MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin and Minnesota scientists are studying a little-known and vulnerable fish whose disappearance could mean smaller musky, pike and walleye in the states’ inland lakes.
The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources is three years into its first comprehensive study of the cisco, a slender white fish that scientists say is an important food for other fish and may serve as an early warning of problems in fisheries.
“Cisco are a key component to how a lot of lakes operate,” said John Lyons, a DNR fisheries scientist on the study.
Lyons and two other Wisconsin scientists have chosen nearly 200 public and private lakes with good cisco habitat. They’re trying to measure the abundance of the fish in Wisconsin’s lakes where sometimes the only evidence comes from old photos, rumors or inadvertent catches from unrelated studies.
They’ve never focused solely on cisco, which some anglers call lake herring or tullibee. Results from the study will become a foundation scientists will use as they assess which fish are at risk of disappearing.
“We think the cisco is going to be one of the most vulnerable lake fish to climate change,” Lyons said.
Scientists elsewhere in the region have over the last decade focused on the fish they say many younger anglers either don’t know about or don’t care about.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - More than 1,000 photos of Wisconsinites have been collected for a memorial in Washington D.C. showing the faces of those who died in the Vietnam War.
The Wisconsin State Journal Reports (https://bit.ly/TL95y7https://bit.ly/TL95y7 ) the photos will be part of an education center built in 2016 near the Vietnam Wall.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is collecting photos of the over 58,000 service members featured on the memorial, including more than 1,200 from Wisconsin.
Two statewide media organizations, the Wisconsin Newspaper Association and Wisconsin Public Broadcasting are managing separate efforts to track down the 230 photos still needed.
The WNA began participating in the project in April. Andrew Johnson, publisher of the Dodge County Pionier in Mayville, has managed to cover 75 names on the list.
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Information from: Wisconsin State Journal, https://www.madison.com/wsjhttps://www.madison.com/wsj
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RIPON, Wis. (AP) - A 54-year-old man is accused of stealing more than $400,000 in school funds while working as the director of information technology at Ripon College.
Ronald Haefner, of Mequon, was charged Friday with 64 counts of theft and fraud, according to The Reporter Media (https://fondul.ac/RqmVDXhttps://fondul.ac/RqmVDX ).
Haefner was terminated in November 2013 after school officials discovered he had been making unauthorized purchases of furniture and Apple products, according to a criminal complaint.
Haefner’s attorney, Jonathan LaVoy, said Sunday his client acknowledges some wrongdoing and they hope to eventually come to a settlement involving restitution instead of going to trial.
Besides purchases allegedly made for himself and his family, some items were given to a former Ripon College president who is now president of Brevard College in North Carolina, according to the complaint.
Fond du Lac County District Attorney Eric Toney said the alleged thefts appear to be for personal profit and that much of this “appears to be built on the backs of students at Ripon College.”
Toney said he believes Haefner took advantage of Ripon College and lied to the former Ripon college president.
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MADISON, Wis. (AP) - A Middleton filmmaker’s efforts over the last two years helped solve some of the mystery surrounding what happened to a soldier killed in World War II and return the soldier’s remains home.
Pfc. Lawrence Gordon, 28, from Canada, was a member of the U.S. Army’s 32nd Armored Regiment when the armored car he was riding in exploded during fighting in Normandy, France, on Aug. 13, 1944.
Staff Sgt. David Henry of Viroqua was wounded during the Normandy campaign, but he made it home.
Henry’s grandson Jed Henry was researching his grandfather’s Army reconnaissance company for a documentary when he stumbled across Gordon’s case, the Wisconsin State Journal reported (https://bit.ly/1jNCfGehttps://bit.ly/1jNCfGe ) in a story published Sunday. Gordon was the only member of the unit who was killed in action who never got a proper burial.
Henry’s detective work led him to conclude that Gordon’s remains had been misplaced in a cemetery for German soldiers in France. But the U.S. military repeatedly refused to perform DNA tests. And when the French government did the tests and identified the remains as Gordon’s, the military refused to accept the results.
But after the University of Wisconsin-Madison and another laboratory also confirmed that the remains were Gordon’s, an office of the Pentagon announced in March that Gordon should be buried with full military honors.
The soldier’s nephew, Lawrence R. Gordon, told the newspaper he has ordered a granite, cross-shaped headstone for his uncle’s burial in Eastend, Saskatchewan, where he was born, with another stone that will describe the soldier’s journey.
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