Anglers get another thousand feet or so of Grand River fishing access in Lake County

Lake Metroparks has picked up an additional 23.5 acres and about one thousand feet of stream-front property that affords additional angling availability along the lower Grand River.

The key is availability rather than access; an important distinction since the land is question does not have the ingredients necessary to offer parking, trails and other amenities.

Instead, the land is situated in Painesville City, immediately up from the High Street/Richmond Street – State Route 535 Bridge, and adjacent to the private Windjammer Court housing development. Much of its is across the Grand River from Lake Metroparks’ popular 15-acre Grand River Landing Park and small boat launch in Fairport Harbor Village.

As such, accessing the site will require an angler to park in a wide right-of-way north of the bridge only and then walk across the structure and down a steep embankment. Parking south of the bridge is a no-go, and very likely will result in one’s vehicle being ticketed.

However, more than few anglers now find the effort worthwhile as the first portion is at stream level and offers easy casting into the Grand River. A high, curved bank is found just upstream from this low-lying flat; though this condition does not prevent anglers from trying anyway – and is often productive for steelhead and other species as long as the angler also has a long-handled net to reach any caught fish.

However, angling was a minor reason for Lake Metroparks to enter into a 20-year management agreement with Painesville City for the property.

It is situated in the Grand River’s flood plain and as such experiences frequent inundation and seasonal ice flows. As such, the property cannot ever be developed and is of little commercial or residential use other than being natural flood plain land deserving of protection.

Paul Palagyi – Lake Metroparks’ Executive Director – said his agency normally does not enter into a management agreement or buys lands that fails to include the potential of offering amenity-equipment public access.

This new chunk of real estate is an exception to the rule, though.

“It gives us the opportunity to protect valuable flood plain land and to provide some measure of public availability,” Palagyi said.”Really, if we were to try and put in trails and such they’d only be washed away again with the next high water event.”

Palagyi said the land came into Painesville City’s hands via the Lake County Land Bank but that the municipality is really not suited to be a steward of such property.

The site’s dimensions will be designated with Lake Metroparks’ typically employed vertical property boundary marker strips. No large signage is intended.

“It will be accessible; only we won’t have any parking,” Palagyi said. “You’ll just have a bit of a walk.”

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net

UPDATED Renewals top newly issued Ohio concealed carry permits in 2018

As the number of new concealed carry permit issuance in Ohio begins to ebb the flow is increasing for the volume of renewals.

Last year the state’s 88 county sheriffs issued 69,375 new concealed carry permits – a 10-percent decline from 2017.

However, these sheriffs did renew 98,927 concealed carry permits – an 83-percent increase. This is the first since at least 2014 that renewals have totaled more than the number of new concealed carry permits being issued. Renewals are required every five years.

The statistics come from the Ohio Attorney General’s annual report on the state’s concealed carry permit system, a legislatively mandated stipulation.

David Yost – the state’s new Attorney General – issued the required documentation in late February.

“Each county sheriff must report concealed handgun license statistics quarterly to the Ohio Peace Officer Training Commission within the Ohio Attorney General’s Office,” Yost said in his year-ending report to the Ohio General Assembly.

“Ohio county sheriffs began issuing concealed carry licenses in 2004.”

Since 2014 when the county sheriff’s issued 58,066 concealed carry permits, the numbers increases steadily, peaking in 2016 at 117,953 permits. The number then fell in 2017 to 77,281, and tumbled to the 69,375 permits that were issued last year.

Renewals were lagging in the low- to mid-40,000 range but started to swing upward in 2017 at 54,064, and then to the nearly 100,000 in 2018.

As for suspensions, those were 1,738 last year; up slightly from the 1,669 in 2017. Suspensions occur when a concealed carry permit holder has been arrested or charged with certain offenses, if a person is the subject of court-ordered protection order. A resolution may result in reinstatement. The three counties with the greatest number of suspensions were Montgomery (181) and Clermont ans well as Franklin (128 each).

Revocations jumped from 437 in 2017 more than four times in 2018 to 1,879.

The Attorney General says that “sheriffs must permanently revoke the license of any person who no longer meets the eligibility requirements to carry a concealed handgun. A license may be revoked when the holder moves out of state, dies, cancels the license, is convicted of a disqualifying crime, or becomes subject to the law’s restrictions on mental illness or drug or alcohol dependency. Such persons are no longer eligible to possess a concealed carry permit.”

Denials stood at 1,436 in 2018; a slight increase from the 2017 figure of 1,216. Yost said denials were less than one percent of all applications.

The three counties with the most denials were: Lucas (206); Montogmery (113); and Lake (90).

As for the leading counties in terms of new licenses issued in 2018, the Top Five were: Franklin (6,117); Lake (4,404); Montgomery (2,820); Butler (2,390); and Clermont (2,346).

The Top Five counties for renewals in 2018 were: Franklin (4,598); Montgomery (4,349); Lake (4,179); Butler (4,040); and Geauga (2,874).

Even though the state’s total number of new issues of concealed carry permits was more than the number of renewals, Ohio still had 18 counties where more new permits were issued than renewals. Among them were Huron County with 952 new permits and 519 renewals; Logan County with 628 new permits and 217 renewals; Shelby County with 677 new permits and 667 renewals; and Tuscarawas County with 2,242 new permits and 932 renewals (That is not a typo, by the way).

As for the counties with the fewest number of new permits issued in 2018 – in descending order – they were: Paulding (115); Van Wert (114); Putnam (109); Noble (97); and Coshocton (82).

And the counties with the fewest number of issuing renewal concealed carry permits in 2018 – in descending order – were: Henry (205); Coshocton (187); Noble (186); Paulding (174); and Meigs (134).

Also, Ohio permit holders can carry concealed handguns in the following states: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net

ODNR data shows that 2018 was a recording-making wet calender year

With the help of heavy rain that never seemed to cease, 2018 has gone down in the weather record books as the third wettest for Ohio in the 136 years that such data has been kept.

And at a point on the calendar when Lake Erie levels should be declining its water elevation actually began to rise in November and December.

The Ohio Department of Natural Resources’ Division of Geological Survey reports that for the 2018 calendar year, the state averaged 51.15 inches of precipitation. That figure is 12.11 inches above average for any calendar year.

Ohio is broken down into 10 regional geological – called “climatic” - districts for recording purposes. This geographic configuration saw that the regional averages had a spread of 60.23 inches – or 19.54 inches above average – for the Southeast Region to 39.37 inches - or 4.35 inches above average – for the Northwest Region.

Data furnished by the Geological Survey Division says that eight of these co-called climatic regions ranked in the Top Five wettest calendar years on record, too, including the wettest on record for Southeast Region, and the second wettest on record for the South Central Region.

What water that did not percolate into the ground helping to recharge wells, ran off into stream, creeks, rivers and watershed basins. Thus, figures show that in November and December, Lake Erie water levels actually began to rise following their normal seasonal trend of decline beginning in October.

The recording station showing the greatest amount of precipitation in 2018 was the Ohio River’s Hanibal Locks and Dam in Monroe County, says the Geological Survey Division. Here, 69.70 inches of precipitation was recorded for 2018.

Recording the least amount of precipitation for 2018 was the small farming community of Wauseon in Northwest Ohio’s Fulton County. Here, just 36.80 inches of precipitation fell: A whopping spread of 32.90 inches between extreme Northwest Ohio and extreme Southeast Ohio.

Geological Survey Division recorded as well that both August and September, 2018 contributed mightily to the record book standings. Many of the 10 climatic regions posted Top Ten records for each month.

Meanwhile, February, 2018 saw record or near-record precipitation levels for all of the 10 climatic regions, the Geological Survey Division data shows.

And November, 2018 also saw above-average precipitation in eight of the 10 climatic regions with above average precipitation in the southern two-thirds of the states: Helping to put on a damp cap on one of the wettest calendar years on record for Ohio.

- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net

(UPDATED) DeWine picks Kirtland Hills attorney to head Ohio Lake Erie Commission

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine continues to fall back on policy wonks to help him shape his natural resources, agricultural and environmental agenda.

Recently named by DeWine to head the Lake Erie Commission is Joy Mulinex, of Kirtland Hills in Lake County. She takes over a small four-person (including herself) staff that helps organize, share and develop strategies that are intended to assist Lake Erie’s recreational, commercial, environmental and other associated issues.

Mulinex will earn $115,000 annually for the job; the same figure her predecessor under the-then Kasich Administration collected. Her immediate previous job was the Director of Great Lakes Relations with Geauga County-based Western Reserve Land Conservancy, a Non-Governmental Organization, or NGO.

The position also was elevated so that the director now reports directly to the governor and not some departmental head.

And like her counterparts who now lead the Ohio departments of Natural Resources and Agriculture, Mulinex is a female attorney.

However, Mulinex says her selection is neither gender-based nor because she is an attorney. Rather it is because Mulinex – like the other aforementioned agency heads -has advised DeWine during the governor’s previous several political lives.

“It’s about finding the right person for the job,” Mulinex said. “I believe my selection had more to do with my background in Great Lakes Policy and some of its associated programs. That will help me with my new job.”

In Mulinex’s case that fit included previously working on Great Lakes issues for DeWine when he was in Washington as a U.S. senator rather than in Columbus when he was the state’s Attorney General or its Lieutenant Governor.

“This new job gets me back to doing some of that work,” Mulinex said.

This work is multi-faceted; dovetailing with several state agencies and departments. Among them are Natural Resources, Commerce, Health, Agriculture, and Ohio EPA, with some members also coming from the private sector. The group meets quarterly in public.

One of the Commission’s role being to help ensure that everyone is working from the same playbook as shaped by DeWine.

The spear point of DeWine’s Lake Erie initiative are so-called “Policy Pillars.” Chief among them, Mulinex quickly says, is the oft-contentious issue of nutrient loading from farm field run-off – chiefly within the Maumee River Basin – that is the backstop of the annually seasonal Lake Erie algal blooms.

“Governor DeWine has enfolded that particular policy issue as a priority of his administration,” Mulinex said. “That should not come as surprise to anyone, and it won’t be accomplished overnight.”

Mulinex did say the DeWine Administration will seek additional funding in the up-coming budget for help in solving this problem though no exact number was available at the time of writing this story.

As for the funding of the Commission’s activities, that comes in at least some measure from the sale of motor vehicle license plates that feature either the Marblehead Lighthouse or one featuring a stylized life ring encircled with the words “Lake Erie.”

These license plates cost an additional $25 annually of which $15 is secured in the Lake Erie Protection Fund, held in a trust account. Some of the proceeds from these sales goes towards scientific and various research grants of up to $50,000 each that benefit Lake Erie in a wide array of issues and matters.

Though the license plate sales started out strong when the program was first introduced in 1993, collecting about $900,000, that figure is dropping about five percent annually and now stands at only about $145,000 annually.

Thus, additional funding – particularly for staff salaries – must come from the various agency members. To save money, the Commission closed its Toledo office with staff now work at other state offices located along or near the Lake Erie shoreline. Mulinex will be working out of the DeWine Administration’s Cleveland office.

Mulinex says she does not anticipate any major shifts in how this grant program works but that her staff will continue to monitor that all applications will help provide the foundational footers for DeWine’s Policy Pillars regarding Lake Erie.

The Commission – with the assistance of its agency partners - also develops a periodic Lake Erie Protection and Restoration Plan, the latest installment being written three years ago.

All with an eye focused on transparency, Mulinex says also, noting that a methodology will be used to gauge the impact and effectiveness of the team’s approach along with “accountability.”

“The make-up of the Commission represents a wide spectrum of interests, so we have a lot resources that we can tap,” Mulinex said.“

- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

Ohio's proposed new rules would simplify check-in life for successful deer/turkey hunters

The latest deer-hunting regulation proposals contain language that is intended to make life easier for successful hunters; not to make life more productive for Ohio’s deer herd.

And the same goes or turkey and turkey hunters, too.

Presented to the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council on February 14^th, the request is to allow hunters to transport to their residence or temporary lodging their deer or turkey without a game tag being attached to the animal or bird, so as long as the necessary permit is properly filled out and the hunter remains with the animal.

Among the other additional rule changes up for consideration is one that allows hunters to carry either a printed or an electronic version of their valid deer or turkey permit.

In each case the purpose is an incremental step toward further utilizing electronic methods for buying, accessing and recording license and tag sales as well as required data submission and collection, says Ken Fitz, the recently re-installed wildlife law administrator for the Wildlife Division.

Of particular interest to hunters, says Fitz, would be that hunters no longer would confront the requirement of tagging a deer or a turkey at the point of kill. Only after the deer or turkey is delivered to some destination would a tag have to be attached, Fitz says.

“The idea actually came from our District Four (Southeast Ohio) wildlife officers as part of a working group discussion on proposals,” Fitz said. They were seeing that tags were getting lost on deer that were being dragged from where they were shot, or hunters were field dressing a deer, moving it a few feet and than the animal being tagged.”

While such activity is a violation of proper tagging requirements, Fitz said his law enforcement staff was reluctant to write tickets for a simple lapse in judgment or because a hunter was unfamiliar with the nuances of following the rules to its letter.

However – and this is a huge however, says Fitz – an animal or bird still must eventually bear some form of tagging that includes the hunters, name, county of kill, as well as the date and time of kill.

Thus, once a successful hunter has gotten back to the vehicle, garage, home, barn, game processor, or wherever the animal – be it bird or beast – better have the proper paperwork, Fitz said.

“A hunter just can’t drop off a deer and leave it untagged and then go back out into the field to keep hunting or to assist; it must be tagged first,” Fitz said.

In effect, the Wildlife Division wants to ramp up the opportunity for electronic savvy hunters to utilize their equipment by not only buying their licenses and tags via so-called “smart phones” but also recording that data which then can be accessed by Wildlife Division officers, Fitz said.

Not to worry, though, hunters who do not own a smart phone or those persons who simply prefer to continue using some form of paper documentation. That method will continue, Fitz said.

“We recognize that not everyone has a smart phone,” he said. “It would be an option, just like the paper tag hunters use now will be an option.”

As for that infernal 18-digit number a successful deer or turkey hunter must obtain via a telephone call or on-line with a computer, tablet or other such device, the Wildlife Division very much wants to cut it, Fitz said.

Hopefully by one-half,” he said.

It was also proposed to change the name of the antlerless deer permit to deer management permit. Another proposal is to require hunters who harvest a deer within a disease surveillance area (DSA) to deliver the head to an inspection station only during the seven-day gun season rather than all firearm seasons.  

Overview of proposed deer hunting seasons for 2019-2020:

• Deer archery: Sept. 28, 2019-Feb. 2, 2020
• Youth deer gun: Nov. 23-24, 2019
• Deer gun: Dec. 2-8, 2019; Dec. 21-22, 2019
• Deer muzzleloader: Jan. 4-7, 2020

- By Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net

Ohio's junior senator Rob Portman is for the birds - but in a very, very good way

Ohio’s junior U.S. senator helped lead a bipartisan charge to make life easier for migrating birds on their travels to and from their breeding and wintering grounds.

Senator Rob Portman – a Republican – with Democratic U.S. Senator Ben Cardin of Maryland to secure the Senate passage of S. 310, the “Migratory Birds of the Americas Conservation Act.”

This important pro-wildlife proposal reauthorizes the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s program to promote “the long-term conservation, education, research, monitoring, and habitat protection for more than 380 species of migratory birds,” Portman said.

“I worked with my colleague Senator Cardin as part of a larger legislation that includes more than 100 public lands, natural resources, and water bills,” Portman said.

S. 310 will invests some $6.5 million annually through 2024 for critical conservation programs that have demonstrated marked successes through public-private partnerships and innovative granting and conservation strategies, Portman says.

In noting that hundreds of migrating birds pass through Ohio twice annually, Portman also says that the Lake Erie shoreline is one of the nation’s most popular destinations for birdwatching. 

Ohio is also home to the annual “Biggest Week in American Birding”, based at Maumee Bay State Park. The week-long event brings in more than 75,000 people each year.

Consequently, Portman says, birding – a term that many people still call “bird watching” - contributes more than $20 million to Ohio’s tourism industry and attracts visitors from across the world each year.

“Protecting and conserving these bird populations is critically important, and I am pleased the Senate approved this bipartisan legislation. I’m looking forward to this legislation being signed by President Trump very soon,” Portman said.

Cardin agrees, saying that migratory birds “play a crucial role in our ecosystems, our agriculture, and our national and local cultures.”

“The programs funded by the Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act have consistent track record of success in helping to sustain populations of migratory birds that face threats to their health and habitats,” Cardin said

Even so, both Portman and Cardin cautioned that migratory birds continue to face a host of environmental threats. These issues range from pesticide pollution, deforestation, urban and suburban sprawl, and invasive species that degrade their habitats.

Additionally, S. 310 will reauthorize the “Neotropical Migratory Bird Conservation Act” which supports 570 projects in 36 countries. Since 2002, more than $66 million in grants have been awarded through this program with more than 4.5 million acres of habitat being positively impacted throughout the Americas, Portman said.

“In 2018 alone, more than $3.8 million in federal funds were matched by more than $14.2 million in partner contributions going to 29 collaborative conservation projects in 16 countries across the Americas,” Portman said.

And Cardin said as well that the reauthorization measure marks the nation’s continued commitment “to improving our environment and investing in the flora and fauna that help our communities grow and thrive.”

Last year, Portman received the Audubon Society’s Conservation Hero award for his work to protect migratory birds and their habitats.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn

JFrischk@Ameritech.net

(UPDATED) New tight hunting regs created deep cuts in Ohio wildlife area deer harvest

The Ohio Division of Wildlife’s efforts at cutting back the deer kill on wildlife hunting areas worked even better than anticipated last season, significantly reducing the total harvest on such holdings.

And unless hunter attitude surveys squeal any loud opposition, the restrictions will remain for at least the 2019-2020 Ohio deer-hunting season. Or better still, the state’s deer management supervisor hopes, through the 2020-2021 Ohio deer-hunting season.

The rule states that for deer hunting on wildlife areas, hunters can take only one antlerless deer from public hunting areas per license year, and require that only antlered deer be harvested on public land following the last day of the statewide general firearms deer-hunting season.

Consequently, says Mike Tonkovich, the Wildlife Division biologist who oversees the state’s entire deer management program, far fewer deer were taken on public hunting areas during the 2018-2019 deer hunting season than during its 2017-2018 counterpart.

In fact, the decline was significant, says Tonkovich.

“What one needs to do is put the total deer harvest into two piles: those taken on private property and those taken on public land,” Tonkovich says.

While the 2018-2019 deer kill (called “harvest in the parlance of wildlife biologists) on private lands was down five percent, it actually fell by almost 35 percent on public lands. In real numbers the public land deer kill last season was 10,864 animals while in 2017-2018 that figure was 16,625 animals, Tonkovich says.

“The five percent is insignificant, but the 35 percent is a lot,” he said.

Broken down even further, the antlered kill on public land fell 19 percent last season while the antlerless season dropped a whopping 44 percent, Tonkovich says.

“The numbers surprised even us,” Tonkovich said.

Tonkovich said the rules will need at least one more season to better assess their impact and “ideally three years.”

Behind the rules was the intent to build up the number of deer that utilize public wildlife areas in an effort to help maximize hunter interest. Should public lands hunters see animals it is thought this activity will help sustain their drive to continue hunting.

Yet at the “end of the day, if this rule does not impress the overall hunter attitude survey this regulation is gone,” Tonkovich also says.

Those surveys are consequently vital for biologists in order to better calibrate deer management strategies and the regulations that go with such work, Tonkovich says.

“Unfortunately, we send out 10,000 surveys but the return response is not great,” he said. “We really do need to ramp up the response rate.”

The Wildlife Division will present its 2019-2020 deer-hunting regulation proposals February 13 before the eight-member Ohio Wildlife Council, though “in all honesty hunters ought not to expect any dramatic changes,” Tonkovich says.

- Jeffrey L. Frischkorn
JFrischk@Ameritech.net