Essays

Water Level Ecology in the Northwoods

By Rand Atkinson | January 29, 2025

Water makes our Planet Earth. Frozen, vapor, or liquid water determines what and where organisms survive. Weather follows water around the globe from our oceans to land and back again. Water creates a crisis after crisis. Droughts and floods. Feast and famine. Peace and war. This is how it affects man’s actions with or without…

Walleye World

By Rand Atkinson | August 11, 2023

Walleye is the species of the Northwoods fishery that represents the connection between the recreational world of fishing and the food world of sustenance. Its history spans thousands of years of human culture following geological time. It is a species that is both predator of other species and prey in the aquatic world including humans…

True Walleye Resource Management

By Rand Atkinson | April 9, 2022

The wisdom that comes with age can be lost even if one writes it down … as someone not only has to read what he has to say but believe in it … and act upon it to makes this a better world. This is an attempt. Wisconsin has been my home my whole life.…

Wisconsin Walleye Management 2021

By Rand Atkinson | January 12, 2021

The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources has called for public input into a new walleye management update. I would like to provide input as an aquatic ecologist who has had a career and a past professional association with fish, water law, and lake management in Wisconsin. Please view my resume/vitae. In early 2019 I semi-retired…