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Local Animals
Local Animals: the Two Lakes' Measured Record
The Story of Lakeville section is the lakes: Riddles, 77 acres, surveyed 16 July 2019; Pleasant, 29 acres, surveyed 19 June 2008. Both bathymetries are Indiana DNR's (the Pleasant Lake acreage conflict, C48 — 29 DNR against 27…
The 1880 Baseline — What Chapman Found Still Here, and What Was Already Gone
Chapman, History of St. Joseph County (1880), Chapter II, "Natural History," p. 340
The township's animal baseline is a county list written when the prairie was still in memory. Chapman opens it with the loss: "Of the species of native quadrupeds that once roamed the flowery prairies and wild forests of this…
Bison on This Ground — the Portage Record, and Nothing After
Chapman Chapter I, p. 336 (quoting the South Bend Tribune, 1878); Howard, History of St. Joseph County (1907)
Buffalo stood on this county's prairies in the portage era and were a memory by 1880. Chapman quotes an 1878 Tribune writer placing buffalo among the animals of the county's Indigenous inhabitants, and Howard carries La Salle's…
The 1880 Bird List, Whole — Turkeys Going, Pigeons Thinning, Eagles Scarce
Chapman (1880), pp. 341–343
Chapman's bird chapter is a disappearance ledger written before the disappearances finished. The wild turkey "has almost entirely disappeared," though "in an early day they were in abundance." The prairie chicken stands under…
The 1880 Fish List — and the Sturgeon That Is Not in It
Chapman (1880), p. 344
Chapman's county fish list is complete enough that an absence in it means something. He names black bass, goggle-eye, and crappie; two sunfish; pickerel running five to twenty-five pounds and gar pike; buffalo, red-horse, white sucker, and two black suckers; channel catfish, mud catfish, and two small catfish running one to thirty pounds, with the bullhead; chub, silver-sides, freshwater herring, and minnows. No sturgeon appears anywhere in the list. That absence is the baseline for this section's great-fish question: whatever the St. Joseph River carried at the county's north end, the county historian's 1880 fish fauna for the county's waters — the township's lakes and the Yellow River among them — has no sturgeon in it, and no later carrier reached adds one for these waters.
The Deer and the Turkey Came Back — the Restoration Arcs, on the State Record
Indiana DNR restoration record, via DNR and Purdue carriers, read 2026
Both of Chapman's lost upland species returned in the twentieth century, by deliberate restocking. The deer arc: the last known wild deer in Indiana was killed in 1893, near Red Cloud in Knox County, the species' last stand…
The Otter Came Back by Truck; the Beaver's Return Date Is Not Pinned; Drainage Took the Rest
Indiana DNR otter reintroduction record; Chapman (1880), pp. 340, 343
Of the wetland animals, the otter's return is a dated programme and the beaver's is not yet a dated fact here. The otter was officially classified extinct in Indiana in 1942; the DNR's reintroduction began in 1995, releasing 303…
The Pigeon and the Prairie Chicken — Two Sentences of Chapman's, Both Carried Out
Chapman (1880), pp. 341–343
Chapman watched both species going and wrote the going down. The passenger pigeon's county record is his thinning sentence — semi-annual visits continuing, "but not in such vast numbers as years ago" — set against the Audubon…
Five Fish Ladders and a Hatchery — the River's New Fish, and Still No Sturgeon
Michigan DNR Fisheries Technical Report 94-5; Indiana DNR Bodine Hatchery record; counts from fall 1992
The St. Joseph River was re-engineered for salmon, and the engineering is the county's fish story of the last half-century. The St. Joseph River Trout and Salmon Project, created by Indiana and Michigan in the late 1970s…
The Raptor Return, at the Nests of Record — None of Them in This Township
DNR release, 8 May 2015; ND-LEEF and Tribune carriers, 2015–2026
Eagles and ospreys nest again in St. Joseph County; the nests of record stand north of this township, and the boundary prints. At Potato Creek, bald eagles nested unsuccessfully from 2012 to 2014 — first enhancing an osprey nest…
The Christmas Count and the Long Baseline — a Circle Named South Bend, a County List from 1880
Audubon Christmas Bird Count, Indiana summaries, 121st and 122nd counts
The county's birds are counted every winter under a circle that carries South Bend's name. Audubon's Indiana summaries record a South Bend count circle: in the 122nd count (the 2021 season) the circle found the state count's…
No Rookery of Record, and the Species Baseline Stays a Named Gap
Chapman (1880), p. 343; searches of this lane, 2026
Chapman's herons were visitors, and no rookery has been put on this township's record since. Chapman lists the great blue, green, and night herons and the bitterns among the county's waders — birds of the marshes, already losing their haunts to drainage — but names no rookery, and no rookery record for Union Township or the county appears in the carriers reached; the rookery-that-is-not-here prints as a searched negative at that strength. What stands is the county frame entire: the 1880 quadruped, bird, and fish lists, the restoration arcs, and the lakes' surveyed fish printed in this history — a county fauna within which the township's own list has never been separately written.
The Invasives, Named One by One — No Lake Record for Any of Them
DNR lake survey record; searches of this lane, 2026
The checklist names the invaders; the lakes' record answers species by species. Zebra mussel: no record ties it to Riddles Lake, Pleasant Lake, or the Yellow River in the carriers reached. The carps — common carp as a surveyed…