Lexi Krupp

At a lock and dam site in the suburbs of Chicago, there’s a plan to build a set of booby traps to keep invasive carp from reaching the Great Lakes. 

It would involve a barrier of bubbles, an electric field, underwater speakers, and a price tag of over $800 million dollars. 

A dispute between Michigan's Department of Natural Resources and the commercial fishing industry is heading to court. 

The state announced it will prohibit fishing in water deeper than 80 feet and other restrictions commercial fishers say will mean the end of their livelihoods. 

In a dim, out-of-the-way corner of the state fish hatchery in Marquette are a few thousand skinny, grey fish, each no more than nine inches long.

“They are skittish,” says Jim Aho, who runs the facility for the Department of Natural Resources. “Movement above them definitely puts stress on them, so they’re in a dark, quiet few tanks here.” 

Arctic grayling were wiped out of Michigan nearly a century ago. Since then, researchers have been trying to restore the iconic fish to the state, without success. 

Now, more than 50 collaborators across the state think they have a shot. 

Read the full feature here.

When winter hits northern Michigan, there’s usually a bump in the number of people who don’t know where their next meal will come from. But this year, the pandemic has made food insecurity in the region much worse. 

When Jordan Roberts first visited an old gravel mine outside of Grayling, in the middle of northern Michigan, he was struck by the landscape.

“If I were a teenager I would just have so much fun on this gravel pit,” he said. “It's this massive sand dune.”

The former mine, now managed by Michigan’s Department of Natural Resources, has been vacant for years. Most recently state police used the area, known as 7 Mile Pit, as a shooting range.

There’s a lot of interest in solar energy in Michigan as the technology becomes cheaper and more efficient, and utility companies set ambitious renewable energy goals. But building up the state's solar capacity will require miles and miles of land. And that could be a problem, because many people don't want solar farms in their communities. 

The state is poised to award over $40 million to fund public land projects this year. The money will go towards big-ticket properties like thousands of acres next to the Pigeon River Country State Forest, land along the St.

For public land advocates in Michigan, Christmas comes the first week of December each year.

That’s when the Michigan Natural Resources Trust fund board decides how to spend the earnings of its massive endowment.

Hospitals across northern Michigan say they have enough beds, ventilators and PPE for this surge in COVID cases — the most of the pandemic.

Their problem now is having the staff to care for these patients, especially as the virus spreads through communities and healthcare workers themselves fall ill.

An unsubstantiated video is alleging voter fraud at a post office in Traverse City. 

A group of tribal citizens and activists have uncovered a potential cultural site at the bottom of the Straits of Mackinac from close to 10,000 years ago — the end of the last Ice Age. Researchers say it could be a major archeological find.

On the ballot this election is a proposal to change how Michigan spends the money it gets from oil and gas production.

Right now the state uses oil and gas dollars to buy and maintain public lands, and for nothing else.

Under Proposal 1 this program would continue in perpetuity.

A popular Senator named Philip Hart had a dream to create a national park in the dunes of northern Michigan. But when he proposed the plan in 1961, it came as a shock to the people of Sleeping Bear Dunes. 

Sleeping Bear Dunes turns 50 this month. It’s a destination that brings well over a million visitors to the dunes along Lake Michigan every year. 

Normally, the waters of Lake Michigan sit around 580 feet.