The North Manitou Island deer hunt in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is held each year to manage the introduced/non-native deer population to allow for the recovery of the forests. This year, the National Park Service is only accepting 200 applications in 2024. The application period will open on Monday, June 3, and close Monday, Sept. 30, or when 200 applications are received.
It’s been part of the conversation for weeks, ever since the unseasonably warm weather in late March: Is it spring yet? Is it really spring? Will there be another frost? Have you seen all the blooms on those lilacs? In order: Yes, yes, probably not, and it’s not just lilacs—it’s everywhere and most everything.
Peninsula Housing, the community land trust dedicated to providing secure, affordable housing for Leelanau County, has launched a newly designed website which, according to founder Larry Mawby, “reflects our work well, gives users more information about us, shows the projects we are working on, while inviting users to participate in our work.”
They may be beautiful. They may look nice as lawn ornamentation. They may even be as familiar as the bouquet from the florist. But make no mistake: non-native plants and animals threaten native flora and fauna as well as the enjoyment residents and visitors derive from the area. Knotweed, barberry, baby’s breath and Eurasian milfoil are just a few of the invasive species found in our fields and forests, lakes and waterways. Some target specific hosts, such as hemlock wooly adelgid, and before that, the emerald ash borer. Others simply crowd out native plants, such as garlic mustard or autumn olive. The Northwest Michigan Invasive Species Network works with a number of partners, including the Leelanau Conservancy, the Michigan Department of Natural Resources, the Leelanau Conservation District, the Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore and numerous private landowners to combat these and other invasives.
Unfrosted, the comedic farce directed by Jerry Seinfeld which launched on Netflix Friday, has a Glen Arbor connection—sort of. The film, which stars Seinfeld as well as Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grand and Amy Schumer, is (very) loosely based on the true story of how the Pop-Tart toaster pastries were created in 1963 in Battle Creek, Michigan. The real founder of Pop-Tarts was Bill Post, who lived for 20 years in Glen Arbor. Post passed away in February. His kids, who were his guinea pigs for the first Pop-Tarts, attended the movie’s premier this week in Hollywood. Dan Post talked to the Sun about his experiences.
The Glen Arbor Players Reader’s Theater troupe has scheduled auditions for the award-winning play “Bus Stop” by William Inge. The auditions will be held on Monday, May 6, at the Glen Lake Community Reformed Church and Tuesday, May 7, at the Old Town Playhouse in Traverse City, both at 7 pm. The play will be performed at the Glen Lake Community Reformed Church from June 6-8.
The Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council presented its 35th annual environmentalist of the year awards in a ceremony on April 19 at Milliken Auditorium on the campus of Northwestern Michigan College. Winners from Leelanau County included: John Dindia of Lakeview Hill Farm for agriculture/farming; Sam Getsinger of Leelanau Indivisible for grassroots organizing; Tina Greene Bevington of Bay Books in the business category, and writer Kathleen Stocking for the Greg Reisig Prize for Environmental Journalism.
Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore is inviting the public to comment on a project to improve safe and reliable boat access to the Manitou Islands. The approximately $32 million project, funded by the Great American Outdoors Act (GAOA) Legacy Restoration Fund, will address the impact of natural processes, such as littoral drift (shifting sands) and high-water levels, on the islands’ docks. The Environmental Assessment (EA) for the Manitou Islands dock project will be open for a 30-day public comment period until May 15.
The black bear that gained national press last week after it briefly broke into Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire and made off with a 50-pound bag of sugar apparently has a taste for chickens, too. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR) caught the bear in a live trap today on Joshua Evan Fast’s property on Stormer Road, about 2.5 miles southeast of downtown Empire. Fast told the Sun that the bear had eaten 16 of his chickens over the past two weeks after breaking the door to their chicken coop.
A black bear has visited Grocer’s Daughter Chocolate in Empire on five consecutive evenings this week, rummaged through a dumpster and spreading garbage around the village, and pulling open the back door and devouring a 50-pound bag of sugar. On Tuesday night, April 16, around 10:30 pm, the bear entered the beloved chocolate shop for no more than 20 seconds, stole the sugar and returned to the sidewalk to eat it. It touched nothing else in the shop, not even the small, chocolate bears on display by the checkout counter.