Digital TV conversion, Y2K computer meltdowns, killer bees, Mad Cow disease, acid rain, low-income housing proposals, almost any state budget proposal, depending if you are a Republican or a Democrat.

Find the common thread yet?

The discussion on these topics is often laced with hyperbole and exaggeration and couched in dire warnings. Occasionally these debates generate protests and demonstrations and the arguments are framed by heat - not light. What is often missing are cold, hard facts.

Well, the facts are in on one of those contentious debates: American Indian spearfishing in northern Wisconsin. Perhaps you don't remember this brouhaha. That is because it happened more than two decades ago. It came after a federal judge ruled that the Chippewa bands still had a right to spear fish on northern Wisconsin lakes in territories ceded by the bands in treaties signed in 1837 and 1842.

Angry protesters gathered at boat launches in Park Falls and elsewhere carrying signs and protesting what they said was a discriminatory ruling that would empty lakes, hurt tourism and drive down property values.

The dispute roiled Wisconsin each spring for a few years. A few arrests were made and, ultimately, a federal court barred protests by an anti-spearfishing group 15 years ago.

And the issue died out. The contentious piece of Wisconsin's recent history was revisited recently in news stories in Eau Claire and Milwaukee newspapers.

One report noted that this spring tribal spearers hauled in a record number of walleyes from northern lakes - 32,000 of them. But the catch went largely unnoticed. In the ensuing years since the protests that warned Wisconsin's northern lakes would be emptied of walleye, that hasn't happened. In the ensuing years, the Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission monitored the spearing and recorded each fish taken as the spearfishing haul rapidly rose from a few thousand to between 20,000 and 30,000 each year. The commission and tribes set up a quota system to protect the fishery.

The state Department of Natural Resources did its sampling, too. The Eau Claire newspaper reported that the system for regulating tribal and sport fishing catches - lowering bag limits for sport anglers so the combined catch doesn't exceed 35 percent of the adult walleye population - has done its job. The walleye populations have been stable for the past 20 years.

Bigger threats to the walleye now may come from growing population of largemouth bass - which some say is linked to gradual lake warming. That, of course, may bring other arguments.

As a fishing commission spokesman told the Eau Claire paper, "We know so much more about northern Wisconsin lakes than we did 25 years ago, since the tribes and the state pooled their resources to better understand fish populations. To see that we've transcended all of the issues and misunderstanding of the '80s is a big deal. Those fears of crashing fish populations and property values bottoming out, those things have gone in the opposite direction."

Those are the cold, hard facts after two decades of study. When we hear other arguments with dire warnings, we would all do well to remember this fish story.