gray wolf from a coyote or correctly identify members of the mustelid family, which includes the American marten, the long-tailed weasel, the fisher and the mink?
7 fresh ways to explore Michigan’s great outdoors this spring
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If hope were a season, it would be spring. Every sign of its return feels like optimism embodied: Birdsong and bicycle bells, budding trees, the soul-stirring scent of rain.
This spring, that sense of promise feels especially potent and necessary. Just as a crocus pushes up from underground after a hard, long winter, many of us are stepping into this new season after an isolated and challenging year. We have mixed emotions, no doubt, but Mother Nature continues to offer her good medicine: beauty, wonder, proof that life goes on. Fresh air and sunshine, too as essential to our own thriving as they are to the ever-greening world.
Wetlands Can Help Prevent Property Damage and Save Lives During Floods
Midland and other cities were hit hard by a flood caused by of a weak dam.
More than 2,500 homes were damaged. There was an estimated $245 million dollars in property damage.
If that flood happened a few years ago, the damage could have been worse. But, there’s been a change. One thousand acres of restore wetlands helped reduce the severity of that flood.
The story began with heavy rainstorms. We’ve been seeing more of those in recent years because of climate change. The Great Lakes region is seeing more intense rainstorms. Storms that were once considered 100 year events or even 500 year events are happening somewhere in the basin every few years now. Climatologists predict we’ll see more and heavier storms in the decades ahead.
Devastating Midland floods would have been worse were it not for the sponge-like properties of a newly-restored wetland along the Shiawassee River. As climate change brings more intense rainstorms to Michigan, the incident is an example of how wetlands could help mitigate flood threats.
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