Star Tribune
Fish house breaks through ice into Prior Lake, refreezes in place
It’s been a tough winter for Minnesotans who typically take to the ice at this time of year. No more so than in the last week on Prior Lake, where a fish house that crashed through thin ice that proceeded to refreeze — but only after it was partially submerged.
The Scott County Sheriff’s Office was first called to the sunken fishing house around 1:30 p.m. on Feb. 8, according to Operations Captain Steve Collins. It is located off the north shore of Lower Prior Lake, just off of the sportsman’s access launch.
Collins said he doesn’t know how long the house had been there, but he said it fell in following a stretch of rain that weakened the already-thin ice.
“Once we got that rain, it started to sag in the lake; one side started to go through,” he said. “Now the entire structure is in the water.”
The owners informed the Sheriff’s Office that they will remove it, Collins said. He noted that the owners have up to 30 days before fines can be applied for leaving it submerged in the lake.
Collins said the method of removing a submerged fish house varies depending on the distance from shore, depth of the water and whether or not they can safely get to it.
One part of the house is currently still sticking out of the ice, which refroze around it after the house fell in. Photos circulating on Reddit, X and Facebook appear to show the house floating in water before it refroze.
The abnormally mild winter has been brutal for ice events elsewhere in Minnesota. In Minneapolis, the warm weather forced the Art Shanty Projects to close early — after only one weekend in operation.
“We have not had good ice, and I don’t know that we’re going to this year,” Collins said.
His advice for those holding out hope ?: “Forget about ice fishing for the rest of this season.” Scott County has had fish houses fall into lakes before, he noted.
“Generally, we don’t have a fish house go through every year here in Scott County, but it’s not uncommon,” Collins said.
“Under the Biden-Harris Administration, more than 11,000 bridges in communities across America are finally getting the repairs they’ve long needed with funding from our infrastructure law,” said U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, in a news release. He said the bridge repairs ensure “people and goods can get where they need to go, safely and efficiently.”
A 19-year-old driver trying to get around slower vehicles collided head-on with an SUV in Wright County and killed one person and injured several others, officials said Thursday.
SUV passenger Janice Evelyn Johnson, 92, of Arden Hills, died Monday at HCMC from injuries she suffered in the collision on Oct. 22 in Monticello Township on County Road 37 near County Road 12, the Sheriff’s Office said in a search warrant affidavit filed in Hennepin County District Court.
The driver and two other people in the SUV survived their injuries, according to the affidavit, which the Sheriff’s Office filed to collect Johnson’s medical records at HCMC as part of its investigation.
According to the affidavit:
Deputies arrived at the crash scene and spoke with the car’s driver, Christian Kabunangu, of Brooklyn Park, who said he was heading west on County Road 37 and found himself behind two vehicles traveling below the speed limit.
“He was late for work, so he decided to pass them,” the affidavit read. Kabunangu said he saw the oncoming SUV and estimated it was about a half-mile down the road.
As he attempted to pass one of the slower vehicles, he explained, the other driver “sped up, preventing him from getting back into the westbound lane,” the filing continued.
As the Honda drew near, he swerved to the left, but the SUV did the same and they collided.
Star Tribune
University of Minnesota researchers find that native plants can beat invasive buckthorn on their own turf.
If the invasive buckthorn that is strangling the life out of Minnesota’s forest floor has a weakness, it is right now, in the shortening daylight of the late fall.
With a little help and planning, certain native plants have the best chance of beating buckthorn back and helping to eradicate it from the woods, according to new research from the University of Minnesota.
The sprawling bush has been one of the most formidable invasive species to take root in Minnesota since it was brought from Europe in the mid-1800s. It was prized as an ornamental privacy hedge. All the attributes that make buckthorn good at that job — dense thick leaves that stay late into the fall, toughness and resilience to damage and pruning, unappealing taste to wildlife and herbivores — have allowed it to thrive in the wild.
It grows fast and thick, out-competing the vast majority of native plants and shrubs for sunlight and then starving them under its shade. It creates damaging feedback loops, providing ideal habitat and calcium-rich food for invasive earthworms, which in turn kill off and uproot native plants. That leaves even less competition for buckthorn to take root, said Mike Schuster, a researcher for the university’s Department of Forest Resources.
When it takes over a natural area, buckthorn creates a “green desert,” Schuster said. “All that’s left is just a perpetual hedge, with little biodiversity.”
Since the 1990s, when the spread became impossible to ignore, Minnesota foresters, park managers and cities have spent millions of dollars a year trying to beat it back. They’ve used chainsaws and trimmers, poisons and herbicides, and even goats for hire. The buckthorn almost always grows back within a few years.
It’s been so pervasive that a conventional wisdom formed that buckthorn seeds could survive dormant in the soil for up to six years. That thought has led to a sort of fatalism: even if the plant were entirely removed from a property there would be a looming threat that it would sprout back, Schuster said.
But there is nothing special about buckthorn seeds. They only survive for a year or two.
