Growing Fruits and Veggies in the City

  • Planting an urban garden in Louisville, KY. (Photo courtesy of the City of Louisville)

For decades, people in American cities have relied on farmers in rural areas to grow the fruits and vegetables we eat. But a new generation of farmers says there’s no reason to keep agriculture out of the urban core. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Transcript

For decades, people in American cities have relied on farmers in rural areas to grow the fruits and vegetables we eat. But a new generation of farmers says there’s no reason to keep agriculture out of the urban core. Ann Dornfeld reports:

Sean Conroe and Amber Banks found each other like so many people do these days: on the Internet. They met for cupcakes, and talked about their hopes and dreams.
It wasn’t a date. Amber and Sean both wanted to start a farm. In the middle of the city.

“Because there are a lot of neighborhoods that don’t have access to healthy, fresh produce and if they do it can be very expensive. So we see unused space as a great place to grow food to make it more accessible to people.”

They call their project Alleycat Acres. Conroe created a Web site to recruit volunteers and donations. Within a week, they were offered a plot of land between two houses in south Seattle. Conroe says 20 volunteers worked for six weekends to turn the grassy land into what it is now. A farm.

“We have spinach, onions, radish, lettuce and chard that’s all ready to be harvested right now.”

There are carrots and green onions. Peas, beans, and turnips.

“Broccoli, tomatillos and cucumbers which are all starting to pop up. And then strawberries.”

Sean Conroe is in college, and Amber Banks is a teacher. But they both grew up farming and gardening.

“Since this is our first year it’s gonna be tough. But we are very pleased so far. We did not expect there to be this much food already, so things are definitely off to a good start.”

The Alleycats have harvested nearly 200 pounds of produce so far. They’ve donated most of it to local food banks. They deliver it by bike.

(sound of snipping and bagging greens)

Bridget Barni is sitting in the dirt thinning the salad greens. She’s one of the 80 people who’ve signed up to volunteer on the farm.

“I just learned how to do this this morning. It’s amazing what you can learn when you show up on a Saturday and are willing to get dirty!”

Like a lot of the volunteers, Barni doesn’t have much gardening experience.

“So what’s the secret to picking in the right place. The right leaves?”

“Y’know, I asked that same question! And it turns out there is no science to it! It’s more like, just get in there and let the new leaves get some sun and grow.”

Exposing city-dwellers to the joys of growing food is one of the Alleycats’ missions. They invite school groups to the farm to help out. And Amber Banks says they want the same people who get food donations to know how to work the soil.

“Y’know, ’cause we’re not gonna be around forever. People are eventually gonna have to take over these gardens.
To teach people that they can feed themselves from the ground that’s right around them is really a good message as well.”

Sean Conroe says Alleycat Acres is expanding to other vacant lots in the city. So are a lot of other urban farming groups. They’re planting carrots in unused yards. And broccoli where old businesses were torn down.

“We’d like to expand as much as we can where there are empty lots that have ample sunlight, that have access to water and that have community rallying around projects such as this.”

The city has even dubbed 2010 “The Year of Urban Agriculture.” But these farms’ growth is limited. That’s because like a lot of cities, Seattle has restrictions on urban farms. The city council is now considering changing those laws.

For the Environment Report, I’m Ann Dornfeld.

Water Lessons From Israel

  • Moses Zohar is a farmer in the Negev desert is Israel. (Photo by Sadie Babits)

A lot of fresh water goes to grow food. But as the population increases in the world so does the demand for that water. In the U.S., states like California and Arizona already face water shortages. In Israel, farmers are using short-term solutions until they can find long term answers. Sadie Babits reports farmers there are raising crops that don’t necessarily need the best water:

Transcript

A lot of fresh water goes to grow food. But as the population increases in the world so does the demand for that water. In the U.S., states like California and Arizona already face water shortages. In Israel, farmers are using short-term solutions until they can find long term answers. Sadie Babits reports farmers there are raising crops that don’t necessarily need the best water.

There’s not much out here in the Negev desert except for the occasional sand storm and scrub brush. So if you want to grow something out in the desert, you need water. And that’s a hard thing to find in a country that doesn’t have much of it. Just ask Moses Zohar.

“ When you have water you have life. If you have no water you have no life here.”

Zohar is a farmer in the Negev desert. He remembers the day he and his family stood on this barren land. Zohar says h is knees were shaking.

“He stood here and said there is nothing here how am I going to do this [Hebrew [duck below translator]] He didn’t have any income… he had kids to feed and he’d just left his job and he had to start anew.”

Now ten years later Zohar has a small vineyard, an olive grove and dozens of pomegranate trees. He says the secret lies in huge underground aquifers. There’s a catch though. The w ater is too salty to drink, but it turns out pomegranates and olives don’t mind the brackish water. Shaher Nizre is a student at Ben Gurion University who helps farmers select and grow crops that can handle saline water.

“It depends on the tree itself because it has a system that can take salt out from the water. Not all of them can do this.”

Right now he explains scientists are testing different kinds of pomegranates on Zohar’s land.

“For example this tree will have very red fruits. This one will have soft seeds and what we try to do is try and see the best variety for Israel and the best variety for Europe.”

In other words, they’re trying to find pomegranates and olives that can be exported to European markets without using water people would normally use to drink. But even these crops can only be grown here for a while. Eventually the brackish water will put so much salt in the ground, nothing will grow.

Eilon Adar leads the Zuckerberg Institute for Water Research. It’s in the Negev desert.

“The population will increase so we should need more water for domestic use, for agriculture and for food production. It will indefinitely have to come from new non-conventional resources.”

One of those resources is saltwater seas. In the mid 1950s, when the country was designing a national water network to tap into the Sea of Galilee, scientists were also building the first desalination lab to take salty water and turn it into drinking water.

“So now that the Sea of Galilee is deprived from surplus of water we are ready with desalination. And what we are doing now is the same. We are happy with the results. We keep developing new technology for the next generation of producing new water.”

Adar says Israel must also learn to treat and desalinate sewage water that can be used to irrigate crops.

Water experts in the U.S. say we can learn from Israel and how that country deals with water scarcity. America’s era of using fresh water from underground aquifers and diverted rivers won’t last forever. Researchers say we need to learn to conserve water better and like the Israelis, plan for the day when the current supplies are sucked dry.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

The Pride of an Industrial Town

  • Cline Avenue and its bridge once cut across and over steel mills and refineries in East Chicago, Indiana. Inspectors found it was structurally unsound and the state didn't feel it warranted repair. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

The US government estimates about twelve percent of the country’s bridges are in dire need of repair.
Those are hazards, of course, but for towns that pride themselves on their industrial might … a crumbling bridge is a concrete and steel embarrassment.
Shawn Allee found one town that needs to remove a bridge but thinks maybe that’s for the best:

Transcript

The US government estimates about twelve percent of the country’s bridges are in dire need of repair.
Those are hazards, of course, but for towns that pride themselves on their industrial might … a crumbling bridge is a concrete and steel embarrassment.
Shawn Allee found one town that needs to remove a bridge but thinks maybe that’s for the best:

East Chicago, Indiana, has been a steel- and chemical-manufacturing powerhouse, and still is, but mills and refineries need fewer workers these days.
That industrial decline is a sore spot that got poked pretty hard last fall.
Some inspectors found structural problems in the Cline Avenue bridge.
It’s an enormous bridge that let drivers soar over canals, trains, and industrial truck routes.
But the local government and the State of Indiana didn’t have the money for a fix, and they closed Cline Avenue bridge for good.

That bothers Monica Serrano.
She wonders, if the town’s losing a bridge, what does that say about the town?

“Why would I stay in this area? If I know the roads are deteriorating, and people are just gonna leave, why would I stay? I want to be in an area that would flourish. I really feel that don’t have the best judgement when it comes to the people here.”

Well, there’re people who think removing the bridge is an opportunity to remake East Chicago for the better.
One person who makes that argument is Kristi DeLaurentiis.
She’s with the Metropolitan Planning Council, a regional land-use think tank.
To make her case, she drives me past East Chicago’s steel mills and refineries.
From your car window … they loom large and dominate the landscape.

“There’s only small pockets of open space that are not privately or corporate-owned.”

DeLaurentiis says back in the day, big industry scooped up enormous stretches of real – estate, including the shoreline along Lake Michigan.

“Maybe but you can kind of see the lake front from here …
It goes on for what seems like it goes on for miles. Nothing but beachfront that’s cut off by fences or very large industrial buildings, smokestacks and the like.
You know, they really have not taken advantage of the shoreline they have.”

DeLaurentiis says the mills use fewer workers these days, and they need less land, too.
So, East Chicago is hoping to reclaim industrial space for an economic boost.
Maybe developers would build new neighborhoods closer to the lake and pay a premium for it.
Or, at the very least, residents could get more parks.

“Here, it seems a real shame not to have people picnicking and using the open space and really not to have personal enjoyment within their own community.”

Well, back to the issue of the Cline Avenue bridge …
DeLaurentiis says it makes things worse – it blocks off the lake from the rest of the town.
It’s so tall, you can’t see past it and you gotta drive a ways to get around it.
If you want to reclaim industrial space for parklands or beachfront neighborhoods, no one will do that if the bridge is in the way.

That’s the practical argument … but what about the idea that big infrastructure is part of East Chicago’s identity?
Surprisingly, big industry won’t miss the bridge much.
Mark Maassel (MAH-zull) heads the Northwest Indiana Forum, a group that represents business in the area, including the steel mills.

“So while I recognize those comments, if we rebuilt that bridge, the one thing we can say for certain is that you’ve spent an enormous amount of dollars and cents resources that would have been potentially used in some other way, and you’ve done it to recreate a barrier between one part of the community and the next.”

Maassel says the whole town of East Chicago, including the remaining steel mills, will benefit from a better local economy.
If that means letting an old symbol like a bridge die, then so be it.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

A Greener Way to Work?

  • Some researchers say telecommuting can be more energy efficient if it's done 5 days a week. (Photo courtesy of Penarc - Wikimedia Commons)

Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Telecommuting is becoming more popular in the U.S. There’s an assumption that working from home saves energy. But some experts say whether it actually saves energy depends on how you do it. Rebecca Williams has more:

Something like 33 million of us work from home or a coffee shop at least once a month. And the whole idea of telecommuting just sounds like it saves energy. I mean, you’re cutting out your commute. So it saves gas.
And it can save a lot of gas money.

Sun Microsystems has what it calls an Open Work program. It allows employees to work wherever they want… from home or from a coffee shop. The company studied its teleworkers’ habits in 2007. And they found the average employee working from home two days a week ended up saving 500 to 600 dollars a year in fuel costs.

But things are more complicated than that.

Arpad Horvath is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California Berkeley. He studies teleworking.

“For example one might telecommute, but also maintain an office at the company as well as at home which of course now means we have to support with energy and other inputs two offices rather than one.”


So – if you have a company office AND a home office… and you’re using both… he says the energy savings might be kind of a wash because you’re using more energy at home. And if you’re not commuting… but you hop in the car to run a bunch of errands to get out of the house… you might not save that much gas.

Horvath says… for telecommuting to save the most energy, it can’t be just a couple days a week.

“The ideal situation is that somebody teleworks full time, gives up the company office and doesn’t increase anything else in one’s individual life, doesn’t travel more for pleasure, doesn’t substantially change the setup at home.”

But for a lot of people it just doesn’t work that way.

Surveys from the Telework Research Network show that less than two percent of Americans work from home all the time.
And experts say the main reason is: it can be a trust issue for the boss.
Rose Stanley is with World-at-Work. It’s a human resources organization.

“It’s a cultural shift within an organization to go to the next level of managing without being able to see their employees. That face time is still a stigma culturally speaking.”

Stanley says bosses just need to be trained on how to manage remote workers. She says her boss pops up on an instant message board throughout the day, just to check in.

Another obstacle to full-time telecommuting is… it’s just YOU. There’s nobody to talk to but the dog.
So some telecommuters are trying co-working. It’s a shared working space for people who would normally work from home.

(snd of espresso machine)

Mike Kessler is the co-owner of Workantile Exchange in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It’s a big, open space… with a coffee shop right up front. Kessler says the whole idea of co-working is… instead of having dozens of individual home offices… there’s one office that dozens of people share when they need to.

“The environmental benefits are everybody needs the same thing to get things done… you need your wifi, table, chair, good coffee, meeting rooms, a bathroom… not everybody needs those at the same time.”

He says also… the space is close to where people live, so they can walk or bike to work.

Some analysts think this kind of setup is where more of us are headed. But they say for most companies… telecommuting is not driven by energy savings… it’s a business decision. It’s more about retaining good employees and increasing productivity. If it saves employees some gas money, that’s just a bonus.

For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

D.I.Y. Cleaning Products

  • Reporter Karen Kelly's daughter making safer cleaning products at home (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Most people probably don’t enjoy cleaning. But we’ve all got to do it. And if you’ve ever looked at the household cleaner aisle in the grocery store, you know there can be some pretty strong chemicals involved. Karen Kelly reports on a cheaper, chemical-free alternative:

Related Links

Radon Continues to Plague Americans

  • David Aschenbrenner from Pro-Tech Environmental installs a radon mitigation system. (Photo by Mark Brush)

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Transcript

There’s an invisible, odorless gas that kills 21,000 Americans every year. We’ve known about radon gas for a long time. But as Mark Brush reports, experts say we’re still a long way from fixing the problem:

Radon gas is found down here…

…in the basement.

Really, it’s all around us. The gas drifts out of the ground from bits of uranium ore. Normally, there’s not enough of it to cause a problem. But it can get trapped in our homes, schools, and offices. We breathe it in. And the gas can cause lung cancer. It’s the second leading cause of lung cancer next to smoking. And if you’re a smoker – you’re even more at risk.

The level of radon gas in this basement is unsafe. More than four times a safe standard set by the EPA:

So a crew of two guys is here to fix the problem.

David Aschenbrenner works for Pro-Tech Environmental in Ann Arbor, MI. He says radon gas seeps up from the ground and makes its way into the house through cracks and holes in the foundation:

“So as the air is rising through the house, the house acts as a chimney. It’s creating what we call the stack effect. And that’s what’s actually pulling the radon in.”

You can’t see it. You can’t smell it. But it’s often there.

“So with the radon piping, and the radon fan, it’s going to create a suction slightly stronger than the house breathing normally.”

They drill a hole in the basement floor – put a PVC pipe into the hole. And fan on the pipe will vent the radon gas outside.
Right now – a lot of people find out about radon when they buy or sell a house. The air is tested and if there’s a problem – it can be fixed.

Bill Field is an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa. He’s studied the health risks of exposure to radiation for decades. Field says these systems work. But even though more people know about the threat of radon gas – there are still more people exposed today than in the past:

“We’re further behind now, than we were 20 years ago with addressing the radon issue, because more homes are being built that aren’t radon resistant than are being mitigated. Each year there are tens of thousands of home that are coming on the market that will hopefully be fixed someday, but they could have been fixed when they were first built.”

Field says new homes should be built to keep radon out. He says simple changes in home construction – changes that would only add $500 in construction costs – would work. He says there should be a federal requirement to build homes this way, since radon can be a problem in every state.

There are some states, counties and cities that have radon resistant new construction written into their building codes – but more than half don’t – and even in the places that do have the code on the books – workers told us that it’s not always enforced – so it’s easy to just skip the requirement.

The National Association of Home Builders says it would oppose any federal requirements to build homes this way. They say radon should be dealt with where there are known hot spots.

There are parts of the country where radon can be bigger problem than in other areas. But it can be a problem no matter where you are. The EPA has a recommended standard for radon gas. It says that homes or offices or schools should be fixed if they have radon levels of 4 pico-curies per liter or more. But Bill Field says sixty percent of the cancers caused by radon were caused at levels below this EPA standard:

“Talk about a safe level of four pico-curies per liter is really a misnomer. It’s like saying it’s o.k. to cross the road blindfolded because there’s only one car coming instead of three. There really is no safe level of radon.”

A recent report by the President’s Cancer Panel evaluated the progress being made on cancer prevention. Exposure to radioactive radon gas is one of the areas where the experts said not enough is being done. And because the problem is getting worse – they’re recommending the government do more.

For The Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

“You can test your air for radon gas by buying a test kit at your local hardware store. They cost between ten and twenty dollars.”

Related Links

Living Without Plastic

  • Cheryl Lohrman victorious after finding a specialty deli that would sell her cheese and put it, plastic free, in her steel tin. (Photo courtesy of Sadie Babits)

We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.

Transcript

We use a lot of plastic. Every year some 30 million tons of plastic in the U.S. from diapers to bottles get tossed in landfills. One woman wants to change those numbers. She’s trying to live her life without plastic. Sadie Babits caught up with her to find out if that’s really possible.

When Cheryl Lohrmann comes to the grocery store all she sees is plastic. Plastic yogurt containers, cheese wrapped in plastic shrink-wrap, juice bottles, plastic bags. She doesn’t want this stuff in her life. So Lohrmann decided she’d vote with her wallet by refusing to buy anything with plastic.

“We’re at cherry sprouts grocery store in Portland, OR where I’m going to purchase some cheese and some eggs.”

Eggs are no problem. She just puts them in her used egg carton. But cheese is a different story. She has a small steel tin that looks like it belongs with her camping gear – not the grocery store. And Lohrmann has a special request for the guy behind the counter.

“And that is if I get the cheese not wrapped up in plastic but just in this container or maybe you could put this on paper.”

“Aahhh. I don’t think we can do that because it needs to be wrapped up.”

Lohrmann gets that reaction a lot. So she won’t buy cheese here. It means a trip to another shop – this time a high-end specialty deli.

LouAnne Schooler owns this store. She explains to Lohrmann why they use plastic.

“Plastic, it’s the unfortunately simplest choice because we wrap and re-wrap continuously throughout the day and it can’t be left unwrapped and people need to see the cheese so that precludes it from being wrapped in most papers.”

But Schooler says she’s only too happy to help people like Lohrmann who don’t want their cheese shrink- wraped. So she drops the cheese –plastic free – into Lohrmann’s tin.

“That’s a good chunk of cheese. Magical moment here–thanks for letting me do that”

“Sure.”

Lohrmann started going plastic free a couple of years ago after reading Elizabeth Royte’s book Garbageland. The author tracked her trash to find out where it ended up. The chapter on plastic struck a nerve with Lohrmann.

“I think it’s been taken too far when you have toothpicks individually wrapped in plastic. You know you just start to think is that really necessary given the fact that this is such a toxic material that doesn’t have high enough recycling rights to really justify having it.”

Lohrmann also gets miffed that you end up paying for plastic three times. You pay for it at the grocery store and again to have it hauled to the landfill. Finally, she says we pay for it environmentally – plastic doesn’t disappear. So you might think it’s a little nuts to even think about living a life free of plastic. Lohrmann gets that.

“It is hard right now to feel like you can maneuver to get whatever you want without plastic.”

“Ok, so on a scale of one to ten–ten being plastic free–where are you?”

“I would say probably a nine.”

That’s a nine when it comes to buying groceries. Because let’s face it. Plastic is everywhere even in Lohrmann’s home. There’s her computer, picture frames, even the parts on her bike. She realizes going plastic free is nearly impossible but she’s willing to try to send a message especially to businesses that we need to reduce the amount of plastic in our lives.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sadie Babits.

Related Links

Gulf Spill Raises Questions About Imported Seafood

  • Right now, Congress is considering a bill that would give the FDA a lot more authority over imported seafood. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is looming over the seafood industry. Prices for things like shrimp and crab are going up. It might mean we’ll see even more imported seafood in the coming months. But as Tanya Ott reports, some people are questioning the safety of imported seafood:

Transcript

The oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico is looming over the seafood industry. Prices for things like shrimp and crab are going up. It might mean we’ll see even more imported seafood in the coming months. But as Tanya Ott reports, some people are questioning the safety of imported seafood:

Tom Robey runs around like a mad man. Or maybe a mad scientist. His laboratory is the kitchen.

“This is the beginning of New Orleans barbecue sauce for our shrimp dish. So it’s brown garlic and black pepper and rosemary and beer.”

Robey is executive chef at Veranda on Highland in Birmingham, Alabama. His specialty is regional seafood: Louisiana crawfish, Florida crab, Alabama shrimp.

When the Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded last month spewing oil into the Gulf, Robey shelled out nearly 3-thousand dollars to stockpile 600 pounds of shrimp.

And it’s a good thing, because officials closed some of the fishing grounds. It’s not clear how extensive and long-term the damage to Gulf seafood will be. Early tests don’t show substantial chemical contamination, but monitoring might have to continue for decades. Meanwhile, industry officials expect a shortage of domestic seafood. And other countries are ready to fill the gap.

We already import about 80% of our seafood. But the oil spill is expected to drive that number higher.

Tom Robey says he’ll take seafood off the menu before he serves imports.

“I’m nervous about, like, how that seafood was handled, how it was fed, if it was farmed raised. I mean every day there’s some kind of recall one or another coming from China.”

He may have reason to be nervous.

“I think it’s really a buyer beware issue.”

Caroline Smith DeWaal is director of food safety for the Washington DC-based Center for Science in the Public Interest. She says when state regulators tested imported shrimp they found it was contaminated with antibiotics and other chemical residues that are illegal in the US. Dewaal says there’s evidence some imported shrimp are grown in contaminated ponds.

Supporters of the industry say – while some tests have caught problems – that doesn’t mean all imported seafood is bad.

Norbert Sporns say there’s no need to worry. He’s CEO of a Seattle-based company called HQ Sustainable Maritime Industries. They farm tilapia – mostly in China. Sporns says the US has an international certification process that is rigorous and will catch potential problems.

“Prior to export we are subject to a series of tests. Once a product lands in the United States there are other tests that can be administered by the FDA on a spot check basis, so there are multiple levels of security in place.”

But the FDA only inspects about 2 percent of imports.

Ken Albala is a food historian at University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. He teaches about food policy and environmental issues. He says the cattle industry has been tightly regulated, but:

“Fishing hasn’t been.. And when you’re talking about a several thousand pound cow versus a bass – let alone a shrimp. I don’t see how they could ever begin to inspect consistently what’s coming in from abroad. Definitely not.”

Right now, Congress is considering a bill that would give the FDA a lot more authority over imported seafood. So far, the bill has passed the house and is waiting to be picked up in the Senate.

So – consumers who want to eat shrimp – and boy do we love our shrimp! – are faced with two choices:

Trust that random spot checks find any problems with seafood imports…

Or pay more for domestic, wild harvested shrimp …

And that price could go even higher if the oil spill in the gulf contaminates a good part of the domestic supply.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Whooping Cranes Not Hatching

  • One of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young in the wild, but so far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and gone on to migrating. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

Transcript

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

It’s not easy to get whooping cranes to reproduce, but here in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, researchers have had success at getting captive cranes to produce
chicks.

For the last ten years, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has created a
flock of more than 100 whoopers. Researchers hatched the birds
– and trained them to migrate by flying behind ultralight aircraft ….or to
follow adult cranes. The birds now fly between the upper Midwest and
southeastern U.S.

But one of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young
in the wild. So far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and
gone on to migrating.

Jeb Barzen is with the International Crane Foundation. He says they can’t
keep supplying the flock with chicks hatched in captivity:

“It’s expensive. it’s expensive in time, expensive in money…expensive in overall conservation effort, because what you put into whooping crane reintroduction you can’t put into other conservation projects at that time. so to be fully successful …you want that population to be
able to survive on it’s own.”

So far, about 16 million dollars has gone into re-introducing whoopers to
the eastern u.s. More than half of that money came from private donors.

The birds’ main summer home is here at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
in Wisconsin.

It’s not that the cranes don’t get close to each other. If you watch the cranes here, you can spot single cranes and the occasional couple.

Jeb Barzen pauses to watch two tall white cranes having a territorial dispute:

“Ooh! these birds are threatening each other. that’s a preen behind the wing
threat…that the second bird is doing…so these are not birds of the same
pair.”

Researchers don’t know why the birds are not raising more wild chicks. But
they do have some theories. Even when cranes do make nice and produce an
egg – the relatively young cranes may be too inexperienced to be patient
parents. Black flies may drive the birds off their nest. Or the parents
may be low on body fat and take off to find food.

The crane researchers are gathering data to find out what cranes need for a
successful nesting site. They’re using tracking radios to follow some of the
birds.

Anne Lacy is with the International Crane Foundation. Today she’s driving
around southern Wisconsin listening for the whoopers.

“it’s important to look at what choices they make as a young bird
before they breed…to know how they choose those areas….they need for
water for roosting at night…they need that eventually for nesting.”

This kind of research is being ramped up this spring. That’s because an
independent report raised some concerns about the crane recovery effort.
The report was done by consultants hired by the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership. It mentions problems with financial oversight, scientific
coordination, and whether the birds’ main summer home – at the Necedah
wildlife refuge – is the best place for them.

Louise Clemency is with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And
she is a co-chair of the eastern partnership. She says the crane recovery
effort won’t make any big changes overnight.

“We’re trying to the time to draw the right conclusions so we can
take the right next step.”

Clemency says decisions on the whooping crane experiment could come next
year. In the meantime..she hopes that some crane eggs laid this spring at
the Necedah refuge will hatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

USDA Guidelines Questioned

  • Professor Paul Marantz says even a small error in the federal food guidelines can have a big public health impact. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Some people say the government is partly to blame for America’s obesity problem – because of the federal dietary guidelines. Julie Grant reports on efforts to improve how the government offers nutritional advise to Americans.

Transcript

Some people say the government is partly to blame for America’s obesity problem – because of the federal dietary guidelines. Julie Grant reports on efforts to improve how the government offers nutritional advise to Americans.

You’ve probably seen those colorful food pyramids they put out, the ones that tell you how many servings to have of each kind of food each day. Those recommendations are used by schools, nursing homes, and the federal food stamp program to design menus.

Robert Post works with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which puts out the food pyramid.

“IT’S THE CORNERSTONE FOR BUILDING HEALTHY EATING PATTERNS. CHOOSING THE RIGHT AMOUNTS OF FRUITS, VEGETABLES, GRAINS, MILK PRODUCTS, AS WELL AS PROTEIN SOURCES SUCH AS MEAT AND BEANS.”

Post says people need to know how to get all the nutrients they need, without over-indulging in foods they don’t need.
That’s why the guidelines also set specific limits on things like salt and fat.

But some researchers think the guidelines actually have the potential to cause harm.

Paul Marantz is professor of epidemiology and population health at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
He doesn’t think the guidelines should give specific recommendations about how much fat and salt people should eat.

“THOSE SEEM TO CARRY PRECISION THAT IMPLIES THAT WE HAVE A GREATER DEPTH OF KNOWLEDGE THAN WE ACTUALLY DO, SO PICKING THESE NUMBERS AND REQUIRING THAT PEOPLE HUE TO THESE GUIDELINES IS A PROBLEM.”

Marantz says even a little bit of error in the food guidelines can have a big public health effects.

He and his colleagues wanted to find out the potential impact of past dietary guidelines.

They looked at 1995, when the nutritionists were telling people to avoid fat.

“MOST OF US REMEMBER IN THE OLD FOOD PYRAMID THAT MADE IT QUITE CLEAR THAT THE MOST IMPORTANT THING TO AVOID WAS FAT AND ONE COULD EAT GRAINS AND PASTA AND BREAT AND THE LIKE WITHOUT CONCERN.”

Marantz says Americans did eat more pasta and bread – that added lots of calories, and lots of weight.

His research, which was published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, found what Marantz calls a ‘strong correlation’ between the dietary guidelines against fat and obesity in Americans:

“CORRELATION IS BY NO MEANS CAUSATION. WE CANNOT INFER FROM THIS THAT IT WAS BECAUSE OF DIETARY GUIDELINES THAT WE ARE EXPERIENCING THE EPIDEMIC OF OVERWEIGHT AND OBESITY. BUT THE CONNECTION IS STRONG.”

Marantz wants the government to give general advice for healthy eating, but not specific guidelines. He gives the example of sodium. Marantz says no one really knows how much salt is appropriate for each person. But there’s a push to put specific limits on sodium in the new guidelines.

Robert Post of the USDA says anything that gets into the 2010 recommendations will be based on what he calls the Gold Standard of scientific evidence. He says a committee of nutritional experts has been meeting for two years to create the new guidelines…

“WE CAN BE ASSURED THROUGH THIS VERY INTENSIVE REVIEW OF SCIENCE AND THE WEIGHT OF THE EVIDENCE IT PROVIDES THAT THE CURRENT ADVISE ON CARBOHYDRATES FOR EXAMPLE IS BASED ON THE LATEST RESEARCH.”

Post says any recommendations for fat and sodium will also be based on the preponderance of current science. The committee is expected to make its recommendations this summer, and new dietary guidelines should be published by the end of the year.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links