Month: August 2005

Lessons Learned From Wetland Rescue?

  • Spotted salamanders - adult and baby. Volunteers collected 14 species of reptiles and amphibians from a half-acre wetland in Ann Arbor, MI. (Photo by David Mifsud)

A lot of new shopping centers and subdivisions have wetlands
at their edges. Sometimes those wetlands are as new as the buildings next to them. Developers often build new ponds when they drain and fill existing wetlands. But experts point out that many man-made wetlands can’t match up to the ecosystems that evolved over hundreds or thousands of years. One group of people is trying something it hopes will be more successful: they’re moving a wetland, piece by little tiny piece. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the story:

Transcript

A lot of new shopping centers and subdivisions have wetlands at their edges.
Sometimes those wetlands are as new as the buildings next to them.
Developers often build new ponds when they drain and fill existing wetlands.
But experts point out that many man-made wetlands can’t match up to the
ecosystems that evolved over hundreds or thousands of years. One group of
people is trying something it hopes will be more successful: they’re moving
a wetland, piece by little tiny piece. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams has the story:


Making a new wetland might not seem that hard. You need certain things – a
big hole in the ground, water, plants, some frogs, some snakes. But wetland
ecologists will tell you that it’s hard to get a man-made wetland to be a
replica of a natural one.


But this group of people is giving it a try. Volunteers are leaping after
baby frogs and snakes at the edge of a wetland in Ann Arbor, Michigan.


“He’s fast, look at him go!”


They’re scooping the animals up and putting them in buckets to move them to
a new manmade wetland. The original wetland is small – just half an acre –
but it’s teeming with life. It’s also sitting right where a new high
school is going to be built.


Saving the frogs and snakes and newts is turning out to be a lot of work.
The group’s caught about five thousand adults and babies in all during the last five
months.


Dave Mifsud is a herpetologist; he studies amphibians and reptiles. He’s
in charge of the rescue. Mifsud surveyed the site last year and was
impressed that such a small wetland could hold so many species. He asked
the school district to let him lead a rescue.


“When I first proposed the idea, I was hesitant because whenever I’ve
suggested it in the past, it’s been received with laughs or a blatant no.”


Mifsud says in most construction projects, time means money. He says it’s
hard to get anyone to agree to wait while animals are moved. So, he was
surprised when school officials agreed to the rescue. Mifsud says the
school’s also trying to make the new wetland as much like the original as
possible. They’re moving water, soil, and plants from the old wetland to the
new one.


Randy Trent directs the school district’s environmental services. He says
instead of seeing Mifsud’s proposal as a headache, the school thinks of it
as a way to balance development and conservation.


“It gives us an opportunity to let our students have the history that’s
going on at this site as something to learn from.”


But critics are asking just what the school district is teaching by building
over an irreplaceable site. Ann Arbor resident Alan Pagliere is a vocal
critic of the district.


“There’s going to be a legacy left, there’s going to be a lesson taught, and what are those? You
certainly can’t teach a lesson about the environment by destroying wetlands, but clear-cutting landmark trees. These are decisions that are going to be with us for decades and the people
who are making the decisions will be gone when their terms are over.”


Pagliere says the school should preserve the existing wetland as a living
classroom instead of spending taxpayer money to destroy it and build a new
one.


The animal rescue has its skeptics too. Jim Harding is a wildlife biologist
with Michigan State University. He says moving amphibians and reptiles is
risky.


“An adult frog or adult salamander already has its idea of where home ought
to be; we have anecdotal reports of building new ponds for salamanders
and having them return in the spring to the old site which is now a parking
lot.”


(sound in, back with frogcatchers)


“Oh, I think that was mud.”


“It’s mud, it’s okay… if you’ve got the tadpoles, you can actually just dump them right on the edge.”


But herpetologist Dave Mifsud says he’s giving the frogs and toads a
fighting chance. He says the tadpoles he’s released will think of the new
pond as home. He’s also put up fences around the woods near the new pond. He
hopes they’ll direct the adults back to the new pond in the spring.


“Let’s start releasing the frogs along the edges…”


The frog-catchers’ buckets are loaded with baby frogs. Dave Mifsud’s taking
the cover off his bucket and coaxing frogs out into their new environment.


(Sound of tapping on bucket)


“Come on guys. You’ve been trying to get out of the bucket this whole time. Ah, this is the best part for me! Come on! You’re lucky if…in all my years I’ve seen maybe a handful of spring peeper babies. The fact that we were able to save these guys is incredible.”


Mifsud says it’ll be an uphill fight to make large-scale amphibian rescues
more common, but he says he isn’t known for keeping his mouth shut when it
comes to watching out for anything that leaps or slithers.


For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Making the Environmental Field More Diverse

Later this month, a group of students and professors
in the Great Lakes region are holding a national conference aimed at creating more diversity in the environmental field. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Later this month, a group of students and professors in the Great Lakes region are holding a national conference aimed at creating more diversity in the environmental field. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The Minority Environmental Leadership Initiative at the University of Michigan is holding the conference. It’s for students, leaders of environmental non-profit groups and government agencies, and environmental faculty at universities.


Professor Dorceta Taylor says the conference will look at why the level of minority hiring in the environmental field is still so low, and what can be done about it.


“The environment affects everyone, and it could be a far more effective movement if it involved a larger cross section of the population.”


Taylor says many environmental organizations say they’d like to hire more minority graduates, but don’t know how to find or recruit them. Organizers say they hope the conference will connect employers with minority students looking for jobs.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Group Seeks to Complete Ice Age Trail

  • Glaciers similar to this one carved the Great Lakes region's landscape during the Ice Age. (Photo courtesy of NASA)

A non-profit group is working to preserve part of the region’s glacial history. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley explains:

Transcript

A non-profit group is working to preserve part of the region’s glacial history. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley explains:


The group is building a national scenic trail where a glacier stopped and receded thousands of years ago in Wisconsin. The same glacier formed Lake Michigan. Landscape formations along the trail vary from cone-shaped hills to long, snake-like hills.


Nancy Frank is with the Ice Age Park and Trail Foundation. That’s the group working on the project. She says sometimes there’s no definite line of where the glacier was.


“It may be a band of about three miles or so of glacial material, that forms what they call the terminal moraine, which is as far as that glacier went.”


Frank says work on the trail began in the 1950’s. So far, 600 miles of it are done; at least 400 miles are left to go. A bill before Congress would make it easier to complete the trail. The ice age trail is one of only eight scenic trails in the nation.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

Report: Fuel Efficiency Lags Behind

  • The EPA reports that despite a slight improvement in the last year, the average fuel economy rating for cars and trucks is still lower than the peak reached in 1987-88. (Photo courtesy of the Department of Energy)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published its report on fuel economy trends for cars and trucks sold in the U.S. Environmentalists say it highlights the need for stricter fuel efficiency standards – an issue largely ignored in the Energy Bill recently passed by Congress. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has published its report on fuel
economy trends for cars and trucks sold in the U.S. Environmentalists say
it highlights the need for stricter fuel efficiency standards – an issue
largely ignored in the Energy Bill signed into law by the President. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports:


The authors of the report looked at fuel economy trends for cars and trucks
over the last thirty years. They found the average fuel economy for today’s
cars and trucks is twenty one miles per gallon. That’s still less than the peak
reached more than fifteen years ago.


The downward trend in fuel economy has been blamed on the popularity of
trucks and SUVs. These vehicles make up close to half of all vehicles sold
in the U.S.


Several foreign automakers have been criticized for their fleets losing
ground in fuel efficiency. Nissan, VW, and Hyndai all saw decreases in
their average fuel economy ratings largely because they’ve jumped in the
truck and SUV market.


The report’s authors highlighted the fact that fuel economy is directly
related to energy security. These vehicles account for close to forty percent
of all U.S. oil consumption, and much of that oil is imported.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Energy Bill Seeks to Simplify Fuel Supply

  • Some say that the use of air-friendly gas blends causes prices to increase. (Photo by Pam Roth)

The new energy legislation passed by Congress
includes an item that supporters claim will ease spikes in gasoline prices. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

The new energy legislation signed by the President includes an item that supporters claim will ease spikes in gasoline prices. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Critics claim the system of using special gasoline blends to reduce air
pollution has led to sizable price hikes when production problems reduce
supplies of the so-called boutique fuels.


The energy legislation would allow the temporary lifting of cleaner fuel mandates during supply disruptions. The EPA would also limit the number of boutique fuels and look for ways to
make the blends more widely available.


Wisconsin Republican House Member Paul Ryan says the new plan will bring stability.


“So we can standardize our gasoline blends, maintain our clean air standards, but stabilize the supply of gasoline.”


Ryan admits it may take several years for motorists to see any savings. Democrats worried about air pollution and oil companies concerned about additional regulations have traditionally blocked changes in the fuel supply system, but with gas prices around two fifty a gallon, the federal
government is taking action.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Credits for Hybrids in Energy Bill

  • Owners of hybrids like this Honda Insight could save on their taxes. (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

President Bush has signed a new energy bill that will raise tax savings for buyers of hybrid vehicles. Supporters predict high credits will boost sales of hybrids, and those cars will save gas. But some experts doubt the move will curb demand for oil. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee
reports:

Transcript

President Bush has signed a new energy bill that will raise tax savings for buyers of hybrid vehicles. Supporters predict high credits will boost sales of hybrids, and those cars will save gas. But some experts doubt the move will curb demand for oil. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee reports:


Starting next year, hybrid-buyers could get up to three thousand dollars in tax credits, depending on the hybrid model. Sounds like a sweet deal, but some environmental groups doubt the move will translate into national fuel savings.


That’s because hybrids make up less than one percent of the car market. Congress didn’t require the other ninety-nine percent of cars to improve their fuel savings. David Friedman directs vehicle research for the Union of Concerned Scientists.


“The only way we could have saved oil in this energy bill is if Congress had actually had raised fuel economy standards or set a real goal for saving, say, a million gallons of oil per day by 2015.”


Overall fuel savings might stall for another reason. The number of hybrid tax credits is limited to 60,000 per car maker. Toyota expects to sell more than 100,000 Prius hybrids this year alone.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Neighbors Reclaim Abandoned Urban Land

  • Maria Graziani (in green) teaches neighborhood kids about farming. (Photo by Lisa Ann Pinkerton)

It can take years for city government to demolish or develop abandoned property. In one urban neighborhood, a group of neighbors has found a new way to reclaim land that has been left behind. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton has their story:

Transcript

It can take years for city government to demolish or develop
abandoned property. In one urban neighborhood, a group of neighbors has
found a new way to reclaim land that has been left behind. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton has their story:


Maria Graziani’s house was built on a hillside. At the top of the hill, people have dumped old refrigerators, broken air conditioners, dried up paint cans, worn out tires… lots and lots of junk on the abandoned property. Last year she brought her neighbors and the city together to clean up the mess. This year, she’s farming it.


(Sound of rusty metal squeaking)


On her front porch, she lifts a manual reel mower onto her shoulder to carry to the top of the hill. She’s made this trip so many times before, she’s carved a path through the weeds. On her way, she has to step over and around various pieces of rusted junk.


“There’s like a wooded area that’s owned by the city that, I guess, used to be people’s backyards because there’s trash and cars up here.”


Graziani’s not your typical urban developer. Her orange knitted headband keeps her brown dreadlocks at bay, her paint-splattered overalls are ripped, and her pockets are stuffed with tools. At the top of the hill, she leans on her knees to catch her breath. Ahead of her, is a field covered by invasive knotweed.


“This is where the farm property starts.”


Despite field’s condition, it has a breathtaking view. Nearly the entire Pittsburgh skyline is framed by trees and lit by a gold setting sun.


“It’s one point seven acres, nineteen lots that the Urban Redevelopment Authority and the city own.”


Graziani formed a non-profit organization to get foundation money to pay for the block and the back taxes. In five years, it will all belong to The Healcreast Urban Community Farm.
The farm doesn’t have a lot of rules. If you help out, you can have some food.
If you’re needy, there’s food available for the asking. Besides the theft of the farm’s tomato plants, Graziani says it works pretty well.


As the sun falls and the evening cools off, another workday begins.
Volunteers trudge up the hill from every conceivable direction.


(Sound of shovels, talking)


The volunteers say once they heard about the urban farm they wanted to help. Even if they weren’t sure how.


VOLUNTEER 1: “I know close to nothing about farming, so I just need to learn – I need to dig in and learn how to do it.”


VOLUNTEER 2: “I work for the Bloomfield Garfield Corporation So that’s how I learned about this; it’s a small office.”


VOLUNTEER 3: “It seemed fairly absurd at first, but it makes a whole lot of sense when you think about it, with all the vacant spaces in town that aren’t being used.”


Everyone picks a spot and starts digging. Immediately they’ve got a problem: they’ve hit concrete. It’s the foundation of a demolished house. That’s only one of the obstacles the Healcrest farmers have faced. The volunteers had an easy time with their first garden. Not much junk was dumped in that area. But the rest of the property is contaminated with arsenic and lead, but Graziani has a plan.


“I would like to till it and put in some dwarf sunflowers. Which I want to use for phyto-remediation.”


The sunflowers will draw up the contaminants into their roots. In the fall, farmers will pull up the plants – roots and all – and dump them at a hazardous waste facility.


(Sound of rain)


Two days later it’s another workday. And it’s raining. But the Healcreast farmers hardly notice.
Because they uncovered the foundation of an old house, they’ve decided to build raised beds.
They layer peat moss, compost, and topsoil into mounds. And even though it’s raining the sun breaks through for a moment.


“And I think that I see it; it’s right there! So we’ve got a rainbow, just kind of right over the hill, it’s quite gorgeous.”


As summer has progressed, all kinds of vegetables are growing strong: peppers, collard greens, corn, squash. With a grant from the Health Department, Graziani can pay junior high school students a little bit of cash to help her once a week. They’re kids from the neighborhood, who’ve only known the hilltop as a dump. Soon, Graziani, the kids, and the volunteers, will have a harvest on the hilltop.


For the GLRC. I’m Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

Related Links

Suburb Sees the Light in Rail

  • The town of Elburn, IL is working to preserve their small town feel in the face of sprawling development headed their way. (Photo by Shawn Allee)

Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:

Transcript

Rural towns on the edge of big cities often see encroaching
suburban development as a threat to their way of life. One small town
is feeling those pressures too. And it’s taking a page from its past
to fight them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee
has this report:


Eric Gustaffson is a young guy who works at his family’s drug store. He says he plans to stick around because he likes his small town – Elburn, Illinois – just as it is. It’s still got a working grain elevator and animal feed stores. It also has a real town center, a strip of shops that people can walk to.


But like a lot of his neighbors, Eric’s bothered by some of the sprawling subdivisions that are popping up nearby. He doesn’t want to see that that kind of development come to Elburn. He says it would become a place where neighbors live too far apart and everyone has to drive to get anywhere. He does have hope, though.


“I really think that the plan that Elburn has set in place will work a lot better and will control how things grow a little bit more instead of just things from popping up in random places.”


So, what’s the plan? Well, it turns out Elburn’s looking to its past for help. Residents used to catch passenger trains here for day trips to Chicago. The passenger service died out decades ago, but now Elburn’s bringing in a new train station. It will be part of the region’s Metra commuter rail system.


By next year, commuters will be able to avoid the congested roads that lead to Chicago, but the town also wants the station to be the center of a new neighborhood, a cluster of new shops, smaller homes, and even apartments.


The idea’s to get people to walk to stores and the train instead of driving to them, all of which is very different from what’s happening in nearby subdivisions. Those are pretty much isolated tracts of big houses and little else.


There is some danger in Elburn’s plan, though. The proposed development could double the population, and the train station will attract extra car traffic to its parking lot. During our drive to the construction site, I ask the mayor, Jim Willey, whether this plan might kill the town while trying to save it.


“I get the impression sometimes people wish that we had some secret sauce we could spray on the town and keep it just the way it is. It’s sad, but you can’t do that and change happens, and we have to deal with it.”


(Sound of heavy machinery)


At the site, construction machines pack down a couple of acres of dirt. It took a decade, a lot of political will, and a hundred and forty million dollars to start the project. But Jim says that was the easy part.


It will be harder to resist the temptation to stray from the plan, and build only big, single family homes here. He says a compact mix of stores and housing will be good for the region, not just Elburn. If there’s enough housing here, maybe there’ll be less pressure to build houses on the nearby farms.


“You can’t go anywhere in the world and find finer farmland than where we’re at right now. So the least that we can do is, when we’re going to convert this to housing, is let’s think about what we’re doing, let’s try to make some intelligent decisions.”


There are towns that look like Elburn’s vision of the future. Last century, commuter towns with compact development sprung up along the country’s commuter rail lines. But they all got their start in the days before interstate highways and long car commutes. So, is it possible to mimic those towns now, in the post-automobile age?


Well, I put that question to Dave Schulz. He’s with the Infrastructure Technology Institute, a federally-funded transportation research group. He says it’s hard to keep projects like Elburn’s on track; homes are clustered close to shops, what planners call high-density. He cites Glenview, another Illinois town with a commuter rail station.


“Basically, a number of members of the Glenview board who were voted out of office for approving a townhome development that was judged, apparently, by voters to be too high density near the train station. I think we have a situation where people in the suburbs fear density.”


Schulz says it’s hard to change that attitude. But to fend off the sprawl of suburban development, towns like Elburn need to stay the course. Otherwise…


“If all you’re gonna do is build a bunch of stations in the middle of the cornfields with giant parking lots to allow people to drive to the station from wherever they choose to live, I think a fairly strong argument can be made that you’re not fighting sprawl, but you’re in fact facilitating sprawl.”


Dave Schulz says places like Elburn could be onto something. Maybe its plan for compact development will attract people looking for something different from typical suburban homes. If Elburn can keep its small-town feel, maybe newcomers won’t mind giving up their spacious yards and extra cars.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

Related Links

Undercover Agents Catch Wildlife Violators

  • The Blanding's turtle is protected by federal law. It's illegal to buy or sell them. (Photo courtesy of Michigan DNR)

The federal government and several states in the region have used undercover agents and other tactics to crack down on people who violate wildlife protection laws. An Ohio man is the latest person to be caught and convicted by the operation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has more:

Transcript

The federal government and several states in the region
have used undercover agents and other tactics to
crack down on people who violate wildlife protection laws. An Ohio
man is the latest person to be caught and convicted by the operation.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen has more:


A Columbus man has been sentenced to a year in federal prison for illegally buying and selling fifty-three Blandings turtles, protected by federal law. Over the past three years, fifty-seven other dealers in the region have been convicted for illegal trading in turtles, snakes, and lizards.


Jim McCormack of the Ohio Natural Resources Department says Ohio’s population of Blandings turtles has been decimated by wetlands destruction along Lake Erie. He says the thousand or so that survive must be protected so they don’t go extinct and prompt a domino effect on other animals and plants.


“We don’t want to see anything, whether it’s as obscure as some rare lichen or moss to something as showy and obvious and noteworthy as that turtle, to disappear.”


Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois classify the Blandings turtle as “threatened,” and Indiana classifies it as “endangered.”


For the GLRC, I’m Bill Cohen.

Related Links

Open Science Grid to Improve Research?

Scientists say a newly-dedicated computing system called the Open Science Grid could improve research on the environment. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Scientists say a newly dedicated computing system called the
Open Science Grid could improve research on the environment. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Computer grids allow users in one group to tap into another group’s
computer data. Several Midwest universities have been working with
federal agencies on a grid for physicists, biologists, and others to be
used in scientific applications.


The hope is that the Open Science Grid will help different fields of science connect. Dane Skow is with the Fermi National Laboratory near Chicago. He says researchers might combine satellite images of crops with data on water quality.


“You may be able to track algae plumes so that you can see fertilizer runoff patterns from fields. There’s a whole bunch of things people are doing, looking at, and tying this kind of data together.”


Skow says creators of the Open Science Grid have put in controls to try to limit who has access to the system. He estimates the grid costs about ten million dollars to build.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links