Scientists have created a species index that tracks populations much like the Dow Jones (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:
Transcript
Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:
The new system is nicknamed the Dow Jones Index of Biodiversity.
It’s put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the
London Zoo.
Jonathan Baillie is with the zoo. He says the system helps keep track of which
species are doing well and which ones are close to extinction.
“So if you thought of a group of species like a company you can track what’s
happening to birds through time, what’s happening to mammals through time
what’s happening to amphibians through time – and we’re seeing amphibians
are crashing quite quickly, birds are going down but not as rapidly.”
Of course species can’t be tracked exactly like financial markets. The species
index gets updated every few years instead of every day.
Soon they’re hoping to track things like beetles, mushrooms, and lichens on the
index.
One environmentalist is arguing that hormones in cows may actually be better for the environment (Photo by Kinna Ohman)
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Transcript
The cow hormone known as rBST or rBGH
has taken a beating in the environmental community.
Injecting the hormone into cows makes them produce
more milk. But some people are afraid the hormone
can find its way from the cow, to the cow’s milk,
and into our bodies. The government insists that’s
not the case. Shawn Allee says one researcher
wants to change the debate about rBST – and convince
environmentalists to support the hormone:
Before I introduce you to the researcher who supports rbst or rbgh, I want
you to understand what she’s up against.
It’s well-meaning people like Steve Parkes.
Parkes co-owns New Leaf natural food store in Chicago. He decides what’s
on the shelves.
“A lot goes into making that decision. First and foremost, is it something
I would eat myself?”
And as for milk produced with rbgh, Parkes won’t sell it.
“People have been drinking milk for thousands of years from animals
that didn’t have have rgbh in them, so, I think I’m a little more
comfortable drinking milk from a cow that didn’t have rgbh than I am
from something that is a very, very new technology.”
A lot of people distrust rbgh, and that’s changed the milk market.
For example, some retailers like Starbucks won’t buy milk from dairies that
use it. More and more dairies are asking farmers to pledge not to use the
hormone.
The trend has frustrated researcher Judith Capper.
“People aren’t questioning the science basis of it.”
Capper is with Cornell University. She argues environmentalists and
consumers should take another look at the hormone, and see it as part of the
solution to global warming.
Capper recently co-wrote a study that began with a simple observation – in a
few decades, there will be many more Americans.
“The US population will have gone up from about 300 million people to
377 million people and we wanted to look at the environment impact of
producing enough milk to feed all those people.”
That scares Capper – because producing milk can make the global warming
problem worse.
That’s because feeding cows, and the cows themselves, lead to more
greenhouse gas emissions.
“Okay, there are six major inputs and outputs in terms of carbon.”
I won’t go through six, but here are a few.
First, there’s the feed that cows eat. Tractors have to plant grain. That burns
fossil fuels. Greenhouse gasses. Then feed is trucked to the dairy farm.
More greenhouse gasses. More cows, more greenhouse gasses.
So, you want as much milk as possible from each cow.
“If you give rbst to a cow, it will produce an extra ten pounds per day,
that’s quite an increase.”
And then there’s the other greenhouse gasses. From, um, the ugly end of the
cow equation.
The manure puts off other potent greenhouse gasses. And Cows belch
methane. Cows that use rbst poop and belch, spare the atmosphere even
more carbon.
All this leads Capper to a startling conclusion.
She says if farmers gave a million cows the hormone –
“Using rbst would be like taking about 400,000 cars off the road, or
planting three hundred million trees. Those are really big numbers.”
Judith Capper says she expects scientists will challenge her research – and
she welcomes a good debate about rbgh and rbst.
She says that’s better than this vague idea that the hormone might somehow
be bad without understanding the whole story.
“Choose organic, choose rbst-free, whatever, but base it on facts and
science, not on consumer perceptions that may not be factually correct.”
But, Capper’s got her work cut out for her.
Government statistics show consumer fear about rbgh has made farmers cut
the percentage of cows injected with the hormone.
Chet Meyers surveys the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science Reserve for Red-headed Woodpeckers. He's heading up a study to identify the bird's preferred habitat, and to encourage landowners to let dead and dying trees stand, as woodpecker homes. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
This red-headed woodpecker has just stored an acorn for use in the coming winter. The word for
this is cache. (Photo by Jim Williams)
Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:
Transcript
Red-headed woodpeckers used to
be just about everywhere east of the Rocky
Mountains. But these days the number of
red-headed woodpeckers is about half of
what it was fifty years ago. Stephanie
Hemphill reports volunteers
are working on a new project to get people
to help red-headed woodpeckers. They’re
encouraging landowners to let dead or dying
trees stand rather than cut them down:
You can’t miss Red-headed Woodpeckers. They have long beaks,
bright red heads and snowy white breasts. And if you go to the right
place, you can find a lot of them.
“Somebody told me that there was Red-headed Woodpeckers up
here, so I walked five minutes, and there was a Red-headed
Woodpecker, and it flew into a hole in a tree, and I says, ‘wow, this is
easy.’”
Lance Nelson first visited the Cedar Creek Ecosystem Science
Reserve about a year ago.
“And then I came up this year and found 8 nests. But the young
make a lot of chattering, so you can usually tell where the nest is.”
Today they’re not hammering on trees – the sound most of us
associate with woodpeckers – but they’re doing plenty of chattering.
This reserve in southern Minnesota looks a lot like how much of the
Midwest used to look.
There are clumps of big oak trees here, separated by open areas of
native grasses, shrubs and wildflowers. The biologists call it an oak
savannah.
And there are Red-headed Woodpeckers everywhere – about fifty of
them on this 500-acre patch of ground.
“There’s a red-headed, and he’s got a baby with him. God, they’re
beautiful. They are so beautiful.”
That’s Chet Meyers. After a career as a college professor, he’s now
in charge of an effort to make more places where Red-headed
Woodpeckers can build their nests and raise their young.
If they can figure out exactly what the woodpeckers like so much
about this place, maybe they can come close to reproducing the
same conditions other places.
Chet Meyers is marking every tree where the woodpeckers have
nested.
“See these two trees to the left, go to the right-most one, it forks, and
there’s a broken-off snag up there, looks like a ‘Y’. That’s where the
babies were sticking their head out a couple weeks ago. It was really
cute.”
Once the trees are marked, the group will catalog exact descriptions
of each tree. They’re hoping to come up with a profile of the perfect
home for Red-headed Woodpeckers.
“And we’re going to measure the diameter of the tree, how high the
nest cavity is, the species of the tree, is it alive or is it dead, so we
can get some data on what seems to be the preferred habitat.”
Once they’re pretty sure they know what the woodpeckers like, they’ll
reach out to land owners. They’ll to try to get them to leave dead and
dying trees standing.
That could work on old abandoned farms, where there are trees and
open spaces. Or in cemeteries. Or around golf courses.
“If our theory – see, this is all theory – if our theory is correct, the golf
course replicates an oak savannah and there should be birds there.
So, that’s what we’re hoping.”
And Meyers says helping woodpeckers means helping other wildlife
too.
“The woodpecker is called a primary nester, it digs the cavity. But
flying squirrels, mice, snakes, bluebirds, tree swallows – there are lots
of other animals that are secondary nesters. They can’t drill the hole.
But they live there. So what we’re trying to do is preserve the habitat
so the woodpeckers drill the hole and when they leave, something
else will come in and live in it.”
The researchers think if you have dead or dying tree, that could be a
home for a Red-headed Woodpecker. But usually homeowners are
worried the tree could fall and damage something, Meyers says you
can cut off the top and some of the bigger branches and leave the
rest of the tree standing. They think the red-headed woodpecker will
be just as happy.
For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Researchers have started a project to document firefly sightings (Photo by Don Salvatore, courtesy of Museum of Science, Boston)
Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:
Transcript
Scientists want your help counting
fireflies. Mark Brush reports researchers
hope to answer a commonly asked question:
People often ask, ‘Why don’t we see as many fireflies anymore?’
Don Salvatore is an educator at Boston’s Museum of Science. He says he and other
researchers don’t have a good answer. They don’t even know whether there are fewer
fireflies or not.
So Salvatore and a few bug scientists started up the Firefly Watch Project. They’re
asking people to help them out by spending a few minutes in their backyard.
“So what we want them to do is to go outside at night and then for a ten second period
count the number of fireflies they see. As well as that we ask them to just key in on a
couple of fireflies and give us just a little information.”
Salvatore says they hope to discover whether thinks like frequent lawn mowing, light
pollution, and pesticides are harming firefly numbers.
A tern chick at Mille Lacs Wildlife Refuge in Minnesota (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
There are few things as aggravating as getting stuck in a traffic jam. But for some drivers crossing a busy bridge from the U.S. to Canada there’s aggravation on top of aggravation. Joyce Kryszak reports that’s because a plan to build an additional bridge is being blocked by concern for a bird and a little fish that it eats:
Transcript
There are few things as aggravating as getting stuck in a traffic jam. But for some drivers crossing a busy bridge from the U.S. to Canada there’s aggravation on top of aggravation. Joyce Kryszak reports that’s because a plan to build an additional bridge is being blocked by concern for a bird and a little fish that it eats.
Every year, millions of people cross the mighty Niagara River on the Peace Bridge that connects Buffalo, New York to Canada. And many of them sit for hours in a traffic jam. The border crossing and passport checks slow things down. But there are just not enough lanes for all the traffic.
Ice delivery man Tim Holliday is one of those who is fed up with hours and hours of bridge delays.
“Like, I gotta go to the duty-free here, and when I’m coming out of here I have to go through customs and they always ask, what were you doing in Canada?” said Holliday. “I’m just sick of the hassles, you know?”
Transportation officials say a new bridge is needed. The traffic problems will only get worse. Because of increased trade, about eleven million additional travelers are expected to be using the Peace Bridge over the next decade.
And that’s a headache for Ron Rienas. He manages the busy international bridge crossing. He says building a new bridge would help with the traffic delays and help with national security.
“This is a border improvement project designed to address redundancy issues, security issues, traffic flow, all of those things, maintenance issues…all of those are impacted by not being able to proceed with the project,” said Rienas.
A second bridge has been designed. It’s a cable-stayed bridge with towers as high as the Washington monument.
Brian Higgins is Congressman for the area. He’s pushing for federal approval of the impressive cable design. He says the region needs an iconic symbol of progress.
“We are in the eleventh hour of a project that’s been going on for fifteen years. We need additional capacity at the Peace Bridge to promote the efficient, predictable flow of commerce between the United States and Canada – we need an iconic bridge, a signature bridge,” said Higgins.
But that signature bridge is exactly the kind of design that is dangerous to many birds.
And the Niagara River is a virtual highway for nearly three hundred kinds of birds. The cables can be invisible to the birds and they can fly into them and die.
Among those birds is the Common Tern. It’s an endgangered species.
Terry Yonker knows these and other birds better than most.
“We probably documented somewhere in the range of half a million birds, and there’s a common tern right there.”
Yonker is a scientist and a former Ornithological Society president. He wrote an environmental study that recommended against the bridge’s cable design because it could kill hundreds of different kinds of birds, including the endangered tern.
Yonker says even if it avoided hitting the cables by flying over the bridge, the tern would be stressed by such a tall bridge design. That’s because it has to make eight trips over the bridge each day to feed its young. But he says it probably wouldn’t make that many trips if the new bridge is any higher than the Peace Bridge.
“You raise that structure and they’ll have to spend a lot of energy doing that. They’ll maybe make five or six trips a day and that means one or two chicks are going to get less food out there,” said Yonker.
The other concern is a food source for the tern.
Fishery experts say the enormous piers would change water currents, eventually killing off the Emerald Shiner. That’s the tiny fish the endangered bird feeds on.
So a new design is being recommended: A lower bridge with smaller piers to protect the tern and the emerald shiner.
Federal and state agencies are working to find a way to mitigate the threat to the birds and fish by altering the plans for the new bridge. But environmental experts say you can’t mitigate extinction.
Environmentalists and some biologists say the common tern is more than an endangered bird. They say it’s a warning, about what happens when sound science is ignored for the sake of progress.
But, try explaining that to the people stuck in traffic for hours because a second bridge is being blocked to save a small bird and a little fish.
The polar bear is now listed as a threatened species (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The federal government has announced that
it’s listing the polar bear as a threatened species.
Biologists say the rapid loss of sea ice from
the warming climate is putting the bears at risk.
Mark Brush reports the government is now facing
legal action from some conservative groups:
Transcript
The federal government has announced that
it’s listing the polar bear as a threatened species.
Biologists say the rapid loss of sea ice from
the warming climate is putting the bears at risk.
Mark Brush reports the government is now facing
legal action from some conservative groups:
In the announcement Secretary of the Interior Dick Kempthorne tried to make it clear –
the listing doesn’t mean the government is regulating greenhouse gases. He says the
listing can’t be used to stop oil and gas drilling or to go after industries for releasing
carbon dioxide.
Reed Hopper is the principal attorney for the Pacific Legal Foundation – a conservative
public interest group. He says he still expects lawsuits from environmentalists. And that
the Secretary can’t control how the courts will interpret the new listing.
“If the activists are able to use this as they intend, to challenge industrial activity in the
United States, the ultimate effect on the average person is going to be an increase in
energy costs, transportation, fuel, food and housing.”
Hopper says his group is planning to go forward with a lawsuit of their own – opposing the listing.
Wolverine display at Arctic Interagency Visitor Center at Coldfoot. (Photo from the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The federal government announced that it will not put
the wolverine on the endangered species list. Steve Carmody
reports:
Transcript
The federal government announced that it will not put
the wolverine on the endangered species list. Steve Carmody
reports:
A federal court ordered the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to take a fresh look
at whether the wolverine should be listed. After the review, the agency
announced that it would not propose a listing for the animal.
Shawn Sartorius is the wolverine expert for the Wildlife Service.
He says the wolverine’s future is not dependant on the estimated 500 animals
that live in the lower 48 states.
“The healthy part of the population, the real genetically diverse and well connected population, is in Alaska and
Canada.”
Sartorius says between 15 and 20 thousand Wolverines live in Alaska and
Canada.
Wolverine numbers are down in the lower 48 states because they have been trapped for fur and
pushed out by development.
A former director of the US Fish Wildlife Service called the decision
“irresponsible.”
The costs of hiring biologists to do a bird count across the U.S. would be astronomical. (photo by Deo Koe)
Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:
Transcript
Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:
(sound of footsteps)
Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”
Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.
She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.
Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.
She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.
“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”
Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day. But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.
Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.
“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”
Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.
There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.
The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.
“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”
(sound of quiet footsteps)
Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now…”
Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree. We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.
“It’s not often that you see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”
Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.
“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”
Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.
Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.
That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.
“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks
but we just think it’s important.”
(sound of Georgina Doe walking)
Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist. But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
Once hunted nearly to extinction, the gray wolf has recently rebounded under the protection of the Endangered Species Act. Now, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing to take the wolf off of the Endangered Species List and hand wolf management back to the states. (Photo by Katherine Glover)
A captive wolf at the Wildlife Science Center in Minnesota. (Photo by Katherine Glover)
Peggy Callahan, Executive Director of
the Wildlife Science Center in Minnesota. Callahan works to minimize conflicts between wolves and people. (Photo by Katherine Glover)
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove the eastern population of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn over wolf management to state control. But not everyone thinks the states are up for it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:
Transcript
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service wants to remove the eastern population
of the gray wolf from the Endangered Species List and turn over wolf management
to state control. But not everyone thinks the states are up for it. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Katherine Glover has the story:
(sound of wolves howling)
The image of the wolf has always had a powerful effect on people. Wolves seem dangerous,
mysterious, romantic. They are a symbol of the untamed wilderness. Before Europeans came
to America, wolves roamed freely on every part of the continent. In 1630, the colony of
Massachussetts Bay started paying bounties to settlers for killing wolves. Over the next
300 years, wolf killing spread across the country, until all that was left was a few small
pockets of surviving wolf packs.
When the Endangered Species Act passed in 1973, the only wolves left to protect in the
Midwest were in Northern Minnesota. By some estimates, there were as few as 350 of them.
Today, Minnesota has a healthy wolf population of around 2400 animals, and smaller populations
are growing in Wisconsin and Michigan. Becaue of this success, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
has proposed removing the animals from the Endangered Species List. This would mean wolves would
no longer be federally protected – it would be up to the states.
(sound of gate opening)
Peggy Callagan works with captive wolves at the Wildlife Science Center in Minnesota. She’s the
Center’s co-founder and executive director. She and her staff research ways to minimize
conflicts between wolves and people. Callahan is looking forward to seeing the wolf taken off
the Endangered Species List.
“It’s a good thing for the Endangered Species Act, to take a wolf off or an eagle off or a
peregrine off when it has recovered. The act was not established to provide a permanent
hiding place. It was established to protect a species until such time that they could be
managed in a different way.”
Wisconsin and Michigan have wolves because young born in Minnesota have migrated east to start
their own packs. Callahan says how Minnesota manages its wolves will affect wolf numbers in the
Midwest. And she isn’t crazy about Minnesota’s current wolf management plan, which has different
rules for different parts of the state.
“Now, there’s a boundary; there’s a boundary called a wolf zone, and there’s a boundary that’s
called the ag zone. And nobody likes it. We went backward.”
In Northeastern Minnesota, where the majority of wolves are, landowners can only kill wolves
if they can demonstrate an immediate threat to pets or livestock. In the rest of the state, where
there is more agriculture and more people, the rules are more lenient. On their own property,
landowners can kill any wolf they feel is a danger, without having to prove anything to the state.
The Sierra Club is opposed to taking the wolf off the Endangered Species list, largely because
of Minnesota’s management plan. Ginny Yinling is the chair of the Wolf Task Force of the Sierra
Club in Minnesota.
“They’ve pretty much given carte blanche to landowners, or their agents, to kill wolves
pretty much at any time in the southern and western two thirds of the state; they don’t even
have to have an excuse, if a wolf’s on their property they can kill it. Instead of this being
what should have been a victory in terms of wolf recovery and the success of the Endangered
Species Act, instead we’re afraid it’s going to turn into something of a disaster.”
Yinling is also concerned with the protection of wolf habitat, such as den sites, rendezvous
sites, and migration corridors.
“The current management plan protects none of those areas; it leaves it entirely up to the
discretion of the land managers.”
But wildlife managers say these are not critical for a large wolf population
like Minnesota’s. Mike DonCarlos is the wildlife program manager for the Minnesota
Department of Natural Resources.
“As you look at the range of species that are threatened by habitat change, ironically the wolf
in Minnesota is not one of them. As long as there’s a prey base that continues, wolves should
do just fine. The key is mortality rates and availability of food.”
In Wisconsin and Michigan, where there are fewer wolves, state laws will continue to protect
wolf habitat. Peggy Callahan says she has faith that the wolves will be fine, even if the
Minnesota state plan is not perfect. But at the Sierra Club, Ginny Yinling says they have
plans to challenge wolf delisting in court.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Katherine Glover.
Scientists have created a species index that tracks populations much like the Dow Jones (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
