Time to Eat the Dog?

  • Meredith Mull loves dogs. She owns five and works as a groomer. She's not getting rid of any of her pets to help the environment. (Photo by Julie Grant)

We’ve all heard about the
environmental problems our
gas-guzzling cars and trucks
cause. But some researchers
say our vehicles aren’t the
biggest energy hogs. The biggest
energy users actually live
in our homes. Julie Grant
reports about the new book
‘Time To Eat The Dog?’ about
the wasteful ways of our pets:

Transcript

We’ve all heard about the
environmental problems our
gas-guzzling cars and trucks
cause. But some researchers
say our vehicles aren’t the
biggest energy hogs. The biggest
energy users actually live
in our homes. Julie Grant
reports about the new book
‘Time To Eat The Dog?’ about
the wasteful ways of our pets:

Robert Vale is sorry. He didn’t set out to incriminate Fido. He and his wife Brenda Vale specialize in sustainable living at Victoria University in New Zealand. And they just wanted to see how much of the world’s resources it takes to do things like eat, work, play sports, and own pets.

“The thing that most surprised us, and was the most unexpected was the scale of the impact of pets – which was really, really high.”

Vale says a big dog, like a German Shepard, actually has a bigger ecological footprint than an SUV.

To measure the ecological paw-print of pets, the Vales looked at the ingredients in common brands of dried pet foods. Based on recommended portion sizes, they calculated that a medium sized dog would consume more than 3 ounces of dried meat a day. To get that much dried meat, the Vales found, it takes nearly a pound of fresh meat. Add that up each day, and they concluded a medium sized dog eats about 360 pounds of meat a year!

Robert Vale says raising that meat – beef, lamb and chicken – has an environmental impact.

“And we did the calculation based on a dog eating chicken, which is a fairly low footprint meat, rather than say beef, which is a fairly high footprint meat. So, we tried to bias it in favor of the dog. But it still came out really big. It was a big surprise, really.”

Vale says the dog takes more than 2 and a half times more energy and resources than building and driving an SUV 6000 miles a year.

These numbers aren’t just coming from the Vales.
The New Scientist Magazine asked the Stockholm Environment Institute in England to calculate a dog’s paw-print, and the findings were almost exactly the same.

But none of this really computes with dog-lover Meredith Mull. She doesn’t understand why Robert Vale would even look into this.

“He must not have a pet. He must not know what it’s like to be loved by an animal and take care of it and have it give you nothing but respect and loyalty and love. He must not know what it feels like.”

The Vales don’t have any pets. They used to have cats and other animals. But when they died, Robert Vale says they felt they shouldn’t replace them and use more of the world’s resources just to give themselves a little more comfort.

“We are increasingly pushing up to a question of limits. What can we have, what, everything. I think to some extent, that’s why it’s unpopular. We’ve all been brought up to believe that not only can we have more of everything, but it’s our right to have more of everything.”

But some people think the Vales are barking up the wrong tree.

Chetana Mirle works on global warming issues at the Humane Society of the United States. She says instead of blaming dogs, people should look at what they, themselves are eating – and how that contributes to environmental problems.

“So to me, I felt like, ‘are you kidding me?’ Um, we’re worried about our pets, and what our pets are eating instead of what we’re eating, and what our consumption is about – which has such a huge disproportionately large impact on climate change and the environment in general.”

It’s not that the researchers want people to blame dogs and cats instead of themselves. They say they just want people to understand that each choice we make – right down to whether we have pets – has an environmental impact.

For The Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

NOAA Looks Into Navy Sonar

  • Critics of sonar say it’s so loud that it confuses whales and other marine animals, and can cause them to be injured or even die. (Photo courtesy of NOAA)

A new federal ruling could
protect marine animals by
changing how and where
the Navy uses sonar. Samara Freemark reports:

Transcript

A new federal ruling could
protect marine animals by
changing how and where
the Navy uses sonar. Samara Freemark reports:

Critics of sonar say it’s so loud that it confuses whales and other marine animals, and can cause them to be injured or even die. That’s why environmental groups have been pushing for tighter regulations on the technology.

This week the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, took a step in that direction. The agency acknowledged that current policies are not doing enough to protect marine mammals. And NOAA says it will identify critical marine habitats impacted by sonar.

Michael Jasny is a policy analyst with the environmental group the Natural Resources Defense Council. He hopes the policy will be a first step to banning sonar in those habitats.

“It’s not a prescription, it’s a plan. And it sets in motion potentially a very significant change. I mean, the proof will be in the pudding, of course.”

Jasny says his organization will work with NOAA and the Navy to negotiate sonar policy so that marine mammals are not hurt.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Climate Change and Caribou

  • Some want the government to put caribou on the endangered species list. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Santa’s reindeer are not doing
so well. Rebecca Williams reports
one group wants to get them on
the endangered species list:

Transcript

Santa’s reindeer are not doing
so well. Rebecca Williams reports
one group wants to get them on
the endangered species list:

Caribou, also known as reindeer, are declining all over the globe. The group International Fund for Animal Welfare says two subspecies of caribou are in especially bad shape.

Nathan Herschler is with the group. He says these caribou live in the Arctic. And climate change is making their lives miserable.

“Instead of soft snow that’s falling on the ground, we’re getting freezing rain. That’s encasing the land in ice and the caribou are literally starving to death.”

Herschler’s group wants the US government to put the caribou on the endangered species list. Even though the caribou live in Canada, he says the listing would help by banning the import of caribou or caribou meat into the US.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Recording Elephant Conversations

  • Elephants talk amongst themselves below levels we can hear. (Photo courtesy of the Elephant Listening Project in Dzanga National Park)

Biologists are always trying to
get a good count of the animals
they’re studying. You wouldn’t
think it’d be that hard to find
an elephant for a count, but even
some of the largest animals are
difficult to count in the wild.
So researchers are now trying new
methods. Emma Jacobs reports on
a Cornell University project which
is using audio recordings to learn
more about elephants:

Transcript

Biologists are always trying to
get a good count of the animals
they’re studying. You wouldn’t
think it’d be that hard to find
an elephant for a count, but even
some of the largest animals are
difficult to count in the wild.
So researchers are now trying new
methods. Emma Jacobs reports on
a Cornell University project which
is using audio recordings to learn
more about elephants:

Mya Thompsons sits down in her lab and pulls up a set of recordings on her computer. She helped tape these sounds for the Elephant Listening Project in Dzanga National Park in the Central African Republic. She plays a recording made in the forest, late at night.

(sounds of the forest at night)

“You heard some insects, you heard some sort of the din of a nighttime forest.”

But you probably don’t hear elephants.

Next, Thompson takes the same sound and speeds it up on her computer. Suddenly, you can hear something else.
“This is 4-times normal speed.”

(sound of forest at night, but with rumbles)

Elephants make those low rumbles. When she speeds up the playback, they rise in pitch. It’s kinda of like the voices of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

It turns out elephants talk among themselves below levels we can hear. Biologist Kaity Paine discovered these sounds in the 1980s. She realized that because elephant rumbles are so low, they travel long distances. This should make them useful to track elephants over wide forests, but Thompson remembers that in the field, it was hard to see how.


“We’re collecting all this information and we wanted to know what the calls were like, but because we can’t hear them, we were almost totally in the dark about what was going on.”

When she got back to New York, Thompson and the rest of the research team started combing through all the audio and video collected in Central Africa for elephant calls. It took thousands of hours.

But with time, they could nail down a pattern. The key was a relationship between the audio recordings and the video of elephants they had made in one clearing popular with elephants.

“This is a communication system. There are a lot of other variables other than, ‘Hi I’m here,’ but, overall, the more calling, the more elephants and that was good news for us.”

Now Thompson can monitor elephants over huge areas of this dense forest using these audio recordings.

In the field, the team hoists their recorders into trees attached to truck batteries. They can stay up there a long time, which has real advantages.

“Usually, when you take a survey, you go, you count, and you leave. For acoustics, we’re able to have this recorder up continuously without all this human effort and make repeated estimates over longer periods of time.”

With enough information, Thompson can estimate at the numbers of elephants in a forest with twice the precision she could have before.

Marcella Kelly teaches wildlife field techniques at Virginia Tech. She says, when you can track animal numbers closely, you can see how they respond to changes in their environment. This is a must for conservation.

“We really need effective ways to estimate population size, especially because decisions are made on management based on what those numbers tell us, over time.”

The Elephant Listening Project recently started monitoring elephants in the African nation of Gabon.


“The authorities had allowed gas exploration to see if there’s any petroleum reserves there, and so our project was asked to monitor the forest for elephant calls before, during, and after this exploration.”

Thompson can already say that things have changed. Elephants have started coming out more at night than during the day to avoid people. In the end, hopefully she’ll be able to see just how disruptive changes have been and to pinpoint the human activities causing problems.

She also wants to protect other animals making noise in the forest, and outside it.

“We’re really hoping that these methods that we’ve developed, will be developed for not only forest elephants but for other species that are hard to survey that we really need to know more about before we can protect them.”

For right now though, Thompson is still in her lab, listening for elephants.

For The Environment Report, I’m Emma Jacob

Related Links

Fish Swimming in Hormones

  • Fish are putting up less of a fight on the line when caught - making them less fun for sport fishing. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

A recent report from the US Geological
Survey confirms past findings that fish
are in trouble. Tanya Ott
reports the hormone estrogen is getting
into rivers and lakes and could reduce
fish populations:

Transcript

A recent report from the US Geological
Survey confirms past findings that fish
are in trouble. Tanya Ott
reports the hormone estrogen is getting
into rivers and lakes and could reduce
fish populations:

The fish have been turning up with lesions and intersexed –
meaning they have both male and female characteristics.

Rob Angus is a fish biologist at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
He wasn’t involved in the USGS research, but has studied the problem for
more than a decade. The culprit?

“You’re a female? You excrete estrogens. Both natural estrogens,
the estrogenst that are in birth control pills, females that are
on estrogen replacement therapy. All of those end up in the
wastewater stream.”

Wastewater treatment plants clean up about 90 percent of the
estrogen, but the remaining ten percent is a problem.

Fish don’t reproduce as easily. And, for sport fishers, the fish
aren’t as much fun to catch. They don’t put up as much of a fight
on the line. That could affect the 75 billion dollars sport fishing industry.

For The Environment Report, I’m Tanya Ott.

Related Links

Interview: Climate Affecting Fish and Game

  • The National Wildlife Federation is concerned about the nation's fish and game species being impacted by climate change. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

People are beginning to notice the effects
of climate change – especially people who
get out in nature a lot. Hunters and anglers
with the National Wildlife Federation recently
released a list of some of the game and fish
species that are at risk due to climate change.
Lester Graham talked with one of the members
of the group:

Transcript

People are beginning to notice the effects
of climate change – especially people who
get out in nature a lot. Hunters and anglers
with the National Wildlife Federation recently
released a list of some of the game and fish
species that are at risk due to climate change.
Lester Graham talked with one of the members
of the group:

Lester Graham: Kathleen Law in an angler, a member of the National Wildlife Federation, a former member of the Michigan Legislature, and a retired research scientist. First, what kind of game and fish, besides polar bears and penguins, are at risk because of climate change?

Kathleen Law: Well, everything that nests in the water or tries to have a fishery involved. It is affecting our national and our local bird, deer, the population, the habitat.

Graham: I guess that’s the question, though – how do we know that it’s not something else at work? How do we know that it’s climate change? And, of course, the skeptics will say, ‘how do we know it’s man-caused changes to the climate?’

Law: Well, we can continue being in a state of denial, and wonder where everything went, or we can get ahead. It’s not important to me who’s causing it, it’s, ‘what can I do to help?’

Graham: The US House has passed climate change legislation, the Senate is debating a version. Will the policies in those bills be enough to save some of these fish and game species you’re worried about?

Law: It’ll give us a chance. Without a concerted, willful effort, we have a very limited chance. So, there are things that we can do, that we must do, as a people who want diversity, who want to fish, who want to eat – I like venison. So what do we do to protect that resource and, and in a positive way? Which is the education and resource restoration, I think, is probably the best way to start.

Graham: Opponents of climate change legislation worry a cap-and-trade carbon reduction scheme will cost the economy too much. They don’t want the US to be put at a competitive disadvantage. Will the concerns of hunters and fishers sway any members of Congress to actually support climate legislation, if they believe it’s a jobs killer?

Law: Well, it will certainly be a consideration. The hunters and fishing folk are your constituents, they’re your neighbors, they’re your family. You can look at that, ‘it’s a job killer.’ So is climate disruption a job killer. So, how do we create new jobs? Well let’s get people out planting marsh grass. Let’s, you know, something positive. Something that people can do that makes a difference for them and their neighborhood and their community. That’s positive. That’s hope. We gotta give them hope.

Graham: What is the National Wildlife Federation doing in Washington to affect the debate about climate change?

Law: Well, they have flown in a large contingent of just people who are hunters and fishers and who have represented people in the constituencies to come in and talk to the Senators. Our hunters and fishing people – consider them sentinels. They’re out there in November, hunting ducks. They’re out in April, standing in the water, fishing. These are sentinel people, and to pay attention to what they’re saying is very important, vital, and that’s what we did in Washington DC.

Graham: Kathleen Law is a retired research scientist, a former member of the Michigan legislature, and working with the National Wildlife Federation as part of an effort to save fish and game species the group says is at risk because of climate change. Thanks very much.

Law: Thank you.

Related Links

Scavengers in Dire Straights

  • Vultures can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

Transcript

For most people, the slow spiral
of airborne vultures means that
some unlucky animal has died. Now,
in some regions of the world, vulture
populations are dying. An American
scientist is part of an international
effort to save these massive scavengers.
Ann Murray has the story:

It’s hard to get too excited about an ugly bird that eats dead, rotting flesh. Let’s face it, vultures don’t have a good rep. But vultures are amazing animals. They can eat 20% of their own body weight in one sitting. And they have digestive systems with special acids that will dissolve toxic bacteria and viruses. Meaning, vultures prevent the spread of killer diseases like rabies and anthrax when they scarf down the carcasses of sick animals.

“With the meat goes the disease.”

That’s Todd Katzner, Director of Conservation and Field Research at the National Aviary in Pittsburgh. Katzner says, sadly, with all the good vultures do, many species are in big trouble.

“Vultures are in dire conservation straits in much of the world because of things like habitat loss, poisoning and now these new problems like diclofenac.”

Diclofenac is a medicine given to sick livestock in central Asia. Vultures that eat livestock carcasses with traces of the drug almost always die of immediate kidney failure. It took scientists some time to figure that out. Katzner’s friend Vibhu Prakash, an Indian ornithologist, recognized the beginnings of this vulture die-off.

“This was almost 20 years ago that Vibhu started seeing vultures near Barrackpore, India. They were sitting in a tree with their heads hanging down .Eventually they’d just fall out of the tree and die on the ground.”

Since then, Indian white-backed vulture numbers have plummeted from 30 or 40 million birds to just thousands. This massive decline has left scientists scratching their heads about how many vultures are left in central and south Asia and other parts of the world. Because vultures move around a lot, it’s been hard to keep track of individuals. There’s never been an accurate total population count – anywhere. That’s where Katzner and the National Aviary come in.

For several years, Katzner and his field team have been traveling to mountainous grazing lands in Kazakhstan and the northern plains in Cambodia . Katzner says the one place vultures reliably congregate is at feeding sites.

“We ask people if any livestock have died .We drive up to those sites . Usually the vultures have been there. When vultures feed on the carcass they leave feathers everywhere. And when we go to the carcass, we’re able to pick up sometimes 500 or 1000 feathers.”

Once the feathers are collected, Katzner’s team extracts DNA from them to identify individual birds. The scientists will use this information to create population models. This new counting method is faster and more reliable than capturing, marking and recapturing birds.

Katzner expects researchers will use his feather- based system to count endangered vultures in other places. That includes here, in the United States, where California Condors are dying from lead poisoning.

(sound of a vulture eating)

Before I leave the Aviary, Katzner points out an American black vulture. She’s gobbling a breakfast of chick pieces and mice. Katzner hopes his work will help to keep other vultures happy and hungry. He says we all need ‘em on the job as nature’s cleanup crew.

For The Environment Report, I’m Ann Murray

Related Links

Furry Critters and Chanel No.5

  • Jeff Wilson and Dan Haskell are trapping pine martens in Minnesota for relocation to northern Wisconsin. (Photo by Barbara Jean Johnson)

There are places where some wildlife
that once thrived, are now gone. In
Wisconsin, the Pine Marten has been
wiped out. The shy animal looks a bit
like a ferret. Pine Martens are members
of the weasel family. Barbara Jean Johnson
went out with researchers to see how
they’re bringing Pine Martens back to
northern Wisconsin:

Transcript

There are places where some wildlife
that once thrived, are now gone. In
Wisconsin, the Pine Marten has been
wiped out. The shy animal looks a bit
like a ferret. Pine Martens are members
of the weasel family. Barbara Jean Johnson
went out with researchers to see how
they’re bringing Pine Martens back to
northern Wisconsin:

You probably have never seen a pine marten. But I’m spending the day with two guys who spend weeks at a time looking for them. They work for the Wisconsin DNR. We’re actually in a county in northern Minnesota. We’re crammed into a Ford Ranger pickup, driving on the back roads to check trap lines. We’re looking for Pine Martens in Minnesota that will be released in northern Wisconsin.

Pine Marten’s were wiped out or extirpated in Wisconsin over the last hundred years. The Marten’s were in trouble once European settlers moved in. A combination of forest fires reduced animal habitat. Already too many of the animals were trapped for their pelts. But then the Great Depression hit.

“Trapping was a valuable commodity. Fur prices were high and many farmers and farm boys feed their families off their trap lines, and given that there’re weren’t many regulations, or limited regulations, and the high value, I don’t doubt that they over harvested, as well.”

That’s Jeff Wilson. He’s on the frontlines of this varmint capture mission. He and his partner Dan Haskell are seeking to right some of the past wrongs. Dan and Jeff are fun guys. They love the wilderness and they like to chat. The only downside to our little expedition is the smell that permeates the cab. I didn’t say anything, but it smells like skunk.

“Now you do admit, you do smell a little skunk essence in here, do you not? We do our best you know. we shower everyday, but we have been getting a few looks at the grocery stores and the places we’ve been shopping in your Grand Marais community. We hope we haven’t offended anybody.”

These guys us a skunk scent to lure Pine Martens to live-traps. They love the scent. And, they’re not the only ones. Apparently this skunk compound is used in the famous French perfume Chanel No. 5. Some of their colleagues have actually used the perfume as a lure when trapping lynx in Canada.

“However, Chanel No. 5 is like $90 an ounce. (laughs) So we don’t use it.”

Dan and Jeff don’t want just any kind of marten. They already have all the males they need. They want females. As we make our way from trap to trap we catch male after male – seriously, five males – and no females.

“My wife says it’s because they are smarter, but I think it’s because they have a much smaller home range – maybe a half a mile to a mile. In contrast, males cover around two to three miles. You’re just going to get more males. If you set a trap line and spread it out, there’s going to be about two or three times more possibility of a male capture than a female capture.”

(sound of animal screaming)

Catch six, and we’re all hoping it’s a girl. But they have to check to make sure. Marten’s may be small, but they’re certainly not known for being cuddly.

Jeff coaxes the marten head-first into the corner of a laundry bag. He puts a tight hold on its head while Dan peels back the bag to check the genitalia. Once they know they’ve captured a female, they sedate her and run through a series of basic tests to collect data. They also give each animal they take home a name.

“This one is obviously going to be called ‘Barbara’ after you, our colleague. (laughter) You’re a breath of fresh air – literally. (laughter)”

Yeah, they’re a little lonely out in the field. Not a lot of people spend much time with them – smelling a little like skunk and all. And they’re away from home for extended periods of time. But, all in all, they both enjoy what they do and find real meaning in it.

“We can restore what we’ve mismanaged in the past and it’s inspirational for me to see there’s no doubt there’s a niche for this animal there. This animal is a really important part of biological diversity and I’m really happy I can participate in that.” For The Environment Report, I’m Barbara Jean Johnson.

Related Links

Forests, Carbon, and Critters

  • Some suspect that in Copenhagen, rich countries might agree to pay poor countries to stop cutting forests. (Photo by John J. Mosesso, courtesy of the National Biological Information Infrastructure)

World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen,
Denmark next month to begin dealing with
global climate change. A firm treaty is
off the table for now, but one idea they’re
thinking through is to preserve forests
and have them absorb heat-trapping carbon
dioxide. Shawn Allee reports,
some scientists want all this forest talk
to include animals, not just trees:

Transcript

World leaders are meeting in Copenhagen,
Denmark next month to begin dealing with
global climate change. A firm treaty is
off the table for now, but one idea they’re
thinking through is to preserve forests
and have them absorb heat-trapping carbon
dioxide. Shawn Allee reports,
some scientists want all this forest talk
to include animals, not just trees:

Stuart Pimm is a biologist at Duke University. He says in Copenhagen, rich countries might agree to pay poor countries to stop cutting forests. Pimm says that’s great but not all forests are equal.

“Some forests have more carbon in them than others, and some forests have more species in them than others.”

Pimm and other biologists say carbon pricing alone might mean carbon-poor forests get cut – even if they’re home to lots of animal species. They want negotiators to somehow tweak any climate agreement.

“So we should be encouraging countries not to burn their forests, but we should encourage them not to burn the forests that are so biologically rich.”

Climate negotiators could take up Pimm’s idea next month in Copenhagen.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Predicting the Next Outbreak

  • The program is supposed to identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Transcript

A new coalition wants to set up an
early warning system for diseases
that pass between animals and humans.
Samara Freemark reports
some research institutions and conservation
groups are launching the PREDICT program:

Organizers hope the program will help prevent the spread of diseases like avian flu, ebola, and swine flu. PREDICT researchers will work in disease ‘hotspots’ overseas.

Program director Stephen Morse is an epidemiologist at Columbia University in New York. He says the program will identify new viruses in animals before they spread to humans.

“We don’t even know how may emerging viruses, let alone other infectious organisms there are out there in nature, but the number must be large.”

The PREDICT program will also create better global disease warning systems.

“This is really essential to our survival as well as something very important to understand if we want to be able to control infections in the future.”

Morse hopes the program will help governments stop local outbreaks before they become global pandemics.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links