MICHIGAN, USA — A grant by the Consumers Energy Foundation awarded to the Michigan Arctic Grayling Initiative supports efforts to bring back the Arctic grayling to Michigan waters.
The Arctic grayling are native to Michigan and are the namesake of the city of Grayling in Crawford county.
Arctic grayling, which are in the salmon family of fish, disappeared from the state because of three main factors - each caused by humans: Habitat destruction, unregulated harvest and predation/competition with an introduced trout species. Arctic graylings have not been seen in the state since the 1930s.
The Michigan Arctic Grayling Initiative is a program that hopes to reintroduce Arctic graylings to the Michigan rivers and streams that it once called home. The initiative, which was originally launched in late 2018, has more than 40 partners collaborating on the reintroduction.
The grant, totaling $70,000, will help fund an evaluation of several types of chambers for rearing Arctic grayling eggs in Michigan streams.
There have been successful efforts to repopulate the waters of Montana with Arctic grayling through remote site incubator designs, but it is unsure if those methods will work in Michigan. This new project will evaluate alternative approaches to the remote site incubator design in lab and stream environments to determine which will be most efficient and reliable for Michigan's stream environments.
"This is the second contribution we have received from the Consumers Energy Foundation since we started our initiative to bring Arctic grayling back to Michigan," said DNR Fisheries Division Chief Jim Dexter. "With their partnership we are able to get closer to meeting our goals and seeing success."
For more information on the history of Arctic grayling in Michigan, visit MiGrayling.org.
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