New Details on Bat-Killing Fungus

  • In caves where 200 to 300 thousand bats used to hibernate, scientists like Scott Darling have found that this year there are only hundreds. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Scientists are racing to find a way to fight-off a fungus that’s killing bats. More than a million bats have died so far. Scientists believe entire hibernating bat species could be wiped out within two decades. Laura Iiyama reports the cause might have come from overseas:

Transcript

Scientists are racing to find a way to fight-off a fungus that’s killing bats. More than a million bats have died so far. Scientists believe entire hibernating bat species could be wiped out within two decades. Laura Iiyama reports the cause might have come from overseas:

Biologist Scott Darling knew something was wrong in a recent winter when he got several calls at his Fish and Wildlife office in Vermont. People told him about hundreds of bats flying in the air and dying in the snow. During winter, the furry mammals should be hibernating.

He went to Aeolus cave. It’s where the bats in the area should be crowded together on the walls and ceiling.

“Aeolus cave became a morgue. Bats freezing to death in clusters just outside the cave entrance. Most of the bats flew out of the cave onto the landscape to certain death.”

Where 200 to 300 thousand bats had hibernated just four years ago, this year there are just a couple hundred.

The dead bats had white nose syndrome.

The white powdery fungus was first noticed on bats in New York State in 2006. It’s spread into Ontario, Canada and as far south as Tennessee.

The fungus is not directly killing the bats.

Thomas Kunz is a professor at Boston University. He suspects the fungus keeps waking-up the hibernating bats.

“It may be simply the irritation from the fungus that is causing, if you have athlete’s feet, it itches.”

Instead of hibernating, surviving on their fat reserves, the bats keep waking-up. They burn off the fat. They get too thin. And they die.

Word spread about the fungus.

Thomas Kunz says some scientists recalled seeing a white fungus on bats elsewhere:

“Bat biologists in Europe have observed and reported that there are bats that do have the fungus although it doesn’t seem to be killing them.”

Scientists think someone visited a cave in Europe. Spores from the fungus got on clothing or shoes. Then that person wore the same shoes or clothing in a cave in the U.S. The spores were picked-up by the bats.

The bats huddle together in hibernation, easily spreading the fungus.

Often 90 percent of the bats are killed-off after the first appearance of the fungus. And Kunz says that may have been what happened to bats in Europe because we don’t find as many bats in European caves as there have been in North American caves:

“Now it’s very possible that in historic times there were large numbers of hibernating bats in Europe and these are the leftovers, these were the survivors that may be resistant to the fungus.”

So the arrival of the fungus may mean US bat species will permanently drop in numbers, like the bats in Europe.

David Blehert (blee-hurt) of the US Geological Survey says if that’s the case, it will be a dramatic change in life in caves in America and Canada.

“Whereas we have hibernation caves with 100 thousand, 300 thousand and even commonly lower ten thousand but those are rather common sites where we’ve seen the fungus decimate up to 95 percent and greater to the animals in the cave. Many of the European hibernation sites have between one and thirty animals.”

There’s no treatment for white nose syndrome. And even if a cure is found, it will be a very long time –centuries– before the bats recover. Bats reproduce slowly. The females have only one pup, one baby bat, per year. And there are over a million bats dead so far.

For The Environment Report, I’m Laura Iiyama.

Related Links

Lake Huron’s Invasive Species

  • Filmmaker John Schmit says he wanted to make this film to show how even the smallest invader could mess up the delicate balance of life in the lake. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA GLERL)

You might call Lake Huron the forgotten Great Lake. There are no major cities on its shores. It doesn’t get the media attention the other four Great Lakes do. But its problems are just as bad or worse. Rebecca Williams reports a new documentary tells the story of Lake Huron’s struggle with dozens of alien invaders… and the biologists and fishermen who are trying to reclaim their lake:

Transcript

You might call Lake Huron the forgotten Great Lake. There are no major cities on its shores. It doesn’t get the media attention the other four Great Lakes do. But its problems are just as bad or worse. Rebecca Williams reports a new documentary tells the story of Lake Huron’s struggle with dozens of alien invaders… and the biologists and fishermen who are trying to reclaim their lake:

The documentary Lake Invaders is a cautionary tale about opening the door to strangers. It tells how Lake Huron was opened up to alien invasive species. The film paints fish biologists as the heroes rushing in.

“Seems like it always has to wait until it’s at a disaster level before you know, we can start fixing it… we’re constantly putting out these biological fires, running from fire to fire, to try to keep them under control. We have to find another way to approach this.”

More than 180 non-native species have gotten into the Lakes… and some of them have turned everything upside down. Long, slithering, blood-sucking parasites called sea lamprey were the first to get in. They slipped through a canal that connects the Atlantic Ocean and the Great Lakes. Lamprey killed off most of the big predator fish in the Lakes.

Then… came the alewife. Since the lamprey had taken out the top predators… there was nothing to eat the invading alewives. In the film… biologist Jeff Schaeffer explains how the small fish took over the lakes.

“At that time over 90% of the fish biomass of Lake Michigan and Lake Huron was probably dominated by the exotic alewife. One of my colleagues refers to the Great Lakes at that time as alewife soup.”

Suddenly… there was a major stinking mess. Each spring, hundreds of millions of dead alewives washed up on shore and rotted. Not the best thing for tourism.

Filmmaker John Schmit says he was surprised to learn what happened to the lakes next.

“The funny thing about the Great Lakes is there’s Pacific salmon in them.”

Schmit says biologists brought in millions of salmon from the Northwest to control the alewives. The crazy thing is… it worked. In the film we see how a 4 billion dollar sport fishing industry was born. And the native fish of Lake Huron were pretty much forgotten about.

The salmon fishery boomed for decades. Until the alewives crashed in 2003.

Fisher Doug Niergarth says then… the salmon started starving.

“Two years ago we saw some monster salmon heads that were sitting on little dwarfed bodies. And it was the ugliest thing and rather nasty. Just skinny and withered away. It was the nastiest thing you ever done seen.”

The fishing industry started slipping away. Marinas just scraped by. Tackle shops and motels closed. People finally realized there was something wrong with the lakes.

John Schmit says he wanted to make this film to show how even the smallest invader could mess up everything… both the delicate balance of life in the lake and the people who fish it and depend on money from tourism.

“Lake Huron has been the most impacted by the newest invaders. My personal concern, my investment in the Great Lakes and making this documentary is for people to be aware of the kind of damage invasive species can do to these huge lake systems.”

He says his film Lake Invaders is an example of what invasive creatures can do… not just to Lake Huron… but any ecosystem.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Volunteers Testing the Waters

  • Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:


Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.


Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:


“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”


They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:


“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”


Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.


She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.


Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.


Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:


Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”


Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”


Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”


Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”


Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”


Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”


Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”


Rochelle: “Yep.”


Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”


Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”


Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.


Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”


Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.


“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”


Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.


“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”


Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Farmers Respond to Peer Pressure

  • Farming is big business in America's heartland. Many farmers say they want to be left alone to run their farms the way they always have - and they don't want government regulators or researchers dictating to them. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Farm pollution is the biggest water contamination problem in the
nation. But government agencies often struggle with getting farmers to
use less polluting farming methods. Many farmers say they don’t want
outsiders telling them what to do. Rebecca Williams reports one
grassroots project is trying to encourage farmers to change, by relying
on peer pressure:

Transcript

Farm pollution is the biggest water contamination problem in the
nation. But government agencies often struggle with getting farmers to
use less polluting farming methods. Many farmers say they don’t want
outsiders telling them what to do. Rebecca Williams reports one
grassroots project is trying to encourage farmers to change, by relying
on peer pressure:


(Sound of birds and buzzing insects)


The corn around here is way over knee high, and there’s a whole lot of
it. This is Iowa, after all. So, pretty much everyone farms corn and
soybeans.


But there isn’t as much farming happening today. Dozens of farmers are
hanging out by a creek that meanders through farmland. They’re
checking out the day’s catch.


(Sound of splashing around in bucket)


“Now there’s one really bright-colored southern red belly in here, kind
of the prettiest fish we’ve got in this stretch.”


Biologist Dan Kirby just used an electroshocker. It stuns the fish and
they float to the top of the water. Now that he can see them, he can
get an idea of how many fish there are and how big they are. The
farmers are watching closely.


(Farmer:) “That’s a real good sign to see them that big, at this
point?”


(Kirby:) “Yeah, especially the southern red belly – they do classify
them a little bit different, they consider them to be a sensitive
species, so it’s a good thing to have them there at that adult size,
for sure.”


That’s better news than they might’ve been expecting. This creek
running along many of the farmers’ fields is in trouble. It’s on
Iowa’s impaired waters list. In this case, that means the fish and
other aquatic life in the creek are not doing as well as they should
be.


“In some of these streams we have had some rough times. Chronic issues
where fish were not even getting to size they could catch them or else
were just plain absent.”


Dan Kirby says farm pollution such as excess fertilizer and soil
erosion from farm fields can harm fish and other stream life. That’s
the kind of thing that put this creek on the government’s watch list
three years ago.


One of the farmers, Jeff Pape, remembers hearing about that. For him it was a big
red flag:


“We knew there was an impaired waterway and it was running through some
of the land I rent and obviously I don’t want that to shine on me… I
didn’t want the DNR – not that they would or have the time to do
it, but I didn’t want them to come in and say hey, you will be doing
this, or you will be doing that.”


Pape says the fear of being dictated to by the government was a strong
motivator for him and a few of his neighbors. In late 2004, Pape
formed a watershed council with nine of his farming neighbors.


Now there are nearly 50 farmers in the group. Pape says there are some ground
rules: No finger pointing. And everyone gets equal say:


“That’s nice with this group – nobody’s telling them they have to do
anything – they do what they want when they want and that’s it. You
know, they don’t do any more than they want to.”


Pape says he’s proud of what he and his neighbors have gotten done.
They’re installing grass strips along ditches and creeks to filter
water rushing off fields. They’re putting in fences to keep cattle
from tearing up stream beds and banks. They’re being more careful
about how much fertilizer they apply.


Maybe most importantly, they’ve gotten a lot of their neighbors to join
them. Jeff Pape says cash incentives help – farmers are paid for the
conservation projects they do. It’s not as much money as some of the
government’s conservation programs, but it keeps the government out of
their hair.


Pape says this program works because there’s an even stronger
motivation:


“That guy’s looking over your fence – he sees you ain’t got a waterway
and you’re thinking about it, so that peer pressure thing does make a
difference too. You know everybody’s watching each other in this
watershed – not pointing fingers at nobody but everybody’s watching
each other and that keeps people on their toes – they want things to
look right, too.”


Other farmers here agree that a farmer-to-farmer project is going to be
much more effective than anything government regulators or researchers
say.


John Rodecap is with Iowa State University Extension Service. He’s
been helping these farmers clean up the creek. He says it’s remarkable
that more than half of the farmers in this 23,000-acre watershed have
signed on.


“The trials that they do, they talk about it at their coffee shop, they
talk about it over the fence… If the trial’s done 50, 60, 100 miles
away, that’s not good enough. They want to know how it’s gonna work on
my farm.”


Rodecap says if you see your neighbor making a change first, you’re
going to feel a little more comfortable giving it a try yourself. And
knowing your neighbor’s watching you over the fence… that’s a powerful
incentive all its own.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

In Search of Resistant Butternuts

A program is trying to save another
native tree that’s being wiped out by an invasive
fungus. People who like the butternut are hoping
that by planting more seedlings, and tracking
mature trees, they’ll find some are resistant
to a blight that’s killing the butternuts.
Lucy Martin reports:

Transcript

A program is trying to save another
native tree that’s being wiped out by an invasive
fungus. People who like the butternut are hoping
that by planting more seedlings, and tracking
mature trees, they’ll find some are resistant
to a blight that’s killing the butternuts.
Lucy Martin reports:


Butternuts are rich in history. Native Americans used the tree for
medicine and dye. They ate the nuts. During the Civil War, so many
Confederates used the tree’s yellow-brown dye to make home-spun
uniforms that their army picked up the nickname “butternuts.”


Wood ducks, finches and songbirds eat the tree’s spring buds. The fall
nut crop feeds woodpeckers, turkeys, squirrels and other wildlife.
The tree’s hard wood resembles walnut, but with a lighter, golden tone.
That’s why it’s sometimes called “white walnut.”


The trees are seriously threatened by butternut canker, an invasive,
airborne fungus. The blight was first noted in Wisconsin in 1967. In
some states, up to 90% of all butternuts are now affected, but there’s
work underway to try to save the butternut before it’s wiped out.


Tucked in an old orchard, a cold-storage room serves as a distribution
station. Each spring, this is where the Rideau Valley Conservation
Authority gives away seedling trees to the public. Project technician
Rose Fleguel gave me the tour:


“So, I think there’s about 100,000 seedlings here. These are boxed or
bagged so that the trees stay moist and dark. We’ve already spent two
days re-packing into individual landowner tree orders.”


At this time of year, the dormant seedlings just look like twiggy
sticks. Many are still wrapped in brown paper sacks. Conservation
agencies plant all kinds of trees. But sometimes they target very
specific problems, like butternut canker.


“My thing is the Butternut Recovery Project, whatever amount of land
can sustain 10 seedlings, then you’re free to take the seedlings and
plant them out. ‘Cause what we’d like to do is get the seedlings out on
the landscape, get them growing. Replace the ones that have been killed
by this disease, already, and that continue to be killed, and hope for,
I mean, it’s going to be, it’s going to be a shot in the dark, but hope
that maybe some of these seedlings might be resistant.”


“Hope” is the key word. It’s not clear whether any butternuts are
resistant to the canker blight. The seedlings being handed out are
from trees that are still healthy. This recovery program also maps
mature trees and keeps track of the ones that still seem to be canker-
free. It’s a long shot, called “find the resistance.”


Rudy Dyck is the Director of the local Watershed Stewardship Services.
He says you can usually see if a butternut has been attacked by the
disease:


“Look for black patches, black streaks, black sooty areas on
the main stem, at the root collar, and always look on the underside of
the large branches, because that seems to be where the canker first
infects.”


“And if you notice that, is there anything to be done?”


“No, there’s nothing you can do. We’re asking people to keep them, as
long as they can. But one of the reasons that butternut is in such
extreme danger of extinction is that it just does not regenerate very
well.”


Dyck says that’s why it’s important to conserve existing trees.
Butternuts don’t bear seed each and every year. And when they do, the
nuts tend to get gobbled up. Growing new butternuts takes a few tricks:


“You have to stratify them, or prepare them for growing, the next
spring. So they have to spend a few months in kind of freezing
temperatures, an un-insulated garage in a pot of peat moss, or
something. Another strategy some people do, is they bury the nuts in
the fall, and they cover them with chicken wire, and then that protects
them from squirrels during that fall period and, as they start to grow
next spring, you can transplant them.”


Dyck says US and Canadian agencies are sharing ideas and results
because diseases don’t stop at borders:


“There’s literally thousands and thousands of heavily cankered, dying
butternuts out there, and we really want to focus on looking at
healthy, canker-free trees. Because those are the trees we want to get
into our geo-data base, for future seed collection, those are the trees
that may hold some resistance and those are the trees we want to
track.”


Butternut canker isn’t a well-known problem. The beautiful trees are
too big for most yards. They’re usually sparsely scattered in forests,
or old farmsteads. But Dyck says the butternut has an important place
in nature.


“There’s no question, bio-diversity and having many, many types of
ecosystems, habitats, species. They all interact, they all count on
each other, and it all makes for a healthier environment and place for
us all to live.”


Many native trees such as the chestnut, elm, and now the ash, are under
attack from invasive diseases or pests. The butternut is yet another
tree biologists want to save for future generations.


For the Environment Report, I’m Lucy Martin.

Related Links

Lamprey Infests Lake Champlain

  • Two sea lampreys attached to a large fish. This predatory parasite is wiping out freshwater salmon and trout in Lake Champlain. (Photo courtesy of U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

Government biologists working on Lake
Champlain, between New York and Vermont, say
they’re losing the fight against the sea
lamprey, a parasite that targets freshwater
salmon and trout. The lamprey population has
surged in recent years. Brian Mann reports
scientists say the best solution might be to
turn the fight over to federal biologists
who have had greater success fighting
lamprey on the Great Lakes:

Transcript

Government biologists working on Lake
Champlain, between New York and Vermont, say
they’re losing the fight against the sea
lamprey, a parasite that targets freshwater
salmon and trout. The lamprey population has
surged in recent years. Brian Mann reports
scientists say the best solution might be to
turn the fight over to federal biologists
who have had greater success fighting
lamprey on the Great Lakes:


On a gorgeous April morning, charter boat captain Richard
Greenough went fishing. He didn’t like what he found on his line:


“I went out this morning, I got one fish. Looked like it had been
sitting in front of a machine gun. It was skinny. It looked sick.
And that was a good one, because it’s alive.”


Lake Champlain’s freshwater salmon and trout are being wiped out by a
predator called the sea lamprey. The parasites are awful creatures – long and slimy
with circular suckers used to clamp onto the side of fish.


Back in the early 90s, New York and Vermont partnered with the US Fish
and Wildlife Service on an experimental project to kill lamprey, but
since 1998, the parasites have come roaring back. Speaking at a sea lamprey summit
in Burlington, Vermont, Captain Greenough says his customers regularly catch fish
that are half-eaten and scarred:


“It’s almost an embarrassment right now. Two years ago, I thought it
was bad with a 13-inch lake trout with three lampreys on it. Well, it’s
got so good we got a 12-inch with five on it last year.”


State biologists in Vermont and New York concede that the lamprey
response here simply isn’t working. Doug Stang is chief of fisheries
for New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation:


“You see in our current effort, even though substantial and
significant, just isn’t cutting it. We need to put forth more effort. Or
we need to pick up our toys so to speak and go home.”


Government biologists say abandoning an intensive lamprey program
would mean a complete crash of lake salmon and trout populations.
The fish are in danger of being wiped out by the lamprey. Biologists also say the parasites would likely begin feeding on other
species. One possible solution, Stang says, is turning the lamprey battle over
to the federal government, modeling the effort here after a much larger
lamprey program on the Great Lakes:


“This would provide us with a more centralized approach and this would provide us with a more a coordination for funding
and sea lamprey control efforts.”


The sea lamprey program on the Great Lakes isn’t a complete success.
The program is struggling with proposed funding cuts… and some
critics say the lamprey population in the Great Lakes is still too high.


Despite those concerns, Dale Burkett says the feds are ready to do more on Lake Champlain.
He heads sea lamprey control operations for the Great Lakes Fishery
Commission and works for the US Fish and Wildlife Service:


“The expansion in dollar amount would be somewhere around $310,000 more than is
currently being spent by the collective. I think the Fish and Wildlife
Service has indicated that they are willing, if tasked with that
responsibility, to step up to the plate.”


Federal scientists say that new investment would help to save a $250 million sport fishery.
Even so, the Federal takeover would be controversial. The main weapon
in this fight is a kind of poison called TFM that’s used to kill sea
lamprey larva in rivers.


On the Great Lakes, the use of TFM has a long track record, dating back
to the 1950s, but in New York and Vermont the practice is still
controversial. Joanne Calvi is with a group called the Poultney River
Committee. She says the toxins could affect other native species, including
several varieties of freshwater mussels that are considered endangered or threatened by state biologists:


“I’m opposed to chemical treatment with TFM to control native sea
lamprey in the Poultney River. I feel it should be prohibited.”


A new wrinkle here is the growing scientific consensus that the lamprey are a native species
and might not be invasive at all. Green groups say the parasite’s growing numbers reflect a larger problem with Lake Champlain’s eco-system.


Rose Paul is with the Vermont Chapter of the Nature Conservancy:


“We need to manage the lake’s species and habitats in a more holistic
way, that would help us identify root causes of problems.”


Scientists are experimenting with other methods of controlling lamprey including nest destruction, the release of
sterilized males, and trapping. But in the short term, government resdearchers say lampricide poison is
the only cost-efficient way to prevent the parasite from destroying Lake Champlain’s fishery.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brian Mann in Burlington.

Related Links

Volunteers Testing the Waters

  • Volunteers across the country gather samples and data for biologists who don't have the resources to get into the field. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:

Transcript

Most of us assume the government is keeping track of environmental
issues such as pollution in water. In reality, most pollution problems
are first detected by citizens. Lester Graham reports in some parts of
the nation, volunteers step in to make sure their local streams and
lakes are clean:


Rochelle Breitenbach and Mary Bajcz are trudging through the snow,
winding their way through a thicket to find a small creek. It’s 14
degrees above zero. And they plan to go wading. They’re lugging in a
fine-mesh net, some hip boots, and an orange 5 gallon bucket of trays and
specimen jars.


Breitenbach says they’re headed for a pristine creek that eventually
becomes a river, the Huron River in southeast Michigan:


“One thing about this spot is that it’s really close to the headwaters
of the Huron River. So, it’s a really good indicator of what they’re
going to find downstream too. This has traditionally been one of the
best spots to collect in the entire watershed.”


They’re just one team of many that take samples up and down the river.
They’re looking for a certain kind of bug, stonefly larvae. Stoneflies
are good fish food and they are very susceptible to pollution. They’re
considered an indicator species. If stoneflies are there and healthy,
it’s a good indication the stream is healthy:


“Their food source is on decomposing leaves, so that’s
where you find them. And then, I will get some of the leaf packs in
the net and then I’ll dump it in the tray. And then we’ll add a little
warm water so they don’t freeze. And then we’ll sort through the leaf
packs and then look for stoneflies.”


Breitenbach cautiously makes her way down the bank, across the ice and
into the water.


She’s taking her first sample in this open water. Bajcz steps out onto
the ice, holding a plastic tray so Breitenbach can empty the net’s contents
into the plastic tray. But… the ice can’t take the weight.


Luckily Bajcz did not fall into the water. In these temperatures, that
would have been bad. They scramble up the snowy bank and start
sorting through the debris in the trays to find stonefly larvae.


Stoneflies have two tails. Mayflies have three tails. So, they’re
squinting to see what they’ve got:


Mary: “Oh, there’s one! Right there. Right, Rochelle? That one?”


Rochelle: “I left my glasses in the car.”


Mary: “Okay. I’m going to collect it. I think it is.”


Rochelle: Yes, go ahead and take it.”


Mary: “Oh look! That’s a mayfly. Three.”


Rochelle: “Yeah, see all the tails.”


Mary: “Look at that one! That’s two. That’s got two. See?”


Rochelle: “Yep.”


Mary: “Wow. (whisper) That’s gigantic.”


Rochelle: “That’s why we love this site (laughs).”


Once they find one, they drop the bug into a jar of alcohol. After the
thrill of finding the stoneflies, they hate to kill them, but they have
to preserve the samples for biologists.


Rochelle: “The whole jar goes back and Jo goes through and identifies
everything.”


Jo is Jo Latimore. She’s the Huron River Watershed Council’s
ecologist. She says without the volunteers’ efforts all along the
river, they’d never be able to monitor this river system as well, but
there are drawbacks to using volunteers.


“The first impression is that volunteer data may not be as trustworthy
as anyone else’s, any trained professional’s data. But, our volunteers
have been trained and then we also do quality control checks, just like
the government would do with their agencies where we’ll go out side-by-
side and send professionals out with the volunteers and compare their
results to make sure that they’re trustworthy.”


Latimore says the end result of volunteer surveys like this one is a
steady monitoring program that fills in the blanks left by government
agencies that can’t do the work.


“The agencies that do have the responsibility for checking the quality
of our waterbodies really have very limited budgets, very limited
staff. For example, in Michigan, the professional biologist from the
DEQ can only get to a particular watershed every five years. And to
really be able to stay on top of the conditions in a stream, you need
to monitor more often than that.”


Voluntary watershed organizations all across the nation assist government agencies in
monitoring the streams and lakes. But in many parts of the nation,
there are no volunteer agencies. The water quality is rarely checked,
and the only time anyone realizes there’s a problem is when there’s a
huge fish kill or other pollution problems that get the attention of
people who live nearby or people who fish the streams. And nearly
everyone agrees that’s not a very good way to keep water clean.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

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Cougars Creep Into Suburbia

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:


On a June morning two years ago, David Hanawalt was hunched over a
flower bed in his back yard loosening the soil with a hand rake. He says
he caught something out of the corner of his eye moving toward him:


“I started to prepare myself because it seemed like a large dog that was
making a beeline for me.”


(Allen:)”As if it was going to jump on you?”


“Yeah. And as soon as I stood up and turned it veered off. And the way it
ran, the way it moved, and its ears, I swear it was a cat.”


The cat disappeared into a patch of brushy woods behind his
house. Hanawalt says he became more convinced it was a cougar when his wife, T, saw
a big cat with a long tail sauntering across a neighbor’s blacktop driveway.


“…And it was just walking up like this. Just walking up. And then it went
just right off into those woods. Casually. It wasn’t in any hurry.”


The creature’s nonchalance is what has people in this northern Michigan
neighborhood worried. Some of them have read David Baron’s book
Beast in the Garden. It recounts how people have built their houses in
foothills surrounding Boulder, Colorado, right into prime mountain lion
country, then they saw cougars coming into their yards, taking their dogs and cats.
Eventually, a cougar killed a high school boy when he was jogging on a
wooded trail outside Boulder.


There are significant differences between the situations in Colorado and
Michigan, but author David Baron says if people are seeing a cougar and
it’s not running away from them, and in fact begins to approach them, then
that can be a warning sign:


“That’s what was seen in Boulder in the years before there was a fatal
attack not too far from Boulder. That’s what was seen in Missoula,
Montana back in the late ’90s before a little boy was attacked who did
survive. But again, if there are multiple reports of what is clearly a cougar
in one neighborhood, it’s probably worth looking into.”


Back in the northern Michigan subdivision Patty Barrons lives in the
house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It backs right up to a stretch of woods.
She was walking up the street one early morning last August when she
spied a big cat heading into her back yard. She took off running for her
front door because she remembered she’d left her housecat on the back
deck:


“…And I ran through the house, and onto my deck and down the two steps.
And went, I can’t believe I did this, it’s so embarrassing but I went, shoo,
shoo.”


It didn’t shoo.


Instead, Barrons says, it turned and took two steps toward her. She took
two steps back onto the porch. Barrons describes the animal as
enormous. She says she and the big cat watched each other from a
distance of fifteen feet for about half a minute:


“The face when we looked at each other eye to eye I felt that I was looking
at, I mean I knew I was looking at a lion. I knew I was looking at a lion,
there was no doubt. It was very muscular. It never crouched down or
anything so I didn’t feel threatened. But it stared at me and then, um, it
turned and walked around my flower garden, behind the tennis courts
and kept going.”


Patty Barrons keeps a careful eye out when she takes her early morning
walks, and she won’t work in her garden in the early morning or
late evening hours anymore.


(Sound of model airplanes buzzing)


Next to her house is an open field where kids play soccer and neighbors
walk their dogs, and its where T Hanawalt’s sons fly the remote controlled
model airplanes they love to build, but she won’t let them go out by
themselves anymore:


“Day or night. I mean they used to run around this neighborhood and play
with all the children at night and we’re not doing that anymore. I just, I
can’t have that it’s too scary. In fact, I’m looking to move.”


State wildlife officials won’t come out to investigate unless there’s clear
evidence of what could be a cougar. That means a photo, a paw print,
maybe some scat or droppings from the animal.


The people in this neighborhood didn’t get any of that, but now they have
their cell phone cameras handy.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

Blazing New Atv Trails in Parkland

  • Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:

Transcript

Managers at state parks across the country are scrambling to figure out how to deal with a
rising demand for trails for All-Terrain Vehicles. Stephanie Hemphill reports park
managers are finding it’s not easy to satisfy both fans who have fun on four wheel drive
vehicles and people who want a quieter time in the park:


As the name suggests, All-Terrain Vehicles are built to travel rough. ATVs power over
rocks and logs. Their go-anywhere knobby tires grip the land and take their riders just
about anywhere they want to go, and a lot of them want to go to public parks.


Whether it’s forests, dunes, bogs or a desert, riders say four-wheeling can be a fun way to
get out into nature. The vehicles are popular. Dealers are selling close to a million ATVs
every year, and sales are growing steadily. With that many people looking for a place to
play, states are scrambling to accommodate them.


In Minnesota, the state decided a long ATV trail might be a good way to attract tourism
dollars to a struggling rural area in the state.


Ron Sluka jumped at the idea. He’s the trail coordinator for a local ATV club. He’d been
wanting for years to build a trail in his area. Then he heard the state would pay for a
“destination” trail so well-built and attractive, people would come from all over to ride it.
Sluka thought it would be great news for his area.


He and county officials worked up a plan, but when it hit the local news, Sluka says a
few people raised a ruckus:


“The way it was presented to the people, eminent domain would take over in cases if
need be, and there were going to be up to 20 feet of your land taken for this trail. None
of the above is true, totally none of it is true, absolutely zero. But it’s too late: once
things are rolling, it’s rolling.”


Sluka says now, it’s hard to get a rational discussion of the issues. Beyond property rights
issues and worries about the ATVs being too loud, there are other concerns:


“The residents have kind of been left out of the loop.”


That’s Deb Pomroy. She lives near the proposed ATV trail.


Pomroy says most of her neighbors don’t mind the local ATV riders. It’s that idea of
drawing ATVs from all over the state that freaks them out, and Pomroy has her own reasons
for opposing a trail here, where the Cloquet River has its beginning: wood turtles.
Pomroy is a biologist. She says this area is a refuge for the turtles. They’re endangered in
most of their range, and listed as a threatened species in Minnesota.


Wood turtles bury their eggs in sandy soil. Pomroy says they would love to bury their
eggs in soil disturbed by ATVs, but the eggs wouldn’t survive:


“Even stepping on a nest, which is buried in soil, don’t know there are eggs there, is
enough to destroy the eggs.”


The trail is on hold for now, while county officials and ATV riders try to come up with
an alternative. Concern about damage to sensitive environmental areas is one of the chief
reasons many environmentalists don’t like the idea of letting ATVs into parks.


Jason Kiely is with Wildlands CPR, a national non-profit group that works to prevent off-
road vehicle damage on public land. He says fights over ATV trails are inevitable, as
long as public agencies don’t involve all park users in a comprehensive planning process.


“Primarily because off-road vehicles affect every other use of the forest so significantly.
So we advocate for doing comprehensive travel and recreation planning, not just trying to
carve off the ATV piece, but multi-stakeholder planning efforts that offer something to
everyone.”


Kiely says the US Forest Service and many state agencies have a lot of work to do, to
find the right balance between preserving nature and allowing ATV riders to have their
fun on public land


For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Cloning Plant Species for the Future

  • Biologists plant cloned Monkshood starts. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Lots of people worry about the extinction of animal species, but plant conservationists say plants are even more threatened than animals. People are starting to go to great lengths to protect them.
There are banks set up to save seeds and large-scale efforts to educate people about threats to plants. Researchers, park biologists, and others have teamed up in one state to save a type of wildflower. Julie Grant
reports:

Transcript

Lots of people worry about the extinction of animal species. But plant conservationists
say plants are even more threatened than animals. People are starting to go to great
lengths to protect them. There are banks set up to save seeds and large-scale efforts to
educate people about threats to plants. Researchers, park biologists, and others have
teamed up in one state to save a type of wildflower. Julie Grant reports:


Biologist Mike Johnson is trying to walk carefully. He’s balancing a tray of plastic
containers while hiking down damp, sun-dappled cliffs. Each container holds a few starts
of northern monkshood. These wildflowers have only been found in four states.
Johnson is in Gorge Park, one of only three places in Ohio where monkshood have been
found:


“And, in Gorge Metropark they only exist in one area, and that makes them very
vulnerable to both natural and human induced impacts.”


People who walked the Gorge in the 1980s remember seeing thousands of the blue-
hooded wildflowers. But by 2000, there were only 13 of the plants left here. Johnson
says they were being killed by the salt used to melt ice and snow on a recently built
highway. People dug a ditch to divert melted salt that washed off the road. The monkshood have
done a little better since then. There’s now a stand with 190 of them, but
conservationists want to make sure this wildflower survives long term. Today Johnson is
planting new monkshood starts on the opposite side of the River, away from the
highway:


“So the goal is to establish satellite populations throughout the Gorge Metropark, so if
for some reason they were to die out in one area, they wouldn’t die out in the park
altogether.”


You might think that Johnson and other plant people could just collect seeds from the
surviving monkshood in order to grow new plants, but the director of conservation at
the Holden Arboretum says seeds aren’t reliable enough. They often don’t grow into
plants. Brian Parsons says that when the monkshood population started to decline, the
Arboretum started looking for new ways to preserve the plant’s genetic diversity:


“The only true way to capture that is to clone the plants, so we made the recommendation
to investigate cloning because scientific literature indicated that plant potentially had the
capacity to respond to that type of propogation.”


The Cincinnati Zoo plant research program specializes in plant cloning. So it cloned the
monkshood that Mike Johnson and another biologist are planting today.


Down in the gorge, they use a trowel to dig around in the rocky soil. They’re looking for
planting conditions that will give the monkshood the best chance to survive:


“Literally, that, over there is perfect. There’s not full sunlight. The trees above are
filtering out a lot of it. Just a little sunlight is getting down to the bottom and you’ve got
cool, clear springs. And even though we have all the surrounding development, there are
still springs in the gorge that are fairly uncontaminated from urban runoff and pollution.”


Water drips onto the biologists from the overhanging rock formations. They plant a
couple of monkshoods right in the crevices of the rocks. The leaves are reminiscent of a
buttercup. They are in the same family of plants. They’re not in bloom now. In the
spring, the delicate blue flowers remind some people of a religious hood. That’s how the
plant got its name.


Once Johnson puts these small monkshood starts in the soil, it’s hard to distinguish them
from the other ground-cover. That’s not a bad thing. Johnson says it’s best if people don’t
know exactly where to find the rare northern monkshood:


Grant: “You think people would poach them or something?”


Johnson: “Yeah. Yeah. It’s possible. We don’t generally try to advertise their location.
Anytime something’s rare, it’s valuable and somebody might want to take it.”


Plant specialists believe each plant species provides a purpose in nature, and might hold
some promise for pharmaceuticals or some other use. They’re just not sure yet what
people can learn from the northern monkshood. That’s why they want to make sure it
survives.


For the Environment Report, I’m Julie Grant.

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