Scientists have found that millions of birds are killed each year when they crash into communication towers. Now officials at the Federal Communications Commission are thinking about making companies change the way they build the towers. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
Scientists have found that millions of birds are killed each year when they crash into communication towers. Now officials at the Federal Communications Commission are thinking about making companies change the way they build the towers. Mark Brush has more:
The explosion of cell phones has meant an explosion of new communication towers, but when these towers are built using guy wires, and use traditional lighting systems, they can end up really hurting bird populations.
Steve Holmer is with the American Bird Conservancy. He says the steady red lights on these towers can confuse birds that use stars to migrate at night.
“The birds are actually attracted to these towers, kind of like a moth to the flame, and will actually circle around them and strike the towers, or strike the guide wires, or actually just keep circling until they exhaust themselves.”
Holmer says that simply replacing these lights with white strobe lights would help a lot.
The FCC will be seeking public comments on whether or not they should require that new communication towers be bird friendly.
Some people have been looking at our relationship with water from a completely different perspective. Commentator Cameron Davis suggests how we might re-define our relationship with the water around us:
Transcript
Some people have been looking at our relationship with water from a completely different perspective. Commentator Cameron Davis suggests how we might re-define our relationship with the water around us:
Something really different came across my desk not long ago. A company called H2Om was introducing and selling the world’s first “vibrationally charged” bottled water. According to the California-based company, its bottled spring water would be the first ever to be infused with the “power of intention through words, music, and thought.” Inspired by the work of Japan’s Dr. Masaru Emoto showing that water reacts positively to positive emotions, H2Om’s water from underneath the San Diego Mountains is professed to be bottled with “love” and “perfect health.”
Interesting thought for a bottled spring water company. Part of the problem with bottled water is that when you buy it, you rarely know whether your money is supporting a company that’s damaging to the source of the water.
Ecological damage aside, there’s the issue of cost. According to The Green Guide, Americans pay 240 to 10,000 times for bottled water what they’d pay for tap water. But, here in the Great Lakes region where I live, water is plentiful and consistently ranked as some of the best for drinking in the world. Bottled spring water shouldn’t be selling for those prices here, right?
Wrong. Even though bottled water is so much more expensive, and with the risk of harming the source of the water, we’re drinking just as much bottled spring water as anyone, if not more.
I have a proposition: think globally, drink locally. If you get your water from a community within a certain watershed, drink that water. You’ll be doing your part to support “homegrown” water. If you’re nervous about tap water quality, filter it and check out your municipality’s Consumer Confidence Report for water testing results.
As long as we’re drinking water from someone else’s back yard, we don’t seem to have to care for it as much. At the end of the day, maybe H2Om has a thought. But rather than paying to infuse someone else’s water with someone else’s love, let’s love and drink our own.
Cameron Davis is the president of the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
"Observations of the Astral World (1989 - 1999 )" by Norval Morrisseau. One of the largest murals the artist has ever painted, measuring just over five meters or seventeen feet long. (Photo courtesy of the National Gallery of Canada )
Every artist depicts nature in a different way. In one artist’s world, nature is a place where people, animals and plant life are intertwined in vibrant color. Karen Kelly visited this new exhibit:
Transcript
Every artist depicts nature in a different way. In one artist’s world, nature is a place where people, animals and plant life are intertwined in vibrant color. Reporter Karen Kelly visited this new exhibit.
Six and seven year olds are pointing and chattering in front of a mural bursting with plant and animal life. One of them, Pierre Rousseau, describes his favorite parts of the painting.
“People, strawberries, some leaves, and fish, and kind of mister who has a bird on his head.”
The kids are at an exhibit of Norval Morrisseau’s work at the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, Canada. Usually, you hear a lot of shushing when kids are in an art gallery.
Here, you can almost feel the energy between the kids and the paintings.
In one corner, Sadok Benmoussa and Amir Shallal are trying to figure out a mural that tells the story of creation.
“And what’s that big stuff? A flower? That big stuff… Oh, the big stuff, bears? A bear? A bear.”
Norval Morrisseau grew up on an Ojibway reservation on the north shore of Lake Superior, and that environment fills his paintings; the water, the animals, trees, berries.
But most important are the people, his own people interacting with that nature.
Gabe Vadas lived with Morrisseau for many years, and now that the artist has Parkinson’s disease, Vadas is his spokesman and guardian. He says when Morrisseau was growing up in the 50’s, his tribe began rejecting many of its traditions, and it’s connection to the natural world, so Morrisseau used his paintings to tell the stories he learned from his grandfather who was a shaman.
“And I think Norval just felt desperation as a young person to regain the identity that had been passed down to him. And of course Grandpa is only telling him, so there’s a desperation that ‘wait a minute, I’m the only one who’s learning these things and learning these legends.'”
One of these legends shows a man who changes into a thunderbird. It’s one of Morrisseau’s most famous works and it shows this transformation over six canvases. It begins with a man who has a bird perched on his head, as well as one in each arm. Slowly, his eyes get larger, his mouth forms a beak and his arms become wings. This is Morrisseau’s later style, and it resembles stained glass. He uses thick black lines to create an intricate design of colors and shapes.
Greg Hill curated the Morrisseau show for Canada’s national gallery. It’s now on display at the McMichael Gallery north of Toronto and it will be in New York City in January. Hill says the artist’s later works contain a message for everyone, not just members of his own community.
“He’s saying that we all exist here on mother earth and we need to respect that, those interrelationships.”
That message is something that visitor Yvette Debain says she could see in Morrisseau’s work.
“Very spiritual. That’s why it touches me because I believe also that we’re all part of a creation, and the spirit, you can say God, is in all the creation. It’s not separate.”
Morrisseau’s guardian, Gabe Vadas, says that when the artist returned to his hometown many years later, he was surprised to find many people who had gone back to the native traditions, and many told him that his paintings had inspired them to do so. Now, he hopes that with this major exhibit, more folks will be touched by his message.
Phragmites, or "common reed," is being used to treat wastewater in Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. (Photo by Adam Allington.)
"Sludge," or wastewater, being delivered to the phragmites in Tivoli, New York. (Photo by Adam Allington.)
After the phragmites consume the liquid in wastewater, the remaining matter is a rich, fertile compost. (Photo by Adam Allington.)
Dan Fleuriel is director of wastewater treatment for Shelburne Falls. (Photo by Adam Allington.)
Nature is often full of practical solutions to real-world problems. Take the case of sewage and wastewater treatment: for decades engineers have used mechanical means to process wastewater before disposing of the end product in landfills. It turns out that phragmites, a robust wetland reed, can do the job just as quickly and for a fraction of the cost. Adam Allington has more:
Transcript
Nature is often full of practical solutions to real-world problems. Take the case of sewage and wastewater treatment: for decades engineers have used mechanical means to process wastewater before disposing of the end product in landfills. It turns out that phragmites, a robust wetland reed, can do the job just as quickly and for a fraction of the cost. Adam Allington has more:
Brandee Nelson is wearing knee-high rubber boots. She’s wading out into a tiny patch of reeds gently swaying in the wind. They’re planted in a goopy substance that appears to be mud, but is actually…
“Sludge. We’re standing ankle deep in sludge. Sludge is the leftover solids from the conventional sewage treatment process. Things that are very organic in nature, but thin enough that you can’t really scoop it out with your hand. It’s not the consistency of yogurt, it’s more like a thin milkshake.”
That thin milkshake used to be the solid stuff that you flush down the drain. Brandee is an environmental engineer working for the village of Tivoli, New York. Today she is monitoring the growth of two recently planted reed beds. The reeds are an invasive wetland species called “phragmites,” or “common reed”. In most places these reeds are a problem because they crowd-out native plants, but here they’re doing a job.
“The whole reason to have the reed beds is really to get the largest volume reduction of your waste product. Because the sludge tends to have so much water in it, and phragmites sucks up an enormous amount of water. This bed, we’re standing in it now, this bed will be totally dry in one day.”
Even though Tivoli is relatively small at about 1000 residents, the village still produces 100,000 gallons of waste water every day. That waste water translates into a whole lot of sludge, which Tivoli then has to haul to landfills.
“We’ll probably be saving about $45,000 on hauling fees.”
Tom Cordier is deputy mayor for the village of Tivoli.
“At one point we had drying beds, and it took about a week for them to dry, and then we would come in with our backhoe and take out the dried material. But every time we got ready to do that, it would rain and we would have to start the whole process over again, and then in the wintertime it was always freezing, and finally we got to the point where we had to have it trucked away.”
Before they planted the reeds, Tivoli had to remove their liquid sludge once a month. When the reeds are fully grown, the village won’t need to haul anything away for over 10 years. But if reed bed technology is so efficient, why isn’t everyone using it?
The answer has a lot to do with the predictability of mechanics, versus the variables of biology.
“One of the issues with the reed beds is it’s a biological process. Engineers like to typically do things that are mechanical, things that fit into formulas.”
Dan Fleuriel is director of the wastewater treatment for the town of Shelburne Falls, Massachusetts. Shelburne Falls began experimenting with reed bed technology back in the early 1990’s. Unlike the short 3 foot reeds in Tivoli, the mature reeds in Shelburne Falls tower some 6 feet over us as we walk through them.
“We’ve been applying to these reed beds since 1993. It’s been very good for us because we’ve gone from a very time consuming process of de-watering sludge to something that we pretty much leave hands-off that we can rely on.”
Functionality and reliability: they’re fundamental to any civil engineering project. But Brandee Nelson notes that Tivoli’s reed beds also make sense from an environmental perspective.
“This waste product, 150,000 gallons of it, used to go to a landfill somewhere else and it wasn’t our problem any more. Now what we’re able to do is manage that waste product here on site in a relatively small footprint using a natural technology, a very low-energy technology, and in the end we’ll end up with a product that we can use for village landscaping projects.”
Tivoli’s reed beds are expected to reach full maturity by next summer. Success of the project is being followed closely by neighboring towns, who are also considering a switch to reed bed treatment plants.
Reporter Dustin Dwyer found all the ingredients for his Thanksgiving dinner within 100 miles of his house, including the turkey (poor thing). (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Turkey farmer Christine Roperti continues to farm near Detroit despite growing development pressures. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment, and a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
Transcript
Thanksgiving is about family, friends, and ridiculous amounts of food. But the food we buy can have a big impact on the environment. And a lot more people are starting to look for local ingredients to put in their meals. One movement encourages people to get all their food from within 100 miles of their home. Dustin Dwyer tried to find out how practical that could be for his Thanksgiving feast:
I like to look at labels on my food. I don’t care so much about the nutritional info, I just want to know where it came from.
But there’s a problem with that. Even if I know where something is packaged, I still have no idea where the actual ingredients come from. I mean, where the heck do they make partially hydrogenated soybean oil?
I have no idea. And so, for one meal, for the most important meal of the year, I decided to try to get all my food, and all the ingredients in my food, from within 100 miles of my apartment in Southeast Michigan.
If you’re impressed by my ingenious and creative idea, don’t be. I stole it from someone else. Alisa Smith and her partner James MacKinnon were on a 100 mile diet for a year, and they’re writing a book about it. I called up Alisa for some help.
Dwyer: “So my wife and I are going to do the 100 mile Thanksgiving, and I want to ask some advice.”
Smith: “Oh, great! For doing a single meal you picked a very good time to do it because it’s the harvest bounty, so that makes life a lot easier.”
I’m thinking, excellent, this could be a piece of cake. But I’m worried about a few tough ingredients, such as salt. Alisa says salt is a problem for a lot of people.
“I think in the end, you probably will find that salt isn’t available. And not being able t o make it yourself you might just say ‘okay salt is going to be an exception for us.'”
Ok, fine, but I still wanted to make as few exceptions as possible. I’ve got to have a challenge here, somehow.
That said, our menu would be simple: just turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing and pumpkin pie. Turkey turned out to be easy.
“Roperti’s Turkey Farm.”
Christine Roperti has been living on her family’s turkey farm in suburban Detroit all her life. Farms like this one are getting crowded out more and more by suburban sprawl. There’s even a brand new subdivision next door to Christine’s place. There have been offers for her land too.
“Yeah, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I like the farm, and like raising my turkeys.”
I liked knowing that Christine actually enjoys this, and cares about it. It made me feel good. And that’s important, because I was also paying a lot more for her turkey than the store-bought stuff.
Anyway, I was flying high, and things were going really well. My list of exceptions was firming up, and it was mostly spices: salt plus all the spices for the pumpkin pie.
Then, while I was bragging at work about how I’d be able to get almost everything but salt for my local dinner, someone reminded me that there are actually salt mines under the city of Detroit.
Like a good journalist I looked into it, and ended up on the most absurd shopping trip of my life.
“Okay I’m headed over the Ambassador Bridge, going from Detroit to Windsor, Ontario. They do have salt mines in Detroit, but they don’t sell that salt as food salt in the US, they only sell road salt. So in order to get food salt that’s made within a hundred miles of my house, I have to go to Canada.”
Because of some trade regulation I don’t understand, table salt from this mine can’t be commercially shipped into the US. So I ended up in a city I barely know, looking for a grocery store. I went into the first, and then the second without finding the right brand of salt. Then an hour or so later, in the third store…
“Finally! Windsor salt.”
So, I wasted a lot of fuel putting this dinner together. It’s probably still an improvement over what the Sierra Club says is an average two thousand miles of driving that goes into each ingredient for my usual dinner.
But here’s the thing: if all this local stuff is available, I think I should be able to get it at the grocery store down the street. I should probably let them know that, and let them know I’m willing to pay more for it. I mean, that’s better than driving to Canada for salt, anyway.
But making that happen would take a lot more effort, a lot more voting with my pocketbook, and a lot more than just checking labels.
The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
The nation’s leading food processor is making big profits from ethanol. Archer Daniels Midland has had two straight years of record profits. And in its latest quarter, the company nearly set another record. Dustin Dwyer has more:
ADM’s profits on corn processing, which includes ethanol production, more than doubled in its latest quarter. Total profits for the period were about $400 million.
Daniel Kammen studies energy policy at the University of California – Berkeley. He says while ADM is making lots of money from corn-based ethanol, future profits could go to companies that make ethanol from switchgrass and other woody products.
“It’s really the first companies that switch into cellulosic sources that I think are going to be the big winners, because they’re going to capture the environmental prize as well as the offsetting gasoline prize.”
ADM executives have laid out a new strategy that includes plans to expand ethanol production from fuel sources other than corn.
Daniel Kammen notes that there might not even be a market for ethanol if not for government subsidies, which also helped ADM reap its bigger profits.
A new study indicates workers who handle some kinds of plastics might be exposed to chemicals that affect reproductive health. Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new study indicates workers who handle some kinds of plastics might be exposed to chemicals that affect reproductive health. Lester Graham reports:
Animal studies and effects on wildlife have made researchers suspect that certain chemicals called phthalates might affect reproductive health in people.
Some types of phthalates are used to make vinyl and plastic soft and pliable.
A new study published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives found a connection between phthalates and lower testosterone levels in men.
The researchers found compared to an unexposed group, men working at a Chinese factory that produced vinyl flooring had significantly elevated levels of phthalates in their bodies. Their testosterone levels were down ranging from moderate to significant decreases in the hormone.
Environmentalists suspect that workers who regularly come into contact with vinyls and plastics would see similar results.
Phthalates have been suspected of causing problems and some cosmetic companies have stopped using the chemicals in their products.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Dishwashing detergent manufacturers are visiting states to try to keep them from banning phosphorous in their products. Lester Graham reports phosphorous is polluting some waterways:
Transcript
Dishwashing detergent manufacturers are visiting states to try to keep them from banning phosphorus in their products. Lester Graham reports phosphorus is polluting some waterways:
Too much of the nutrient phosphorus means too much algae growth. When the vegetation dies, it sinks, rots, and robs the water of oxygen, causing a dead zone. It was a common problem until phosphorus was banned in laundry detergent in the 1970s. Phosphates are still allowed in dishwashing detergent.
Steve Lentsch is with the company Ecolab. It’s the world’s largest dishwashing detergent manufacturer, supplying hospitals, schools and restaurants that use commercial dishwashers.
“And phosphorus is an essential ingredient to the dishwash detergents to ensure that the dishware becomes sanitary, and clean, of course.”
Ecolab, Proctor and Gamble, and other detergent makers say without phosphates, people won’t be satisfied with the results. But environmentalists say increased use of dishwashers is contributing to an increased occurrence of dead zones in lakes and estuaries.
For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
A new study suggests global warming could bring a boom in bug populations. Rebecca Williams reports that could mean bumper crops of pests:
Transcript
A new study suggests global warming could bring a boom in bug populations. Rebecca Williams reports that could mean bumper crops of pests:
Researchers studied 65 species of insects. They found that insects that are able to adapt to a warming climate will be able to reproduce a lot more quickly.
Melanie Frazier is the lead author of the study, published in the journal American Naturalist. Frazier says in the future, there could be more crop pests and other problems.
“There might also be human health consequences – a lot of bugs are disease carriers, like mosquitoes for instance. And if those populations are growing at a faster rate we might have more difficulty dealing with those.”
Frazier says at this point they can’t predict which species might experience population booms. And she says not all species would do well in a warmer world. Some species might migrate to cooler places, and others might go extinct.
John Harnois raises Narragansett turkeys, one of the so-called heritage breeds. He also raises a few Bourbon Reds, another heritage breed. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Many heritage turkey breeds tend to be closer in appearance to wild turkeys than the most common commercial turkey breed, the Broad-breasted White. The Broad-breasted Whites have been bred to have white feathers, so there won't be dark marks left behind when the birds are plucked. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
The tom turkeys strut their stuff for the hens... who appear to be not particularly interested. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
John Harnois gobbles to the turkeys and the turkeys respond in unison.
(Photo by Rebecca Williams)
A male Narragansett in living color. Turkeys are native to North America.
They've been transported across the Atlantic Ocean several times, from Mexico to Europe... from Europe to America... as turkeys were domesticated, crossed with wild turkeys, and new varieties were developed. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
The type of turkey you buy for your big holiday feast isn’t always an easy decision. You can choose the usual supermarket bird, or you can get a kosher turkey, or one that’s been fed only organic feed. You can also buy a heritage turkey that’s got a little wilder history. Rebecca Williams has the story of farmers who are trying to keep these older turkey breeds from going extinct:
Transcript
The type of turkey you buy for your big holiday feast isn’t always an easy decision. You can choose the usual supermarket bird, or you can get a kosher turkey, or one that’s been fed only organic feed. You can also buy a heritage turkey that’s got a little wilder history. Rebecca Williams has the story of farmers who are trying to keep these older turkey breeds from going extinct:
John Harnois talks turkey.
“The turkeys pip, they bark, they gobble, (Harnois makes gobbling sound and turkeys respond in unison).”
He’s got a yard full of turkeys, mostly males. They’re trying to look all big and macho as they strut around in front of the hens. These turkeys are Narragansetts, one of the so-called heritage breeds.
“They’re old time turkeys, much closer to wild. They don’t have the broad breasts, so proportionally for eating (turkeys gobble, Harnois laughs), they have more dark meat to white meat.”
People who’ve tasted a heritage turkey say the flavor is stronger too. Sara Dickerman is the food editor for Seattle Magazine. She taste tested different types of turkeys, from the Butterball brand, to kosher, to heritage.
“When you taste one of these heritage breeds you’re getting more of a… it begins to taste more like a distinct meat, and I’m afraid our vocabulary is so ill suited to describing it, except that it tastes meatier, it tastes more intensely, and it just has a resonance that you’ll never get in a Butterball.”
Dickerman says still, you’ve got to be pretty committed to buy a heritage turkey. They can cost upwards of $100.
Taste and cost aren’t the only things that set heritage turkeys apart from the turkeys you find in the grocery store. Your common grocery store turkey is a breed called the Broad-breasted White. These turkeys have been bred over the years to produce a lot of meat in a short period of time. As a result, they’re large breasted birds with short little legs.
John Harnois says that means they can’t mate naturally.
“One of the things about heritage birds is they’re small enough to mate as opposed to the broad-breasteds which is artificial insemination. With that big breast they just can’t do the deed.”
But even though heritage turkeys can mate naturally, they haven’t been doing so well on their own.
“These birds, the heritage breeds, were real close to dying out. It’s funny, you gotta eat ’em to keep ’em going. To keep their genetics in the gene pool, there has to be a market for them.”
That’s where the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy stepped in. It’s a non-profit group trying to keep rare breeds from going extinct. Marjorie Bender is the group’s research manager. She says just three companies own the rights to the commercial turkey breeds.
“And they’re all very, very closely related and it’s that narrow genetic pool that has been of particular concern to us, and what makes the conservation of these other lines of turkeys and these other varieties of turkeys so important.”
Bender’s group is encouraging farmers to raise rare turkeys so there will be a larger genetic pool of the birds. And they’re helping to market the turkeys. Bender says now, there are more of these heritage turkeys than there were a few years ago.
“In terms of the breeds themselves, they’re not out of the woods, in terms of the farmers and the market. It’s so young that many farmers are really investing capital in them to make this a viable option, but they are making some money off the birds, otherwise they wouldn’t be doing it.”
(turkeys gobbling in background)
John Harnois says he is earning money from his heritage turkeys, but it’s not easy money. Heritage turkeys cost a lot to raise, and it takes longer to get them to market weight. And unlike the commercial turkeys, the heritage birds can fly the coop.
“You’re chasing them, and it’s dark out, and you don’t know if you’re going through poison ivy, if you’ve got shorts on you’ve gotta change your pants to long pants… it’s a pain.”
But he says the late night chases and extra turkey TLC are worth it.
“When there’s no more Narragansetts the gene line is done. You can never pull on that. You don’t want everything being the same, and if you only have one thing and something happens to it, there’s no more. Where are the turkeys going to come from?”
Harnois says he feels like it’s his job to make sure there will always be plenty of different kinds of gobblers to go around.
