Mike Dombeck led the rulemaking process as chief of the U.S. Forest Service under Clinton. Originally from northwestern Wisconsin, he spent a career in public service, mostly in fisheries, earning multiple degrees, including a masters from the U of M.
While local leaders honor Melissa Hortman’s thoughtful governance in Minnesota, federal lawmakers keep playing games with public lands.
Condolences to the family, friends, and colleagues of former speaker of the Minnesota House, Melissa Hortman. Although I’d met Hortman at a few events over the years, I’d never interviewed her in-depth. In terms of bill authorship, Hortman wasn’t closely involved in traditional outdoors issues at the Capitol, but insiders say she played a crucial leadership role in the passage of matters important to outdoors folks.
During a “walk-through” session last Thursday at the Minnesota State Capitol, members of the Environment committee learned what the Omnibus Environment and Natural Resources finance, policy package contains.
Per the news story from Outdoor News, Capitol sharpies do not expect the bill to change before a special session passes it likely later this week. As of Tuesday, it contained several consequential outdoors policy items, some of which legislators have debated for years.
Conservation groups have flooded our email boxes at Outdoor News the past two weeks ever since the U.S. House Resources Committee passed a late-night amendment to the reconciliation bill that would sell 460,000 acres of federal property in Utah and Nevada.
Readers may recall that the state of Utah attempted, and failed, to acquire public lands through the courts last year, but the issue keeps rearing its head.
Minnesota blew the lid off its previous record spring wild turkey harvest last year, and the first half of 2025 has kept pace with 2024.
My daughter, my dad, and I must’ve hit the midseason doldrums last weekend, however. Between a half-dozen sits, we heard one gobbler, and he was unimpressed with my calling. My daughter’s tag is good the entire season, and adults like me with unfilled tags may hunt season F from May 21 to May 31, so we’ll get out again.
Outdoor Insights: What’s Minnesota doing right when it comes to wild turkeys? Read More »
I spoke with Don Pereira last week, the former head of Minnesota DNR Fisheries. Pereira retired from the agency in 2018 then served as a commissioner on the Great Lakes Fishery Commission. He still chairs the group’s Sea Lamprey Control Board.
Everyone know the sea lamprey story? The blood suckers are one of the nastiest aquatic invasive species ever. They got into the upper Great Lakes in the early 20th century with the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway and by the 1950s and ’60s had wiped out lake trout and other sport fisheries.
Outdoor Insights: Sea lamprey control program can’t be on the chopping block Read More »
Southeast Minnesota-based outdoors writer and regular Outdoor News contributor Scott Bestul, age 64, died Saturday morning, April 19, after a 2.5-year battle with a gastrointestinal stromal tumor.
Bestul’s outdoors writing focused on a number of topics including turkey hunting, stream trout, and muskie fishing, but he was best known for his white-tailed deer hunting expertise, especially in the bluff country of southeast Minnesota, western Wisconsin, and northeast Iowa.
Outdoors scribe Scott Bestul, well-known for his whitetail expertise, dies at age 64 Read More »
Jeff Broberg, 71, a clean water and trout fishing advocate and a giant on Minnesota’s conservation scene, died Saturday, April 12 from complications of pancreatic cancer.
In a Facebook post on March 29, Broberg shared his cancer diagnosis and thanked friends and family for their prayers. He said he was waiting for more details from the Mayo Clinic and asked for time to process the news. The disease progressed quickly, however, and two weeks after the social media post, he passed.
Back in 1997, Outdoor News columnist Shawn Perich wrote a piece about efforts by the Grand Portage Band to restore brook trout to Lake Superior tributaries. The piece included a photo of Rick Novitsky, the band’s then-natural resources director, holding a plastic bag containing “Brooks,” one of 26 young brook trout the band recently had discovered in a North Shore tributary stream.
I remembered that story last week after reading reports that the Minnesota DNR discovered big, spawning “coaster” brook trout in the shallows of the great lake last October.
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