Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)
One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:
Transcript
One thing we can be thankful for
this Thanksgiving is cranberry relish.
After a sour decade of collapsing prices,
the industry has rebounded with a record
season. Julie Grant reports:
In the late 1990s, the market for cranberries started drying up. Americans didn’t
seem to crave the pucker of our native berry. Some years growers were getting as
little as 8 dollars a barrel and they didn’t know if they could stay in business much
longer.
Today, they’re getting as much as 150 dollars per barrel.
Dawn Gates-Allen is fourth generation cranberry grower on Cape Cod.
“It’s been ten years of suppressed grower return for the price per barrel.”
Prices are rebounding because cranberries have gained popularity as a healthful
fruit overseas. Europe and Japan have started importing a third of America’s
cranberry crop.
But even with that new demand, you shouldn’t see a big jump in prices at the
supermarket this year: the weather has been great for cranberries and there’s a
bumper crop.
Greg Seymour, with the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources, walking through Cranberry Bog (Photo by Christina Morgan)
Cranberry Bog is actually floating on top of a lake (Photo by Christina Morgan)
Cranberry Bog is made up of sphagnum moss (Photo by Christina Morgan)
It’s normal to want to protect special
places in nature. But in some cases, these
places are disappearing simply because of nature.
Christina Morgan reports on an ancient spot that
might disappear in our lifetime. The people who
love it want to save it, but they might have to
let it go:
Transcript
It’s normal to want to protect special
places in nature. But in some cases, these
places are disappearing simply because of nature.
Christina Morgan reports on an ancient spot that
might disappear in our lifetime. The people who
love it want to save it, but they might have to
let it go:
For four generations, J-me Braig’s family has visited a rare
site, a bog left behind by glaciers thousands of years ago.
“As a child, I used to go out there and play on it, with my
grandmother, and we would pick cranberries; my brother and I would play on it. ”
Braig says her grandmother used to take a boat out to the bog
in a lake in Ohio. Her grandmother made pies and wine with
the cranberries.
Braig is a lake historian who’s worried about the bog. That’s
because it’s shrinking.
But before we talk about why it’s shrinking, though, it’s important
to know what makes this tiny area special.
Webster’s dictionary defines a bog as soft, waterlogged
ground. This bog, Cranberry Bog, is soft and waterlogged.
But it’s not ground. There’s no dirt. The bog is a 10 acre
patch of sphagnum moss.
Most bogs surround a glacial lake. Instead, Cranberry Bog is
surrounded by a lake, and floating. Here’s what happened.
Nearly 200 years ago, crews digging in an ancient river bed
created a reservoir to feed the Ohio and Erie canal. The
reservoir filled, the mossy bog floated to the surface. How or
why it stayed, no one knows.
“An absolute oddity. It shouldn’t be here.”
Greg Seymour is with the Ohio Department of Natural
Resources. He says the ancient bog is home to likely the only collection
of plants of its kind in the world.
More than 150 plants, a
handful native to Canada. Nudged southward by the glacier,
the plants are tricked by the cool bog mat into thinking they
never left home.
The bog is shrinking for several reasons. Waves from passing
boats loosen the bog mat. Storms topple trees
which rip out chunks of the mat. But Seymour says the biggest
threat is the bog’s chemistry, which makes the site its own
worst enemy.
“The number one factor is going to be the chemical reaction
between the alkaline lake waters and the acidic bog.”
The pH balance is off – way off. Cranberry Bog is doomed to disappear, probably within 30
years.
But area historian J-Me Braig remains upbeat, saying ever
since she can remember, someone has had a scheme to save
Cranberry Bog.
And sure enough, there is a new group determined to preserve the
ancient bog.
George O’Donnell leads Friends of Cranberry Bog. He and
others think one way to generate interest in the site, is to inventory of all that the bog has to offer.
Such an inventory is being done by the bog’s neighbor 8 miles
to the north, Dawes Arboretum.
Tim Mason is the manager of natural resources there. He says even
if the inventory and other efforts to preserve the bog fail, they
have a plan B. Dawes created a restoration area where pieces
of Cranberry Bog that break off are placed.
“We can just hold on to what’s there. It takes thousands of
years for the peat moss material to grow; so to create that is something we would certainly not see in
our life times.”
Saving the bog – or just preserving its pieces – are a long shot.
Yet the efforts persist. Historian J-Me Braig is one of many people
who hope for success. But even Braig admits, after more than
10,000 years, Cranberry Bog has had a pretty good run.
Advocates of special trails for ATV riding say the trails would reduce environmental damage from uncontrolled use. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
ATV riders have worn down the bank of the Cloquet River in northern Minnesota. ATV owners say if they had more trails to ride on, there would be less off-road riding and less environmental damage. (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.
President Clinton has said this summer’s record breaking heat is evidence of global warming, and he blasted congress for ignoring the problem. Most scientists are firmly convinced that global warming is already underway, but there is still some scientific uncertainty about what effects it might have. Around the world, scientists are looking for answers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one research project now underway:
Cranberry harvest in New Jersey (Photo by Keith Weller, courtesy of the USDA)
