Minnesota
Climate change could drive loons out of Minnesota and Wisconsin, scientist warns
MINOCQUA, Wis. — A scientist warns that the effects of climate change could ultimately drive Minnesota’s state bird out of the state entirely.
Loons captivate our imaginations and steal our hearts, but they’re literally shrinking. Loon nesting season on Blue Lake in Minocqua, Wisconsin has become a holiday of sorts.
“It is a big deal around here,” said lake resident Brian Colianni “When the chicks hatch, it’s loon watch.”
For 32 years, Professor Walter Piper, a biology professor at Chapman University in Orange, California, has made the trek from the West Coast for this front-row seat.
Piper Tags and tracks loons with the help of lake residents and young research assistants from around the country. All hoping to uncover what’s happening with the majestic icons of the north. You can follow his work online.
After cruising in Colianni’s pontoon for a while we spot a pair of chicks with their dad, but having a sibling these days is less common.
“A two-chick brood is almost getting to be a special thing now and that’s a reflection of a thing that’s going on here in Wisconsin,” said Piper.
Loon chicks are shrinking in northern Wisconsin — both in numbers and size — something that’s worsened since the early 2000s.
At one month, a loon chick used to weigh about 3.5 pounds. Now, they’re closer to 3 pounds. That worries lake residents like Brian and Teresa Colianni.
“It’s really disturbing because it’s such a part of our habitat and such a part of what we like up here,” said Brian Colianni.
To understand why chicks are shrinking, you first have to understand how they forage. If you’ve ever seen a loon fishing, you’ll notice they peer below the surface before diving down to grab their next meal.
Loons need to see to hunt, and to hunt they need clear water. That’s where climate change becomes a problem. Our more frequent and intense downpours wash things like fertilizers and sediment into the water making it murky and hard to hunt.
“Parents simply can’t keep themselves alive and feed the chicks enough to keep those chicks growing,” said Piper.
The rain and heat also allow black flies to thrive. The pests can swarm and annoy loons and that can drive them off their nests.
“That second chick that would have made it 25 or 30 years ago when we didn’t have the water clarity problems that we have now. That second chick can’t make it anymore,” said Piper.
Piper says they used satellite images from over the decades to confirm water quality was dropping.
“It’s very serious,” said Piper.
At some point, Piper thought if this is happening in Wisconsin, it could be happening in Minnesota too. As a result, in 2021, he expanded his research into Minnesota to include places like the white fish chain of lakes near Crosslake, Minnesota.
But Piper’s early findings in the land of ten thousand lakes are even more troubling than in Wisconsin.
Just 82% of Minnesota’s state birds return after wintering in the south. That’s lower than Wisconsin’s 88%, and it surprised Piper.
Piper says while the return rate is not equivalent to the survival rate, it is certainly a strong indicator.
“It’s another thing that’s keeping me awake at night,” said Piper.
His decades of data show loons in northern Wisconsin are declining 6% a year.
“It means within 20 years we’ll have virtually no loons here in northern Wisconsin,” said Piper.
Others, like the National Audubon Society, say because of climate change, loons simply won’t live here by the end of the century. Despite all of that, we have loon-watching to enjoy in the here and now.
As loon parents try to shelter their little ones from tough realities, others rally behind the symbolic and captivating creature.
“My hope is just to hold on to loons. To keep loons around in Wisconsin and Minnesota,” said Piper.
If you want to help, Piper says you can stop using lawn fertilizers. Planting or keeping native shorelines provides healthy habitat and clearer lakes. Building nest rafts can help, too. You can also get involved: Community scientists help provide important information to save the birds we love.
A dangerous social media trend is circulating online, and Minnesota health experts are warning parents it involves allergy medication.
Doctors say the so-called Benadryl challenge involves teens taking large amounts of the medication and record themselves as the effects kick in.
“Our goal here at Children’s Minnesota is if a trend causes any sort of physical harm or mental harm to make sure that we’re taking care of our patients,” said Dr. Nita Gupta, a pediatric emergency medicine physician at Children’s Minnesota.
According to the Minnesota Department of Health, the trend first gained attention in 2020 when there were 184 reported cases tied to intentional misuse of the allergy medication. Cases continued to rise the years but dipped in 2024 and then more than doubled in 2025, reaching nearly 400 cases. Most of the cases involved teens ages 15 to 19.
Dr. Gupta believes the main draw is the hallucinogen aspect of it, but says there are so many other negative consequences that can happen.
Health experts say the allergy medication can become dangerous when taken in large doses. Symptoms can escalate quickly and may include agitation, blurred vision, seizures and in severe cases, death.
“The second the parent knows that their child consumed this is a reason to come in or at least call poison control, don’t even wait for the symptoms to start,” Dr. Gupta said.
Experts say the resurgence of this dangerous challenge shows how quickly trends can return, and they urge parents to talk to their children about what they are seeing online.
Dr. Gupta believes early conversations at home may help prevent serious injury.
The Minnesota Regional Poison Center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week for anyone with questions. The organization’s phone number is 1-800-222-1222.
Trading LaMelo Ball to the Minnesota Timberwolves will make the Charlotte Hornets worse in 2026-27. There is no denying that.
Ball was the lone driver of Charlotte’s top-five offense, speeding the Hornets’ fast-paced attack up and down and all around the floor to create open looks for himself and his talented teammates. LaMelo’s Gastonia shooting range, unorthodox handles, eagle-eyed passing, and his ability to heat up in a moment’s notice just simply cannot be aggregated in the interim.
With Ball on the floor, Charlotte’s offensive rating jumped by 11.6 points per 100 possessions, good for the 99th percentile among guards in the NBA. Kon Knueppel’s three-point percentage increased by 10.3 points when he shared the floor with Ball, and Brandon Miller shot 20.5% better at the rim (an area where he struggles) with LaMelo helping create looks for him.
Everyone who plays alongside LaMelo Ball gets better — the proof is in any publicly available number you can find.
Charlotte’s historically efficient offense cratered when LaMelo hit the bench, and trading him now, no matter what they got in return, will immediately set back the Hornets’ push to become the premier NBA franchise they aspire to be.
But what if I told you this move does make some sense in the Hornet’s long-term team build? And that Charlotte is justified to sell-high on their All-NBA caliber point guard? I’m not sure I believe it, so I’m going to try and convince myself as I attempt to convince you.
Justifying Charlotte’s Decision to Trade LaMelo Ball
I can understand some trepidation about building the whole plane out of LaMelo Ball. He only played a total of 105 games in the three seasons prior to 2025-26, and until that becomes the exception, not the norm, it will always be dangerous to have him as the centerpiece of a franchise.
LaMelo Ball played 72 games in 2025-26, the second-highest number of his young NBA career. The Hornets were cautious about over-taxing their star creator, only playing him 28 minutes per game, a career-low, and crafting a roster that was built to ease LaMelo’s burden.
Last summer, Charlotte targeted Tre Mann (which looks bad in hindsight), Collin Sexton, and Spencer Dinwidde to provide supplementary ball handling and lower the league-high 37.1% usage rate Ball racked up in 2024-25. Championships are won on the margins, and if you have to allocate extra resources to your point guard room as a parachute for a player like LaMelo, there’s a chance you’re missing out on some impact on the fringes of your roster.
Also, the skill sets of Ball, Knueppel, and Miller are quite redundant. They are all perimeter-focused offensive options who struggle to score in the paint. Charlotte could believe that it was necessary to move one of them in an attempt to diversify their offensive attack, and due to Kon and Brandon’s contract situation and LaMelo’s long-term health outlook (which the Hornets would know better than anybody, by the way), they decided that the time to sell-high on Ball was now.
How high would the ceiling of a fully-formed, maxed-out contractually Ball, Knueppel, and Miller trio even be? A second round exit assuming everything goes right? By trading Ball now, adding a talented front court piece in Naz Reid, creating the largest trade exception in league history, and setting yourself up to be a real player in trade talks about any disgruntled superstar, Jeff Peterson just created a number of avenues to rebuild this team around its burgeoning stars.
Could the package have been more robust? Sure. But there’s no guarantee another team with more assets to spare than Minnesota would have even registered more than nominal interst in LaMelo Ball. The market is the market. Peterson said last summer that he’ll push the chips in when the time is right, and if nothing else, he just added a few more to his stash.
There is also a chance that the Timberwolves look radically different when these swaps and picks are ready to convey. Minnesota’s asset reserves are bone dry, starting center Rudy Gobert is on the back-nine of his NBA career, and the Western Conference has a couple of well-positioned juggernauts that the Wolves will have to navigate every year that they employ Anthony Edwards and Ball.
And what if Edwards becomes disillusioned with his standing in Minnesota and forces his way out before his five-year, $244M contract expires in 2028-29? Or what if he leaves that summer in free agency? The Hornets will have the opportunity to pick up the pieces and feast off of the wreckage in Minnesota in that nightmare scenario for the Timberwolves.
There has to be more bubbling underneath the surface for Charlotte to be willing to take the massive PR hit of trading LaMelo Ball just weeks after the franchise played some of the best basketball in the league for an extended period. There is an argument to be made that this deal says more about Charlotte’s lack of belief in the ceiling of a LaMelo-led team than anything else.
And there is merit to that.
Ball has played in four Play-In Tournament games and struggled mighitly in three of them. When the game slows down and becomes increasingly more physical, Ball has failed to hold up. The Hornets must be projecting that Ball’s postseason struggles will continue in Minnesota, capping the long-term ceiling of the Timberwolves.
This is a bet against a couple of things: LaMelo Ball’s long-term health, the viability of a back court duo of Ball and Edwards, and Minnestoa’s asset-poor state. I’m not sure if it’s a bet I would have been willing to make, but it is the one Jeff Peterson and the Hornets decided to.
And whether you like it or not, the dice have been thrown.
There is now more pressure than ever on the shoulders of Jeff Peterson. He somehow pulled off the rare feat of making his team worse in the short term while sending the expectations of his fanbase through the roof. There has to be more moves coming from Charlotte. There has to.
Which is why I’m calling on you to holster your torches and pitchforks for now. In a vacuum, this deal is a tough one to swallow. LaMelo Ball brought unquantifiable joy to the city of Charlotte and spearheaded a run that awoke the long dormant basketball-crazed city. Not only did his impact on winning supersede the narratives around him, his impact on the franchise’s bottom line did as well. The city loved LaMelo, and it is a shame that he was sent packing just as things were starting to percolate for the first time in his Hornets career.
However, if it is a part of a larger plan that reshapes the Hornets’ roster into a group that can compete at a high level in the NBA playoffs, then I will tip my cap to Peterson and his team. Winning does cure all at the end of the day, right?
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Minnesota leaders are sending photos that highlight the state’s landmarks and culture to the U.S. Capitol for a special time capsule.
The time capsule gives each state and territory delegation an opportunity to provide a snapshot of time in 2026 as America celebrates its 250th birthday.
Photos from all eight Minnesota congressional districts were sent to the Capitol.
They include Lake Superior, the State Fair, the loon, Prince’s Purple Rain and the National Eagle Center.
The capsule will be sealed inside the Capitol Visitor Center until America’s 500th birthday on July 4, 2276.
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