The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service welcomes Bradley Young to its Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Resources Office in Essex Junction, Vermont.

?Dr. Young brings experience and credentials that are essential to state-of-the-art management of sea lamprey in Lake Champlain. Given the tight federal budget, we are very lucky to be able to bring him aboard,? said David Tilton, project leader of the Lake Champlain Fish and Wildlife Resources Complex. "Brad's addition to the Lake Champlain Office will help sea lamprey control efforts and open avenues into newly emerging techniques for controlling sea lamprey populations in Lake Champlain,? Tilton said. Sea lamprey control in Lake Champlain is jointly managed by the states of New York and Vermont and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Young comes to the Champlain Basin after finishing 3 years of sea lamprey research at Michigan State University. He has spent more than 5 years working with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Sea Lamprey Control Office and Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans on research to enhance sea lamprey control. These established relationships with Great Lakes agencies will now provide more opportunities for the Lake Champlain Office to coordinate efforts with their Great Lakes counterparts while also collaborating on newly developing sea lamprey control strategies..

Young's sea lamprey research has focused on identifying pheromones (odors emitted by animals) that attract members of the opposite sex to mating nests and attract migrating adults to specific streams or traps. His background in pheromone research will potentially contribute to developing new methods of sea lamprey control, which may help to further decrease the Lake Champlain sea lamprey population. Young will collaborate with the University of Vermont and the Vermont Cooperative Fish and Wildlife Research Unit on studies investigating the potential uses of pheromones in Lake Champlain tributaries for sea lamprey control measures.

NORTHEAST REGION, U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE -- Conserving the Nature of the Northeast