Tag: federal

Anglers Competing With Cormorants

  • The cormorant population is booming in the region, and some anglers say they're competing too hard with the birds for fish. (Photo courtesy of Steve Mortensen, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe)

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to catch the big one. But they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters. Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many cormorants now. And they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control cormorants:

Transcript

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to
catch the big one, but they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the
double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters.
Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But
now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many
cormorants now, and they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control
cormorants:


(sound of waves)


Robin Whaley often fishes here on Knife River. It’s the biggest spawning ground for
rainbow trout on the north shore of Lake Superior. But today she’s watching the
cormorants on Knife Island, a quarter-mile offshore.


The cormorant population is booming. About a hundred cormorants lived on the island
last year.


“I guess they’re just coming up into this area in the last few years and becoming a
problem, for degrading habitat and for eating little fish.”


Cormorants are native to this area, but they haven’t been around much in the last few
decades, because of poisoning from the pesticide DDT.


The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources stocks rainbow trout here. This year
they put 40,000 young fish into the river. Anglers like Robin Whaley hope the little fish
will grow big enough for them to catch someday.


The little fish face a lot of predators and hazards and the cormorants are one more threat.
Some people would like to reduce that threat. It’s illegal to kill cormorants. They’re
protected by law because they’re a migratory bird.


But a new federal rule says if they’re threatening a resource, people can fight back in a
different way.


Bill Paul runs the Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services Program in Minnesota. He
sent workers onto Knife Island to try to keep the cormorants from nesting. Their methods
are experimental – but they’re pretty basic.


“We put up some flapping tarps in wind, a couple of yellow raincoat scarecrows, we also
put up ten flashing highway barricade lights, we also have a light siren device out there
that goes during the night.”


The workers also used special firecrackers shot by guns at passing birds to scare them
away.


They did this for two weeks during the cormorants’ nesting season. Bill Paul says even
with all that noise and commotion it wasn’t easy to scare them away.


“They seem to be fairly smart birds and real persistent at coming back to Knife Island.
So we’re uncertain yet whether our activities are actually going to keep them off there
long-term.”


As part of their study, researchers had permission to kill 25 cormorants to find out what
they’d been eating. They wanted to see how much of a threat the birds were to game fish
like the rainbow trout.


They found fish in the cormorants’ stomachs all right. But not the kind most people like
to catch and eat.


Don Schreiner supervises the Lake Superior fishery for the Minnesota DNR. He says
he’d need more than just a few samples to really know what the birds are eating.


“My guess is that cormorants are opportunists and if there’s a small silver fish out there
and he’s just hanging out and the cormorant has that available to eat, he’ll eat it. The
question becomes, is this a significant part of the population that they’re consuming, or
isn’t it?”


Despite the concerns of some anglers, researchers have been studying cormorants for
years, and so far they haven’t been able to prove the birds are harming wild fish
populations.


John Pastor is an ecologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He says the study at
Knife River won’t prove anything useful either.


He says it ignores the bigger picture. Pastor says you can’t just look at one predator and
come to any firm conclusions. There could be lots of reasons why there aren’t many
steelhead, or rainbow trout.


“Changes in land use. All the adult steelhead out there eating the young of the year
steelhead. Maybe it’s some pollutant in the lake. You never know. But it’s easy to fix on
the predator as the problem, because people see a cormorant dive down and come up with
a fish, and they say to themselves, I could have caught that fish.”


Pastor says even if the cormorants are eating lots of young rainbow trout, it doesn’t
necessarily mean the birds are hurting the overall trout population.


And even for an angler like Robin Whaley, the concern about the trout is mixed with a
feeling of respect for the cormorant.


“I admire the bird very much, but human beings, we’re in the business of controlling
habitats and populations, and this is just another case of that.”


For many anglers, the ultimate question in this competition between predators is simple.
It’s about who gets the trout – cormorants or humans.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Gardeners Have Hand in Invasive Species Control

  • Centaurea diffusa a.k.a. Spotted knapweed. Introduced in the late 1800's, knapweed can reduce diversity in the region's prairies. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but if they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests, lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but, if
they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests,
lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them
about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series “Your
Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Gardening, especially flower gardening, seems to get more popular all the time. Maybe
it’s because the baby-boomers have all reached that age where they’re beginning to
appreciate stopping for a moment to smell the roses.


That’s fine. In fact if gardeners plant the right kinds of plants… it can be great for
wildlife. There are all kinds of guides for backyard natural areas.


But… in some cases… gardeners can unleash plant pests on the environment.


Katherine Kennedy is with the Center for Plant Conservation. She says almost all of the
problem plants that damage the native ecosystems were planted with good intentions…


“I don’t believe that any invasive species has ever been introduced into the United States
on purpose by someone who willingly said, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be a problem, but I
don’t care.’ They’ve almost all been inadvertent problems that were introduced by
someone who thought they were doing something good or who thought they were
bringing in something beautiful.”


English ivy, a decorative ground cover, is now killing forests in the Pacific Northwest…
kudzu is doing the same in the southeast… and in the Great Lakes region and the
Midwest… pretty flowering plants such as purple loosestrife and water plants such as
Eurasian watermilfoil are causing damage to wetlands, crowding out native plants and
disturbing the habitat that many wildlife species need to survive.


Bob Wilson works in the Michigan Senate Majority policy office. Like many other
states, Michigan is looking at legislation to ban certain problem plants. Wilson agrees
that these plant pests are generally not intentional… but they do show that people seem to
unaware of the problems that they’re causing…


“The two most common vectors for bringing in these kinds of plants are typically
landscapers, who bring it in as a way of decorating yards and lawns, and then aquarium
dumpers, people who inadvertently dump their aquarium, thinking that there’s no
consequence to that. Before you know it, something that was contained is now spread.”


But stopping the import of pest plants is a lot harder than just passing laws that ban them.
With mail order and Internet orders from large nurseries so common, the plants can get
shipped to a local nursery, landscaper or local gardener without the government ever
knowing about it.


Recently, botanists, garden clubs, and plant nursery industry groups put together some
codes of conducts. Called the St. Louis Protocol or the St. Louis Declaration… the
document set out voluntary guidelines for the industry and gardeners to follow to avoid
sending plants to areas where they can cause damage.


Sarah Reichard is a botanist with the University of Washington. She helped put the St.
Louis Protocol together. She says if a nursery signs on to the protocol, it will help stop
invasive plant species from being shipped to the wrong places….


“And it’s up to each of the nursery owners, particularly those who sell mail order or
Internet, to go and find out which species are banned in each state.” LG: And is that
happening? “Uh, I think most nursery people are pretty responsible and are trying to
do the best that they can. I’m sure that they’re very frustrated and understandably so
because the tools aren’t really out there for them and it is very difficult to find the
information. So, it’s a frustrating situation for them.”


But in preparing this report, we found that some of the biggest mail-order nurseries had
never heard of the St. Louis protocol. And many of the smaller nurseries don’t have the
staff or resources to check out the potential damage of newly imported plants… or even
to check out each state to make sure that banned plants aren’t being sent inadvertently.


Sarah Reichard says that means gardeners… you… need to do some homework before
ordering that pretty flowering vine. Is it banned in your state? Is it a nuisance that could
cause damage? Reichard says if enough gardeners care, they can make a difference…


“You know, gardeners have tremendous power. We, you know, the people that are
buying the plants at the nurseries – that’s what it’s all about. I mean, the nurseries are
there to provide a service to provide plants to those people and if those people have
certain tastes and demands such as not wanting to buy and plant invasive species, the
nurseries are going to respond to it. So, we’re all part of one team.”


Reichard and others concerned about the problem say although agencies are working on
it… the federal government has not yet done enough to effectively stop invasives from
being imported and shipped to the wrong areas. They say it’s up to the nurseries, the
botanists, and the gardeners to stop them. If not, we’ll all pay in tax money as
government agencies react to invasives with expensive eradication programs to try to get
rid of the plants invading parks, preserves, and other natural areas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

GARDENERS HAVE HAND IN INVASIVE SPECIES CONTROL (Short Version)

  • Centaurea diffusa a.k.a. Spotted knapweed. Introduced in the late 1800's, knapweed can reduce diversity in the region's prairies. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)

Gardeners are being asked to be careful about what they plant. Invasive species that cause damage to natural areas often start as a pretty plant in someone’s yard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Gardeners are being asked to be careful about what they plant. Invasive species that
cause damage to natural areas often start as a pretty plant in someone’s yard. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Botanists, plant nurseries and gardeners are all being asked to do a little more homework
before importing, selling, or planting new kinds of plants. Katherine Kennedy is with the
Center for Plant Conservation. She says some of the plants you mail order from the
nursery can end up being invasive kinds of plants that damage the local ecosystem…


“We are actually at a point where these invasions crowd out the native community, not
just a species or two, but the entire community. And the wildlife value falls and the
native plants are displaced. And, so, the destructive potential for a species that becomes
truly invasive is more immense than I think many people realize.”


Kennedy says you can’t count on the nursery to warn you when you order plants. She
says gardeners have to make sure the plants they’re ordering won’t hurt the surrounding
landscape.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Bush Chooses New Epa Administrator

President Bush has chosen Utah Governor Mike Leavitt as the new head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Some environmentalists say this nomination indicates that the Bush administration is no longer concerned about placating conservationists. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

President Bush has chosen Utah Governor Mike Leavitt as the new head of the
Environmental
Protection Agency. Some environmentalists say this nomination indicates that the Bush
administration is no longer concerned about placating conservationists. The Great
Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


If Leavitt is confirmed by the Senate, he will replace Christie Todd Whitman, who
resigned in
May.


Business leaders and Republicans describe Leavitt as a moderate and a consensus
builder.
Environmental groups, though, say Utah’s governor has a history of allowing
corporations to
pollute the state’s forests and waterways.


Scott Groene is the staff attorney for the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance.


“He’s a smart man and he’ll be very careful not to blunder by telling the public
what he’s doing if
he’s actually rolling back environmental protections. That’s certainly what we’ve
seen here in
Utah, is that he’ll take some fairly extreme actions but then he’ll manage to claim
the middle
ground with his rhetoric.”


Leavitt says he wants to give states a larger role in environmental regulation. His
confirmation
hearings will be scheduled when the Senate returns to Washington in September.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Trust Fund for Great Lakes Restoration?

Some members of Congress feel the timing is right for the long-anticipated federal legislation to help restore the Great Lakes. A bill introduced in the Senate recently proposes EPA monitoring of Great Lakes water quality. Now, a bill being introduced in the House proposes a four billion dollar Great Lakes Restoration Fund. And it has strong political support. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:

Transcript

Some members of Congress feel the timing is right for the long-anticipated
federal legislation to help restore the Great Lakes. A bill introduced in the
Senate recently proposes EPA monitoring of the Great Lakes water quality.
Now, a bill being introduced in the House proposes a four billion dollar
Great Lakes Restoration Fund. And it has strong political support.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:


A critical report by the General Accounting Office prompted
Congress to start a coordinated recovery plan. The bipartisan
bill on the Senate side would pay for more reliable monitoring of
water quality. And the House bill now being introduced – also bipartisan –
would supply four billion dollars to help restore the environmental health of the lakes.


The Great Lakes Trust Fund is modeled after a multi-billion dollar
federal plan to rehabilitate Florida’s Everglades. Congressman Thomas Reynolds of New York
is one of the bill’s co-sponsors.


“We’ve seen, from increased levels of toxins and bacteria that are
killing wildlife and closing beaches, to invasive species that are
attacking an ecosystem. The Great Lakes need more than help – they need funding.”


Reynolds says he believes the backing is there to pass the legislation –
and that federal help is long overdue.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

Government Shuttle Services Inefficient

A government report finds that a lot of free shuttle bus services paid for by federal programs could work together to be more efficient. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A government report finds that a lot of free shuttle bus services paid for by federal
programs could work together to be more efficient. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


There are 62 different federal programs that provide transportation for disadvantaged populations.
According to a report by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress…
many times those vans and shuttle buses could be hauling more people if agencies and programs
would coordinate more.


Kate Siggerud is one of the authors of the report. She says the free transportation which is often
run by state or local agencies could work together better…


“And they generally speaking in most communities have not coordinated. So, you might have
several vans for different programs going to one senior center or one clinic rather than using one
van to pick up a larger number of people in a particular area.”


Siggerud says the report doesn’t look at how much fuel is wasted or whether the fleet of shuttles
could be reduced, but she says the report does reveal that the people who rely on the
transportation could be better served by a coordinated effort by government agencies.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Mandated Emission Cuts for Power Plants?

As the U.S. government debates cutting mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants, Wisconsin may become the first state in the region to pass mandatory controls. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

As the U.S. government debates cutting mercury emissions from
coal-burning power plants, Wisconsin may become the first state in the
region to pass
mandatory controls. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:

Mercury released by the burning of coal often falls
into bodies of water and can be passed up through the food chain.
A proposal going before the Wisconsin Natural Resources
Board would order big Wisconsin utilities to cut mercury
emissions 40% by 2010 and 80% by 2015.


Environmentalists want faster
and deeper reductions.
Lloyd Eagan is a Wisconsin air management official. She says
her agency is taking a cautious approach
to how utilities would meet their goal.


“We did not assume that there would be improvements in
mercury control technology… which there will be, but we
based the rule on what is in existence today that we
think will work.”

Utilities still say the Wisconsin mercury plan goes too far.
They want the state to wait until approval of a federal cleanup plan.
That plan targets several different air pollutants.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck
Quirmbach in Milwaukee.

Major Water Polluters Rarely Fined

An Environmental Protection Agency internal document indicates that about one-quarter of the largest industrial plants and wastewater treatment facilities are in serious violation of the Clean Water Act at any given moment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

An Environmental Protection Agency internal document indicates that about
one-quarter of the largest industrial plants and wastewater treatment facilities are in
serious violation of the Clean Water Act at any given moment. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


The study shows some wastewater treatment plants exceed pollution limits for
toxic substances by more than 100-percent. The EPA document was obtained by The
Washington Post. It further reveals that only a fraction of violators of the Clean Water
Act ever face enforcement actions and fewer than half of those are ever fined for the
violations. The study concentrated on the years 1999 to 2001. But it indicated some
company and municipal wastewater plants have illegally discharged toxic chemicals or
biological waste into rivers and streams for years without getting into trouble with the
government.


Often, state governments are responsible for enforcing EPA rules to meet the
requirements of the Clean Water Act. The EPA indicates it’s trying to become more
aggressive in monitoring state enforcement by creating “watch lists” of the most
flagrant violators.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Chemical Plant Security in Question

The General Accounting Office has released a report saying that there’s no way to know how secure the nation’s chemical plants are from terrorist attacks. The Congressional Research Agency says that no federal department has looked into the problem yet. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:

Transcript

The General Accounting Office has released a report saying that there’s
no way to know how secure the nation’s chemical plants are from
terrorist attacks. The Congressional Research Agency says that no
federal department has looked into the problem yet. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Bill Poorman reports:


The GAO released the study last week. It says that there are 123
chemical plants in the U.S. that are in areas where more than a million
people would be effected by a toxic release. But the GAO says the
government has failed to take a comprehensive approach to addressing
chemical plant security. Kate McGloon is spokesperson for the American
Chemistry Council, an industry trade group. She says many
chemical-makers have already taken steps voluntarily to increase
security since 9/11. But they don’t want to reveal what those
are.


“Homeland Security has stressed to us that one of the best ways to keep
potential terrorists from knowing what they’re doing is to be
unpredictable and random and not tell people what you’re doing.”


McGloon says many chemical companies would welcome federal legislation
putting the government in charge of assessing and enforcing chemical
plant security. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Poorman.

Campaigning for Farmer Safety

Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations. Every year, thousand of farmers are seriously injured in the Great Lakes region, often because of carelessness or fatigue. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports, sometimes farm work turns deadly:

Transcript

Farming is one of the most dangerous occupations. Every year, thousand of farmers are seriously injured in the Great Lakes Region, often because of carelessness or fatigue. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports, sometimes farm work turns deadly.


“For any farmer listening, it makes me feel really dumb to do what I did”

What Illinois State Representative Dave Winters did was attempt to clean up a grain bin with his hands, instead of a broom. A slow-moving auger caught his glove on a wintry day last year and before he knew it, Winters was missing most of his little finger on his left hand.

“Any farmer is aware of the dangers of augers, and I certainly was. I was just careless, tired and not thinking”

When he’s not in the state capital of Springfield, the 49-year-old Winters grows corn, soybeans, and prairie grasses on his farm. After the accident, Winters decided to use his position as a public official to spread the word about farm safety. He says working alone, like he was, greatly increases a farmer’s risk.

“And you try to reach too far, you try to do things that you need help doing but there’s nobody available, so you get yourself into dangerous situations. The other problem is that if something does happen, in some instances farmers have lost their lives or have been severely injured because there wasn’t anybody there to turn off the equipment or to get help immediately”

Most family farms are too small to fall under federal occupational regulations that require a minimum of safety precautions. So sometimes, the simplest of safety measures may be overlooked. And that plus the presence of powerful machinery can make for a very dangerous work environment. Each year more than 700 farm-related deaths occur nationwide as well as tens of thousands of injuries requiring medical attention. These accidents cost farmers billions of dollars a year in medical bills and lost productivity.

The largest cause of farm deaths is tractor rollovers, and nearly two-thirds of tractor deaths involve people over the age of 60. University of Illinois Farm Safety Specialist Bob Aherin says this is probably due to slower reflexes among older farmers and their tendency to use outdated equipment. Most new farm implements offer greater protection to users, and Aherin says those safeguards have contributed to a general decline in farm deaths over the past twenty years. One area of particular concern on farms is children. Most farmers live and work in the same environment, and Aherin says it’s not unusual to have kids around.

“They’re either out doing work sometimes before they’re ready to some things and they are not prepared both physically, but more often it’s because they’re not old enough, they don’t have the mental processing skills to do some of the activities we ask them to do.”

The 1989 death of Iowa teenager Shaun Peterson in a farming accident led to the creation of a support group bearing his name. The Sharing Help Awareness United Network provides counseling to farm families who have lost a loved one of any age. Board member Kenneth Thu is a Northern Illinois University anthropology professor. He says farm accidents are especially tough on a family because the tragedy usually occurs very close to home . . . and that means they can’t get away from it. Even a serious injury can lead to a significant loss of income, and a lack of health insurance can be catastrophic. The result can be severe depression, and Thu says it’s sometimes tough to get help because many mental health professionals simply don’t understand the needs of rural farm families.

“Not recognizing the kind of living and work-structure that they live in. The kinds of stresses and strains they feel, particularly these days with so many farming couples working off the farm, the fact that the kinds of social networks that used to exist in rural areas are dwindling away quickly. And so people are often-times more isolated then they used to be”

And though it may be a stereotype, Thu says most farmers think they don’t need any help.

“Getting support services, counseling services to farmers is probably more difficult than providing those same services to people who live in urban settings, because there’s more of a reluctance for rural dwellers, particularly farmers, to get those kinds of services. They think of themselves as more rugged, more independent. So they’re less prone to access support services”

Even with a decline in farm deaths nationwide, those support services will continue to be needed. Farming trails only underground mining as the second deadliest occupation in the United States. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.