2025: a year in review with the chief and assistant chief of the Wildlife Division.

You know what that sound means. It's time for the Michigan DNR's Wild Talk Podcast. Welcome to the Wild Talk 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. Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Wild Talk Podcast. This is your host, Rachel Lincoln, bringing you the December episode. And here with me today, as always, is my co-host, Eric Hilliard. You're like a regular Santa Claus coming down the chimney with a brand new episode, aren't you? Yes. Oh, what does Santa have? A toy full of gifts? No, that doesn't mean that. A toy full of bags? Santa has a toy full of bags. A bag full of toys and a Christmas miracle. Santa's really cutting corners this year. You know, he can't afford the batting and whatnot to fill stuffed animals. So he's just using the recycled bags that your grandma has passed down for decades and decades and you finally end up with it. Yeah. Yeah. Been there. This is actually kind of a special little gift episode today. We're changing the format up a little bit, aren't we? Yeah, we are. We're pretty excited to bring this show to the listeners. We've got our very own Wildlife Division Chief, Sarah Thompson, is going to join us in addition to our Assistant Chief, Keith Kintai. We're going to spend the hour chatting with them about really all things Wildlife Division and kind of what this year looked like for us and what we are excited about moving forward into next year. So we're pretty excited to chat with those two and kind of have a candid conversation about the state of wildlife conservation right now. Yeah, I think our listeners will get a lot out of that interview with those two. So definitely worth sticking around. Most certainly. But before we jump into the show, we do, of course, want to take a moment to recognize those who have donated to the Non-Game Wildlife Fund to support conservation of Michigan's rare species. We have two new donors, Mark and Maureen Schultz. Thank you so much for your donations to the Non-Game Wildlife Fund. And this brings the total donation amount to $2,400 since, oh, let's see, September of 2024 is when we started reading names of recent donors. So thank you, Mark and Maureen, for your recent generous donations. And thank you to everyone who has donated to this fund over the last couple of years. That money goes directly into paying for projects and staff that focus on rare wildlife species and rare wildlife conservation. Don't forget to stick around after the interview today for your chance to win a podcast mug. But before we chat with Sarah and Keith, here's a word from our warblers. Hey, Michigan drivers. The 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 slash SOS. Well, today we welcome to our show the Wildlife Division Chief, Sarah Thompson, and our Assistant Chief, Keith Kintai. I'm so glad you both are here to chat with us. I personally enjoy speaking with both of you very much, and so we're super happy to have you on the podcast to talk really all things Michigan wildlife and to kind of recap this past year and see what we're heading into next year. So thanks for making time to fit into the podcast today. Happy to be here. Man, it's great to be here. Well, we'll start by helping listeners get to know you both just a little bit better. So how about you both share what your role in the Wildlife Division looks like and what your day-to-day is like? Well, I'm the Wildlife Division Chief, and I've been in this role for about three years. And I spend the majority of my days in meetings and sharing information from staff and them sharing information with me so that we can make informed decisions. And so we can give them guidance in whatever they want to do. I often say that I spend my whole day saying no or signing things. That's about all I do is make decisions, and those are the two choices. And Keith? So I'm the assistant chief of the wildlife division, and my job is to support the chief and to support our statewide programs, and that includes our wildlife health section, our species management section, and our planning and adaptation and research sections. As Sarah mentioned, we sit in a lot of meetings together, and my job is to act as an advisor and a sounding board for her as we make decisions together. We have great teams in our division with very passionate and dedicated folks, so this is mostly really, really gratifying work. Yeah, I feel like I just want to reemphasize the number of meetings that you two set in. I tried to schedule our podcast recording like six weeks in advance, and you are really involved. You're very involved with your staff. You're very involved with partners, and you do attend a lot of meetings. It was amazing to schedule this. I was surprised, but not because you're great chiefs. And you make a really good leadership duo. So the two of you, you work really closely to make decisions for the division. How do you like working together? Well, this is a two-person job. I could never do it alone. It's way too much work. And I had the benefit of hiring the assistant chief that I wanted to work beside. And there's strategy involved in that. And I purposely chose a strategy of choosing someone that's in a lot of ways opposite of what I am. So Keith brings strengths to the table that where I'm a little bit weakened maybe. And then I have strengths where maybe he isn't necessarily as strong in those strengths. And then there are places that were both very strong. So it actually works out so wonderful. Like, and he has a different perspective. He's had different experiences out in the division than I've had. And so it works very well that we like draft whatever we want to do. We run it by each other, get the other's perspective, and the end product is better than either one of us could have done alone. Yeah, that's great. That's what you want to hear from your leaders. It's awesome. You both have been with the department for, you have a storied history with the department. You've been here for a little bit. What got you started on the conservation tract or with wildlife division specifically? As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a field scientist and spent a lot of time in the woods and run around in streams and ponds and never got tired of learning about things like spiders and figuring out animal tracks and that sort of thing. And got to college and was studying, you know, field sciences and didn't realize that wildlife management was even an option and then took a resource ecology elective with the fisheries and wildlife department and discovered like, wow, you can do this in Michigan. And so I switched my major to fisheries and wildlife and spent some time out west and considered becoming a wildlife research scientist. We were young parents, my wife and I, and it didn't seem fair at the time, but worked out west for a while and then had the opportunity to come back to Michigan and after four tries got into the department. After four different attempts at positions? Yes. Yeah, it takes a while sometimes. Right. And that was 25 years ago. And since then, you have been in several different divisions, right? Right. I've spent most of my time with Wildlife Division over those 25 years, but took a little hiatus with Forest Resources Division, where I worked a lot on conservation programs and sustainable forest certification. Awesome. Well, we're glad you end up in wildlife. Me too. So I grew up as a farm girl, so I was outside my whole life. I didn't really know I was studying spiders and bugs and animals, but I was, but I didn know I was So I always had a love for animals When I was in high school my biology teacher was my hero and so I went to college to be a biology teacher because I just wanted to be just like him and just happened to have to take an elective class in science, and there wasn't one that fit into my schedule except for introductory wildlife biology. So I took it, and the whole world opened up to me, and before I was even done with that semester, I switched my major to wildlife management. And that's kind of what laid the work for me being in the division. So then I didn't know it was a career either, just like Keith. And so finally finding out exactly what I wanted to do and that you could get paid to do what I love, which is being outside with critters. It just really took off. So like Keith, it's hard to get in with Michigan DNR right from the start. I ended up having to go to Wisconsin for a while. And then I went to Iowa for a while before I could get a job, basically have enough experience to compete for a job here in Michigan. I have a few rapid-fire questions for the both of you so that listeners can really get to know you. So we'll just go back and forth between the two of you, starting with, do you have pets? Yes. How about the person who has brought a dog into the recording studio goes first? Yes, I am a dog person, and I have dogs. Now, previous to the last, you know, 10 years, I also had a small hobby. Well, I call it a small hobby farm, but I guess having like 200 rabbits and, you know, 50 sheep and all that isn't really small. But on the large agricultural side, it was small. So I'm all things animals, domestic, wild and livestock. Yes. Very good. And Keith, do you have pets? We are in between dogs. OK. I travel a lot. And so it's not fair to my wife right now to get a puppy. As a wife whose husband is thinking about getting a puppy, I appreciate that. I have grand dogs. that I see a lot. So that, that scratches that itch. Good. All right. What was your first job? I worked at Charlton Park, which is a historic museum in Berry County. And I was 15 years old and they put me in charge of the stage coach in cooking meals for staff on a wooden stove. And I learned a whole lot and I was really good at it and they just couldn't believe it. And so they kept asking me to come back. So I actually did that for a couple of years. So we actually like dressed in costume and served lunch in the parlor as if they were stagecoach residents. And so that was fun. Nice. My first job was delivering a weekly newspaper in the Grand Rapids area called The Advance. Classic first job. Yeah. And then I promoted to delivering the Grand Rapids Press, which was fine until Christmas morning when you had to go get up and deliver Christmas papers why, you know, the rest of your family was excited about opening presents. Yeah, no kidding. Now, Now, did you ever have to knock on anybody's door? And you may or may not get this reference, but I have to say to them, $2. Yeah, better off dead. Yeah, there we go. He got it. I know that. Finally, someone gets Eric's reference. Finally, somebody gets my movie references. I know that oftentimes I will bring up a movie reference and Rachel will be like, huh, what are you talking about? Yeah, as a paperboy, if you wanted to get paid, you had to go collect. So there were subscribers who regularly would not answer their door. I could hear them in their house. They knew it was me. They would not answer. So, yeah, I get that and appreciate that reference. Well, and I want to tell you what my real first job was. I mean, farm girls work hard. So there are pictures of me feeding calves when I could hardly walk. And yet I had this bottle and the calf was bigger than me. So by far that was my first job, all that calf feeding that I had to do on the dairy farm. Fair enough. Last question. what's one wildlife species you think is underappreciated? Crab spiders. Oh yeah they're they they're bad. I know I can't say they're they're cool. I've never heard crab spiders described that way but it sounds good to me. Sarah? I think that chickadee it's a happy little bird everybody likes it everybody notices it and we we don't often talk about it. I don't disagree that's those are two good species. You know and I gotta say my my aunt would probably be upset if I didn't mention this. She thinks that the black-capped chickadee should be Michigan's official state bird because you notice them through all the seasons and, you know, not just in the spring. Granted, robins don't all leave Michigan for the winter, but you don't see them during the winter, really. I think that's a great idea. Well, now that listeners have a sense of who you both are and what you do, let's talk a bit about the Wildlife Division and what makes it so great. If you could explain it in a nutshell, who is the Wildlife Division? The Wildlife Division's purpose is to manage wild animals in the wild places that they live in the simplest terms. It's a lot more complicated than that. We do our work in cooperation with the rest of the department and the Natural Resources Commission and the legislature. We manage 450,000 acres of public lands that are specifically managed for wildlife conservation. And then we co-manage 3.9 million acres with Forest Resources Division to ensure that wildlife benefits are maintained on our state forests as well. And then another thing that a lot of people don't understand is that we do all of this work in cooperation with the federal government through federal statute. That includes the Pittman Robertson Wildlife Restoration Act, the Federal Endangered Species Act, and the Migratory Bird Act, for example. You mentioned 3.9 million acres of land. You've mentioned several different partners and programs and different things that we're working on. Now, that's a lot of business that has to be paid for somehow. So how is all of that funded? Our funding relies almost exclusively on hunters and sport shooters, and this comes from the sale of hunting and fishing licenses and excise tax on ammunition and firearms and archery equipment. And does that funding shape the particular types of work we do then? Yeah, specifically there's federal and state statute in place that protects the use of these funds to ensure that they're spent on wildlife conservation purposes. And so that federal and state statute really directs the type of work that we can do with those funds. So we get asked by all kinds of Michiganders to do customer service, provide them service, and we try to do so the best we can. However, we're only funded by a small percentage of Michiganders, so we're limited in how much we can do. And there's definitely a gap there between the amount of service that we're being asked to do and how many people we have that can provide that service. Yeah, I think that's certainly worth mentioning. So we're receiving funds from one group, we're serving a much larger audience. How does that impact the goals of the work of the Wildlife Division? So we have to give higher priority to the goals that are important to the people that fund us. That doesn't mean that we don't take into consideration the goals of others. And of course, there's overlap. There's lots of overlap. But we try to do the best we can with our limited funds. Like we do have some non-game funding that we can put towards those other projects and we try to make that money go as far as possible so we can provide as much of that service as possible. But there's no doubt that we try to emphasize game species because that's where the funding comes from. Now, a lot of the work that we do with game species benefits every wildlife creature. So it's not mutually exclusive. Yeah, to take it back to our mission, right? We have a responsibility to manage all wild animals and our non-game funding is, It's, our non-game programs are woefully underfunded. It's, our non-game funding is less than 5% of our budget. And our general fund dollars, we receive some. It's less than 8% of our budget. It's mostly spent on wildlife disease management. Even though everyone benefits from the work that we do, our general fund dollars are only 8% of our budget. Considering the lack of funding we have, what type of impact does that make when it comes to managing these non-game species? We prioritize conservation work for non-game species in a couple different ways. The most urgent work is with state and federally listed species. These are species whose decline is significant enough where they're regulated under state or federal endangered species law. And then the second group of non species that include these threatened and endangered species are the term of species of greatest conservation need And so these are other non species in most cases that have an identified conservation need meaning we need to work more intentionally on their management to help them either remain common prevent declines that are occurring or to recover them So, for instance, the monarch butterfly, everyone knows that. Everyone knows that their populations are declining. They're in the news as declining. They're on the cusp of being on the threatened and endangered species list. if we maybe would have had more money to put towards their habitat we could have kept them from declining and so that's an example of if we had more funding to do more pollinator habitat we could benefit a whole bunch of species like the monarch butterfly. While we're talking about budgets we've had to navigate some adjustments and one of those in the last year was restructuring and redistributing work. Can you speak more on? You know our last restructure was in 2012 and things have changed since then. So we've made some adjustments in structure to be more efficient, more effective with the resources that we have, and also make it easier for our staff to manage our public lands because there's so many acres in relation to how many staff we have. And how many staff are there? What is the size of the division? My Life Division is one of the smaller divisions in the department. Currently, we have 160 or so permanent staff. That's down from almost 200 in the early 2000s. Earlier, you said we're managing 3.9 million acres, and we're doing that with 160 staff, roughly, full-time staff. We're doing that with about 100 field staff of that 160 permanent staff. Just to clarify, we manage most intensively our 450,000 acres of state wildlife areas mostly in the southern part of the state. And then we co-manage 3.9 million acres of state forest in the northern part of the state. So just for perspective, that's more acres than our parks division manages, and we do that with one-tenth of the people. Of course, we're managing our state wildlife areas very differently than parks division manages state parks. But for perspective, we're organized by field offices in the field, and field offices generally include a wildlife biologist, a wildlife technician, and a wildlife assistant. And in the southern part of the state, if you're in the southeast, as a field office, you're managing about 35,000 acres of land, and you're managing a population of a million people. If you're in the southwestern part of the state, same thing. You're managing about 35,000 acres of land, and you're managing 500,000 people on average. So basically, each one of those three staff has about 10,000 acres. They've got to... Right. Well, and don't forget, while they're managing the state land, they constantly have people stopping by and having to provide customer service as well because they don't have their own administrative staff. They're both administrators and public land managers. Of course, we're not representing the entire department. And there are other department staff in these areas that are handling other department issues. But a lot of those wildlife issues are coming through us or our law enforcement division. Yeah, we do have other divisions that provide some customer service for us in our customer service centers and others. And any calls that require more scientific emphasis are shipped out to the field to give more scientific answers and things. But we definitely rely on some of the other divisions. Now, at the start of this fiscal year, which began on October 1st, that's when we receive our new budgets. And we did have cuts to our budgets this year. So how does that affect the work that we do? Yeah, we incorporated an 8% cut into our budget this year. That's on top of a 13% cut from the previous year and 13% from the year before. So that means that we are not filling vacancies. We're not replacing vehicles. 40% of our fleet is eligible to be replaced based on miles, and we're holding on to those, getting as much out of those vehicles as we can until they break down, basically. And we're limiting out-of-state travel, so our specialists aren't going to conferences out-of-state to talk to other specialists and share information about deer management and turkey management and those sorts of things. We're delaying infrastructure repairs. So the division has 20 or so office buildings. We have 100 or so storage buildings, a few staff houses, and almost all of these structures were built in the 1940s and 50s. So you could imagine if you were living in a house that was built in the 1940s or 50s, the updates that would be needed. I live in a house in the 1950s, and I can tell you from the brickwork I just had done that, yes, upkeep is important. And on top of that, we have 101 dams that are providing important wetland habitat. The average age of our dams is 62 years old. They're eligible for Social Security. The engineered lifespan for these dams is 50 years. So on average, our dams are 10 years beyond their engineered lifespan. And so all of this infrastructure requires money to update or repair. We're prioritizing the most important projects and delaying all the rest. But eventually that's going to catch up with us, and we're going to have to divert some more money towards those projects. And so we really need a more stable funding source so that we can do the repairs that are needed. And we realize that we can't keep all the dams. We just can no longer afford the maintenance, and we don't have the staff to put that much management into those that it takes to keep those in good working condition. So all of that to say that we are in a process now of evaluating what we're going to do with all of our infrastructure and decrease it where we can, fix it when we can, and try to get some stable funding, even if it's one-time funding of general fund from the legislature, so that we can get our repairs on all our infrastructure up to speed. Because these are our assets and we need to take good care of them. On alternative funding sources or other funding sources, you just mentioned one from the legislature, but are there other sources we may be considering or pursuing at this time? Some other states provide examples for more sustainable and broader conservation funding. So Missouri and Minnesota are the two examples. Missouri has a sales tax contribution to their conservation programs. We've been approached by stakeholders and stakeholders are starting to ask a lot of questions as our legislators. So we're hopeful that discussions on alternative or broader funding or supplemental funding will continue. All right. So that's the year ahead. But let's reminisce for a second on the year that we just had, being it's the end of the calendar year. When you think back on the year, is there anything that stands out to you as particularly meaningful or successful? I have a couple of them. One is we developed a new leadership team this year of all the supervisors. And we really wanted a team of diverse people. And all of our supervisors cover a different part of the organization. So on this team, we discuss issues and talk things out. And then they give advice to the chief and assistant chief on how we should move forward or implement things. And it's really a large group because it's all the supervisors that we have. And we at first were afraid that this group would be too unwieldy and we would have trouble, you know, sticking to topic. So we brought in a facilitator and the facilitator has done a great job of keeping us on task. And the people have really embraced this group and they show up. They're prepared to talk about what we told them we were going to talk about. They're working well together. The relationship building has been wonderful, and there's a lot of trust, which means they're creating great product. They provide wonderful advice to Keith and I so that we can make good decisions for the division. So I'm really proud of this new team and how they're working together and the wonderful work that's coming out of it to aid in the division. Some things that come to mind for me, we've been working really hard on creation of a new state game area in Lenawee County, And this has been in partnership with Ducks Unlimited and some other groups. And we'll include the restoration of some tiled agricultural land that will be returning it back to wetland, you know, like it was historically before it was ditched and drained. Our deer team has been putting a tremendous amount of work into improving deer hunter engagement. And so we had this incredibly involved effort last year with what is called the Deer Management Initiative Just tons and tons of meetings Sarah participated in almost all of those as well That transitioned into a UP and a Lower Peninsula Deer Advisory Team. And then I think another thing worth noting after a little bit of a rocky start, we've completely redone our regulation summaries, which a lot of people call hunter digests, to make them much more useful product. And that was on top of some challenges from some changes that are occurring in the commercial printing industry, but those were all published ahead of schedule last year. And we've got all of these processes in place now to ensure that we continue doing a really good job with these new and improved regulation summaries or hunting guides. There's so many others. I can think of a few others. We had a major ice storm in the north this year. It affected over 900,000 acres of state forest. And there were thousands of miles of trail that needed to be cleared of debris. Well, all the staff up north could not take over this huge project. And so staff from the south volunteered to go up for a week at a time and leave the work that they had to do behind, the work that they had planned to do to go help their colleagues in the north. And the camaraderie was wonderful, and the fact that we cleared the amount of land that we did in the small amount of time just goes to show how hardworking our staff can be. So I was very proud of that effort and how everyone picked up to help everybody as a team. Another teamwork thing that I'm really proud of is that our staff have had a lot of controversy this year thrown at them. And our staff, you know, they've weathered it well. They shrug it off. You know, sometimes it makes them feel bad, but they stand back up and do their jobs day in and day out and continue to make good product. So I'm really proud of them. They're doing the work they love, and that helps keep them going even in times of adversity. Yeah, you both sound very proud of your staff. In a word or two. how would you sum up this past year for wildlife division? Overwhelming obstacles. We've just had a lot of things thrown at us this year. You know, things that we normally do, we've been told we can't do. We've been told we have to do things differently. We've been asked to do things that we normally don't do. And so this has been a year of like we're trudging along like we normally do. An obstacle is thrown in front of us. We have to adjust. And then that's the new norm. And then a couple weeks later, we get another obstacle. So it's just been like that all year. but we've adjusted and I feel like we're going in a good direction. What about you, Keith? Perseverance. Yeah, you can tell you're the leadership duo. Those are very complimentary sentiments. Well, wonderful. Thank you for sharing basically what makes the wildlife division so great. Those are perfect examples of the good work our colleagues do. Now looking ahead into this next year, what are your top priorities for the wildlife division? So my top priority this years to look at division assets and infrastructure and work on making some headway in our backlog and so that we can make sure that we take good care of our our assets into the future so that's one of the top priorities that we're going to do and then another thing our public land management has gotten a little bit behind as well you know making sure our areas are signed and that's important because we want to make sure that we avoid trespass and things like making sure our roads are clear our gates are in good order, things like that. So I also want to prioritize that kind of work. And that's just the land management work. There's many other priorities that we could do for the division. I'd also like to look at how we can maybe expand our work with partners and see if we can do more work with partners to make our money go further and also to get more people involved in the work we do. And hopefully there's some volunteer groups that would like to come on and also help us do the work. I'll add one priority to the priorities that Sarah listed and that we will continue to be advocating for the value of the work that we do to the general public and that we're worth investing in in some way, you know, either through a hunting license fee increase and or some broader funding. So until we get more funding, that's going to be something we're going to continue to spend a lot of time on. Clearly, there are some challenges we're facing. In the face of those challenges, what keeps you optimistic about the direction of conservation in Michigan? You know, we currently have just a wonderful staff that work hard and they can overcome obstacles. And I'm confident that they'll keep doing their job even as things reduce until a time comes when we have some stable funding. And then the whole world will open up into a whole bunch of different opportunities for us to do when managing wildlife. Yeah, I agree with Sarah. And we're the right organization to lead conservation in this state. Our strength is our people, as she mentioned. You have to want to work for Wildlife Division. We both mentioned how many times it took for us to get hired here. And most of our people could make more money doing something else. They work here because this is work worth doing. They want to be here. So that's our most enduring asset is the great people that we have and the fact that we're the right organization to continue leading conservation in Michigan. and the fact that, you know, these wild animals and these wild places are so core to our identity as a state. And as Sarah mentioned, sometimes people just need to be reminded that these things don't come for free. People have to work on them every day and it takes resources to do that. Sarah and Keith, thank you both so much for joining us. It was a real delight to get to pick your brain on a couple topics and hear from you and the direction that we're heading into next year. So thanks for joining us for the last episode of season eight. And for listeners, stick around for your chance to win a mug. A base license for $11 is a fair fair to go hunt hair, or even a squirrel or two if you care. You hunted deer last month, the license is already there, so no more money from your pocket or your billfold square. To get your share of squirrel or hair to eat yourself or share with flair and fanfare with a nice set of flatware at a table you prepare. Just bundle up warm with something to wear and don't miss when you shoot or you're liable to swear and possibly despair if you see no more signs of hide nor hair. So happy hunting to all and y'all take care. Now is your opportunity to win a Wild Talk podcast mug. As a thank you to our listeners, we're giving away a mug or two every episode. Our winners this month are Bob Bolenberg and Laura Broski. They answer the question, what is the name of the reflective layer in the eyes of white-tailed deer and many other vertebrates that enhances their ability to see during the night? The answer, the tapetum lucidum. And that's a layer that is located behind the retina and reflects light back through these photoreceptor cells, which really improves night vision of these animals. Pretty incredible. Now to be entered into the drawing this month, test your wildlife knowledge and answer our wildlife quiz question. This month's question is, what Michigan mammal can rotate their hind feet 180 degrees to help them climb down trees head first? Once you've got your answer, go ahead and email us at dnr-wildlife at 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 to us by December 15th. We'll announce winners and the answer on next month's podcast. So be sure to listen in to see if you've won and for the next quiz question. Well, thank you everyone for joining us for another year of the Wild Talk podcast. We hope that you have loved it and we'll stick around for the launch of season nine on January 1st of 2026. I can't believe we're already into season nine. Remember, if you have questions about wildlife or hunting, you can call 517-284-9453 or email us at dnr-wildlife at michigan.gov. We will see you back here next year. This has been the Wild Talk 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 at michigan.gov.