To the Journal editor:

Recently a group in the State of Michigan was formed called the Citizens for Professional Wildlife Management.

This group initiated a petition drive so that the Michigan Natural Resources Commission would have the authority to manage our Natural Resource, that being wildlife, fisheries and to provide free licenses to our active military members, and to budget $1 million to help with invasive aquatic species in our lakes and waters.

The Upper Peninsula Sportsmen’s Alliance played a major roll in this petition drive. We want to thank all the clubs and organizations who donated time and money to make this drive a success.

We also want to thank all the business in the Upper Peninsula who allowed us to put petitions in their business to gathert signatures. We needed 256.000 signatures and we turned in 374,000 statewide. We also want to thank all those who signed the petition.

The UPSA holds quarterly meetings. The next meeting will be held in Munising at the Moose Lodge at 10 a.m. Our guests will be NRC commissioners Matonich and Madigan. The publlic is always welcome and we encourage participation.

We were recently made aware of a Michigan Legislative Sportsmen’s Caucus that has been held in Lansing. It consists of many of the states sportsmen’s groups and several senators and representatives from the state.

There were no representatives from the U.P. on the invite list. The UPSA is now on that list. We have attended the last two of these informal meetings and plan on attended futures meetings. Gov. Rick Snyder attended the last one. More information and reports of this will be in future reports.

Tony Demboski, president

U.P. Sportsmen’s Alliance

Quinnesec