Carlin Lake Association

Lake elevation

After we learned about the effect of a lake's elevation on water clarity and fish populations (see post below), John was curious enough to look up elevations of other lakes around us.

Tim Kratz from the Trout Lake station told us that even as much as 5' can make a significant difference. 

      Carlin--1642

      Katinka--1641

     Presque Isle--1632

      Van Vliet--1632

     Papoose--1632

     Big Lake--1613

      Clear Lake--1601

Lakes like the following, closer to the Continental Divide (elevation 1700'), have even higher elevations.

     Oxbow--1672

     Annabelle--1671

     Crab Lake--1648

And, FYI, the research center on Trout Lake is 1614 feet in elevation, but their research lakes--White Sand, 1634, Lost Canoe, 1646, Pallette, 1645, and Escanaba, 1650--are more comparable to Carlin and other lakes around us.

Hope this is semi-interesting!!

March Book Discussion

I don't think we will need much help for our discussion of Garlic and Sapphires.  (Not that we ever seem to need any help to find things to talk about, I guess!)

http://www.reviewsofbooks.com/garlic_and_sapphires   

But, if you want to see some of the raves that reviewers wrote about this book, click on this link for more information.   

We will be at Carol Brewer's home on Tuesday, March 4th, 9:30 am, and Karen Hayes will be our discussion leader.   See you then!

Interesting Lake Meeting

We attended a "Nibbles and Knowledge" session last night, sponsored by the Discovery Center, where we heard Tim Kratz, director of the Trout Lake field station of UW's Center for Limnology (and Carl Watras' colleague there) tell about interesting research projects they are doing with area lakes and water quality.

Among the hundreds of lakes in this area, the researchers have found distinct differences, based on relative elevation of each lake.  Carlin Lake is relatively high--and exhibits the qualities of other high lakes:  fewer fish species, fewer algae, a greater susceptibility to acid rain, clearer water, and no surprise to any of us, greater satisfaction and sense of commitment expressed by users. 

Tim also spoke about invasive species, and showed graphs of long-range experiments, going back to 1980, which clearly showed the negative effects of invasive species on native fish populations.   He emphasized that shorter research projects have shown little relationships, but that the longer studies show that rusty crawfish, for example, have nearly wiped out some native fish populations in the lakes studied.   The crawfish destroy aquatic plants, causing a decline in weed beds and lack of protection for fish.

His data, showing many cases of little change in the first 10 or even 20 years, but then dramatic negative effects coming later, was extremely interesting.

He repeated what we know, but can be reminded of:  The best management tool is to prevent invasion.  It is extremely difficult to eradicate an invasive species, once it takes hold.

Most recent news on ATV trails

Many of you either attended meetings last fall or filled out forms to give input, regarding the possibility of having ATV trails in the Northern Highlands/American Legion State Forest.   Thus, you maybe have already received the same email that I'm telling about here.

Steve Peterson, superintendent of the NHAL, says that the committee's investigation is done, and that they will be reporting to the Natural Resources Board (the group who making the final decision about these trails) in Madison on February 26th.  A final decision will then be expected soon, even as early as the next meeting of the Natural Resources Board on March 25th and 26th.

The committee's reports are very complete, and difficult to summarize.  My main observation is that the committee does not make firm recommendations, about whether to allow the trails, and if so, which trial option would be best.  They do say that the majority of people responding were opposed to any ATV trails at all in both Vilas and Oneida County.

Go to this DNR link to see the documents that will be presented to the NRB next week:

http://dnr.wi.gov/master_planning/NHAL/NHAL-atvtrail.htm

It will be interesting to see what the NRB decides to do.

School update

In the last year, Lakeland Union High School has funded a study about possible school consolidation for the four elementary feeder schools in their area, including North Lakeland.  I wrote last fall about a meeting John and I attended, in which several possibilities for cooperation among the schools were presented. 

The high school board has now announced that they are accepting the "shared services" option, the option with the lowest level of cooperation among the four elementary schools, and the one that North Lakeland people seemed most likely to agree with.

The schools will have a "shared curriculum, shared instruction and assessment visions, and shared personnel."  Now, the high school principal has been instructed to work collaboratively with the four elementary superintendents to develop a model to be presented for implementation.

So, sounds as though it still is in the planning stages.  I haven't heard personal reactions from staff or board at North Lakeland, about whether they think this will be a positive move for our local school or not.

Here they are

Thanks to Gail Speer, for sending me the photos in a format that I can insert here.   (Remember you can always click on the picture to see it in a larger format.)

Gail says she received the photos some time ago, and that the conversation at the time was that they are definitely authentic, but that the location cannot be verified.  Apparently no one from Marinesco has any information to confirm that they were taken in that area.

Have you seen?

Barb Beeler forwarded some great photos of two albino moose, standing alongside a highway in Marinesco, Michigan.  Amazing!  Thanks very much, Barb.

My goal today was to send those on to you, but they are saved in a format (bitmap) that I can't get to transfer to the blog.  I'm sorry.

Have any of the rest of you also seen those photos?   Did you ever read a news story about those two albino moose being sighted in Marinesco?    It seems like a big deal.  But, because I have never heard of it locally, I get suspicious that this may be a hoax, like some of the other things we see, and believe, that we get on the internet.  What do you think?  I wish I were able to send the pictures on, but do wonder if any of the rest of you have heard of them or seen them, and know that these moose actually exist.   

Not for the squeamish

We sat next to a woman in church Sunday who told us about wolves on their property on Manitowish Lake, off Alder Road.

One night after dark, she had the unusual feeling of "being watched" through the windows.  When she let their dog out into their fenced yard before bedtime, it barked and barked and begged to be let in.

The next morning, she saw blood all over the snow, beyond the fence, and going out to investigate, found the carcass of a deer, one shoulder and leg gone.  They could follow the dripping blood and the tracks of a wolf off into the woods.

The next week, they woke up to find another deer carcass beyond their fence, this one almost totally destroyed, but again, with wolf tracks in the snow. 

The DNR, when called, said the property owners would have to dispose of the remains on their own, so they dragged the deer back into the woods, out of their yard.

(This photo is from the internet, not from an actual wolf sighting around here.  Friends on Papoose Lake have seen wolves on their lake, going toward an island, but say they never get to their camera in time to get a picture.)

Where were they during hunting season?

George and Ramona Kubica report that among the dozen or more deer that visit their feeder every day are two good-sized bucks--one a 10-point and one a 12-point.   Surprisingly, one of the big bucks allows a small fawn to feed next to him, apparently not threatened by the little guy.

Ramona says there is also a buck with two little spikes and another that appears to have already lost his antlers.

The little albino, last year's fawn, still visits this winter, but is ostracized and pushed away by the other deer feeding there.  Now, he only comes later in the day, alone, and often only after all the corn from the feeder is gone.  We know that even in the animal kingdom, being too different leads to being excluded by others!

Thanks, George and Ramona, for the info.

No shoveling here

We have beautiful frost on our trees this morning, sparkling in the sunshine---but no new snow.   Those of you in Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago, Janesville, and Des Moines would probably be glad to send some of it our way, as you are shoveling yourselves out this morning.

A camera doesn't do the scene justice, but here are a couple of photos, nevertheless.   The one on the left is Gail Speer's from Katinka Lake, whose weather web site, recently featured in FYI, you already are using.  (Remember you can always click on a photo to make it larger.)

Here is the Presque Isle weather link again, if you may have misplaced it--add it to your list of favorites, if you haven't already. 

http://home.centurytel.net/presque-isle-weather