Cousteau Family in the Amazon

  • Jean-Michel Cousteau and school children from Iquitos at the Pilpintuwasi Butterfly Farm and Amazon Animal Orphanage, Pilpintuwasi. (Photo by Carrie Vonderhaar, Ocean Futures Society/KQED)

A TV documentary will soon bring the Amazon River
basin to living rooms across the nation. Lester Graham
reports the two-part series looks at how the Amazon
affects climate change for all of us:

Transcript

A TV documentary will soon bring the Amazon River
basin to living rooms across the nation. Lester Graham
reports the two-part series looks at how the Amazon
affects climate change for all of us:

The Amazon and its tributaries make up the largest river system in the world.

(Documentary narrator: “In spite of the enormous scale of this tropical rainforest basin, scientific evidence increasingly has revealed how fragile this ecosystem is. And how what happens here will influence global climate dramatically, possible irreversibly, within the next 10 to 20 years.”)

This two-part program produced by Jean-Michel Cousteau, “Return to the Amazon”,
shows that trees are the key to creating rain in the region and keeping the river alive.

Fifty-percent of moisture for rain in the Amazon is released directly from the trees.
So fewer trees means less rain.

(chainsaw noise)

20% of the Amazon rainforest has already been cut down.

And scientists predict if 30 to 40% of the Amazon forest is cut, it will pass a tipping
point, becoming too dry to survive, and no longer absorbing climate changing carbon
dioxide.

Jose Alvarez Alonso is with the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute. In the
documentary he says illegal logging not only endangers the forest, and the climate, but exploits the
indigenous people: paying them a small bag of sugar to illegally cut down an entire
mahogany tree, and in the process destroying their way of life.

“I can tell you that the mahogany taken out of the Amazon now is stained with
blood.”

Most of the logging is, at least, controversial. Much of it’s corrupt. And, often, it’s illegal. But Brazil still
exports massive amounts of wood.

That’s because people in the U.S. and Europe keep buying the rainforest wood.

In the 25 years since Jean Michel Cousteau last visited the Amazon with his father
Jacques Cousteau, he says there have been some disturbing changes and he
wanted people to see what’s going on. We asked Jean Michel Cousteau what he
hopes people get from the programs.

Cousteau: “Well, I really hope that it will be more than people just having had a good time, discovering a place maybe they didn’t know about, or have heard about but didn’t focus on some of the issues, and some of the solutions, and meet some of the local people. And that beyond all of that, they will take action. I really hope that people will be aware enough to understand the connections that they have, how much we depend upon places like the Amazon for the quality of our lives, every one of us.”

Graham: People who watch programs like yours, they look at these things, and they have one question: ‘Well, what can I do?’ What can an individual do when looking at a big problem like this?

Cousteau: Well, what you can do, there’s a lot you can do. As an individual, by being aware. How can you protect what you don’t understand? So, what we’re offering the public is answers to perhaps some of the questions or to highlight some of the problems. That allows you, as an individual decision maker, to make some better decisions when it comes to the wood you’re going to buy, the next time you look at a piece of furniture, you have the right to ask the question: ‘Is that coming from the rainforest?’

The two-part TV series does outline many of the problems. But, it also offers some
hope as researchers, environmentalists and governments in the Amazon basin work
to solve some of those problems.

For the Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Indoor Shrimp Farming: A New Market?

  • Russ Allen breeds and grows thousands of shrimp in a barn in his backyard. The entire process is contained. There's no water coming in or going out, and there's no waste leaving his farm. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

Recently, shrimp surpassed tuna as the most-consumed seafood in the United States. Most of the shrimp Americans eat is produced in Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and Brazil. Russ Allen wants to change that. He’s opened one of the world’s few indoor shrimp farms in the Midwest. Allen says his operation meets an obvious market demand, is good for the environment, and presents a new economic opportunity for the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

Recently, shrimp surpassed tuna as the most-consumed seafood in the
United States. Most of the shrimp Americans eat is produced in
Southeast Asia, India, Mexico and Brazil. Russ Allen wants to change
that. He’s opened one of the world’s few indoor shrimp farms in the
Midwest. Allen says his operation meets an obvious market demand, is
good for the environment, and presents a new economic opportunity for
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


In a big blue barn in Russ Allen’s backyard, there are thousands of
shrimp… beady-eyed, bacteria-munching, bottom-feeders.


Here, the life cycle of the shrimp starts in the breeding center, where
two big tanks of water mimic a place 150 feet deep off the shore of the
ocean where the water quality and temperature are stable. Allen says
it’s the perfect environment for shrimp to mate.


“Like in just about all animals the male chases the female, and they do a
little courtship dance, and then the male will deposit a spermatophore on
the female and when she spawns, the eggs pass through the
spermatophore, are fertilized and then go out into the water.”


A few months later, the shrimp end up in the production room where all
they do is eat, and sometimes, if they get excited or spooked, they jump
right out of their tanks.


“They don’t like light…”


“Oh (laughing)! Do you ever have them hit you as you’re standing
here?”


“Oh yeah, that’s why we have the nets up so they don’t jump.”


Russ Allen has been farming shrimp for three decades. He started in
Ecuador, and then went to Belize, where he started the country’s first
shrimp farms.


Allen and his wife moved back to Michigan in 1990, when he started
designing his indoor shrimp farm. It finally opened for business about a
year ago, and now, he’s selling all the shrimp he produces.


(Sound of shrimp market)


Allen says his indoor shrimp farm is one of the first of its kind in the
world. There’s no waste leaving his farm, so pollution’s not an issue,
and because there’s no water coming in or going out, there’s no danger
of introducing diseases into his system.


Allen says an indoor farm also moves shrimp farming away from fragile
coastal ecosystems. That’s where most of the industry has developed
around the world.


“In a place like the United States with all the development on the
coastline and land costs, you can’t really do it anywhere near the ocean
anyway. So, if you’re going to have a viable shrimp farming system in
the United States, you need to move it away from – you know – these coastal areas.”


But indoor farms haven’t always been a viable option, either.


In the 1980s, a handful of them opened in the U.S., including a big one in
Chicago. They all failed because the technology didn’t work quite right,
and because the cost of production made them unable to compete with
outdoor farms.


Bill More is a shrimp farming consultant and vice president of the
Aquaculture Certification Council. He says now, indoor shrimp farmers
have a better chance of making a go of it.


“Coming from third-world countries, there’s been a lot of issues with
illegal antibiotics being found in shrimp. There’s been environmental
and social issues that environmentalists have come down hard upon. It’s
sort of prompted the opportunity for a good indoor system where
you could manage those and you didn’t challenge the environment.”


But More says creating and maintaining a clean, organic indoor shrimp
farm is still very expensive, and it seems an even bigger problem now
that the price of shrimp is the lowest it’s been in a decade.


Shrimp farmer Russ Allen says he’s invested several million dollars in
his business. He’s the only guy in the game right now, which he
admits is good for business, but he doesn’t want it that way. He says
he’d like to see the industry grow in Michigan, and throughout the
country.


“In order to do that the government has got to be a partner in this, and
that has been the challenge… that when you don’t have an industry, you
don’t have lobbyists and nobody listens to you and you can’t get an
industry until they do listen to you. So, that’s been our real challenge
right now.”


Allen says he wants the government to offer tax breaks and other
financial assistance to the aquaculture industry like it does to other
sectors of the economy, but he says he can’t even get some local elected
officials to come and see his shrimp farm. He says with so many
companies moving jobs and factories overseas, he thinks government
leaders should be looking for ways to help new and perhaps
unconventional industries like his, grow.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Farmland Increasing Worldwide

The amount of farmland is decreasing throughout the Midwest. But scientists say the amount of agricultural land is increasing worldwide… bringing additional challenges to U.S. farmers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Farmland is disappearing throughout the Midwest, but scientists
say the amount of agricultural land is increasing worldwide… bringing
additional challenges to U.S. farmers. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Researchers have used satellite data and statistics from
government agencies to determine that more than one-third of the
earth’s land is used for agricultural activity.


Scientist Navin Ramankutty is at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He says urban sprawl may be gobbling up farmland in the Midwest,
but in places like South America, farms are replacing the rainforest.
Ramankutty says the change concerns U.S. soybean farmers.


“The U.S. still continues to be the largest soybean exporter in the world,
but Brazil’s catching up really fast. So, soybean farmers here in the
Midwest are concerned about whether/how their markets will change
in the future.”


But while the global growth in agriculture is feeding more people,
Ramankutty says there are downsides for the environment in terms of
more water pollution and loss of forests. So, he says his research
team is trying to weigh the tradeoffs, and make recommendations on
what might be the best locations for new farms.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

FORGING ALLIANCES IN ‘STEEL DUMPING’ DEBATE

Steel has once again become a big issue in U.S. trade policy. Many steel companies around the Midwest are worried about ‘steel dumping’ and are urging President Bush to support new tariffs and quotas on imported steel. But some steel users say the Bush Administration should back off. How the President handles the issue could affect both jobs and the environment in the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Steel has once again become a big issue in United States trade policy. Many steel companies around the Midwest are worried about steel dumping and are urging President Bush to support new tariffs and quotas on imported steel. But some steel users say the Bush administration should back off. How the president handles the issue could affect both jobs and the environment in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports.


The amount of commonly used types of foreign steel coming into the United States has risen about a third over the last five years, and a federal trade panel ruled recently that much of that imported steel is being sold here at a price lower than what it cost to make it and ship it here. That’s a practice called dumping. The trade panel found that such dumping poses a serious threat to domestic steel makers. So the panel says President Bush should slap tariffs on many product lines of foreign-made steel to raise the prices of the imports. But that’s not such a hot idea to some other industries, which use plenty of foreign steel.


(furnace/factory ambient sound)


Here at the Engel Tool and Forge Company in Milwaukee…this second-generation family business now uses about 600 tons a year of steel imported from countries like Brazil and Sweden. In the warm and grimy forging area, workers use a robot to move five foot long steel bars that have been heated to 2100 degrees Fahrenheit. Owner chuck Engel watches the orange and white-hot bars enter a machine


“That’s a preforming press …a hydraulic press that preforms the metal. It’s removed from there and moved into a finished form that we gain our finished desired shape.” (WHAM noise)


The bars are scrunched into wheel axles that’ll be shipped to heavy equipment makers in the mining or construction industries. Engel says his company is doing all right during the recession. So he’s says he strongly opposed to the president possibly tinkering with that success by slapping higher tariffs on imported steel.


“I am sure there is a certain amount of unfairness on both sides of the fence but I believe that competition should be what sorts this problem out rather than the government.”


Engel contends domestic steel makers got quote- fat and sassy — over the last twenty years…and he says mergers, downsizing and other changes now taking place among domestic manufacturers will help them compete in the world steel market. Engel says if steel tariffs do go up…he’d have to pass along the price hikes. But other players are urging President Bush to approve higher steel tariffs. The United Steelworkers of America hopes the president even goes beyond what the trade panel recommends. Some environmentalists are also quietly supporting the domestic steel industry. That’s even though green groups have a track record of battling steel manufacturers. Cameron Davis of the Chicago-based lake Michigan federation acknowledges big steel has a dirty history in the area.


“Well traditionally, the steel industry especially in northwest Indiana has been responsible for a fair amount of pollution in the Great Lakes…and that’s air-based pollution, water based pollution, land based pollution across the board.”


But lately environmentalists have been trying to forge alliances with unions like the steelworkers. And Davis notes that environmental lawsuits and other changes have gotten domestic steel makers to start cleaning up their act in recent years. He says if nothing is done to slow the rise in steel imports that could make the United States environment worse. Davis cites the aquatic nuisance species that tag along in the ballast water of foreign ships…including presumably, the ships that bring in foreign steel.


“Without some help in protecting the GL steel industry, we’ll see more and more foreign steel coming into the country. And with that foreign steel probably more aquatic nuisance species that will do more damage not only to the Great Lakes but to rest of country.”


United States flagged Great Lakes shipping companies that haul iron ore from Minnesota and northern Michigan are also siding with the domestic steel makers. George Ryan is president of the Lake Carriers Association. He says if the domestic steel industry keeps getting hurt by foreign imports…there might be some local improvements like less air pollution emitted over Gary or Cleveland, but Ryan says, what about the rest of the globe.


“For anyone who has seen photographs from outer space, we have one world that moves the air around to all parts of the world we can’t really say we condone dirty air in Brazil and in China and okay to do it there cause we’re protecting our air in the United States.”


Ryan is a member of the Great Lakes Commission…which is urging the president and congress to boost steel exports and reduce unfair competition from abroad. Commissioners do the bidding of eight Great Lakes governors…most of whom are republicans like George W. Bush. If the president does not do more to protect United States steel makers and jobs that could be an issue in the gubernatorial and congressional elections next November. Mr. Bush has to announce his plans on steel tariffs and quotas by mid-February. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium this is Chuck Quirmbach in Milwaukee.