Chemicals in the water are mixing up fish's gender (Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)
Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:
Transcript
Scientists already know estrogen from things like ‘The Pill’ is getting into the water and causing reproductive problems for fish. Male fish are picking up female attributes. Some males are even growing eggs. Now a study finds there are other chemicals getting into water that might be messing with fish gender even more. Rebecca Williams reports:
This study’s found a group of chemicals that block the male hormone testosterone is getting into rivers.
Charles Tyler is the lead author of the paper in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives.
He says they don’t know exactly where these chemicals are coming from, but some medicines and pesticides can block testosterone. So, add that to the estrogen…
“And so it’s very likely they’re going to have interactive and additive effects, if you like, to induce a double whammy on the poor fish.”
Tyler says they don’t know if what’s happening in fish is also happening in people.
Human male fertility has been declining. But there might be other chemicals contributing to the problem.
And besides, there’s a difference. Fish can’t get away from these testosterone blocking chemicals or the estrogen in the water – they live and swim in them. So Tyler says they’re getting a much higher dose.
The osprey is a bird that scoops fish out of rivers and lakes (Photo courtesy of the National Parks Service)
Ospreys are birds of prey that eat fish. Todd Melby tells us about a pair of osprey that tried to nest near a fish hatchery:
Transcript
Ospreys are birds of prey that eat fish. Todd Melby tells us
about a pair of osprey that tried to nest near a fish hatchery:
The osprey is a raptor that scoops fish out of rivers and lakes.
So when a pair of osprey decided to mate near a DNR fish hatchery south of
Minneapolis, biologists were delighted and worried.
Ospreys rarely nest so far south. So that was good news. What worried biologists was
whether the birds would eat the fish. Biologists decided these fish were too small.
Another worry was the ospreys’ choice of a nesting site. In this case, the birds picked an
electrical power pole.
Lisa Gelvin-Innvaer is with the Minnesota DNR.
“They like high areas. Places that have room for them to put their nest. Transmission
poles often provide that.”
Biologists decided that was a bad idea, so they’ve built a tall nesting platform near the
power pole.
“We’re hopeful with the new nesting platform, that they’ll come back and attempt to nest
again.”
Dragonflies are one of the insects tricked by false light (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
Bugs are getting confused by the
reflections from manmade structures.
Rebecca Williams reports on a new study:
Transcript
Bugs are getting confused by the
reflections from manmade structures.
Rebecca Williams reports on a new study:
If you’ve ever noticed swarms of insects hovering over your car, there’s a
good chance they’re mistaking it for water.
Smooth, dark surfaces like cars and asphalt reflect polarized light. That’s
what bugs see – and that tricks insects such as dragonflies.
Bruce Robertson is an author of the study in the journal Frontiers in Ecology
and the Environment.
“Asphalt actually reflects polarized light more strongly than water and so it
looks more like water than water! And so these organisms are thinking
they’re finding a place to breed and hunt and lay eggs and mate when in fact
they’re finding a place that’s very dangerous.”
Robertson says these bugs swarm over buildings and roads in huge numbers,
and can die of exhaustion.
But he says it might be possible to stop tricking the bugs. Things like
adding white curtains to dark windows or adding a little bit of gravel to
asphalt to make the surfaces reflect less polarized light.
Adult California Condor in flight (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:
Transcript
It’s been decades, but there are now more California Condors in the wild than there
are in captivity. That’s thanks to two condor chicks who recently left their nests in
the Grand Canyon. As Sadie Babits reports, biologists are thrilled, but one of the
problems that caused the decline in condors still exists:
At the World Center for Birds of Prey in Boise, Idaho, there’s a wood fence that
protects the California Condors that live behind it.
“Just lately in order to minimize the exposure of our adult breeding pairs to humans,
we’ve built this security fence or actually it’s a visual barrier, we call it.”
That’s Bill Heinrich. He overseas the California Condor Recovery program at the
Center.
There is this one small break in the fence – a part that hasn’t been built yet. And
behind some chain link, I can see some very large birds…
Sadie: “Is that a Condor right there??”
Bill: “Yeah… you can see an adult condor standing, a pair of them on a perch.”
Sadie: “Ooohhhh!”
Bill: “You can kind of get an idea of just how big they really are.
Sadie: “They’re huge!”
Bill: “They weigh anywhere from 18-25 pounds and have close to a 10 foot wingspan.”
In the early 1980s the California Condors almost went the way of the Dodo –
extinct. Only 22 of these birds remained in the wild.
The big birds were killed by hunters. They died from lead poisoning after eating
animals killed with lead bullets. And their own genetic makeup didn’t help much
either.
These birds, shall we say, have a low sex drive. Rather than produce chicks every
year and gamble that they’ll survive, condors lay one egg every other year. That
hasn’t worked so well.
So biologists thought they’d help. They started capturing the endangered condors to
begin a captive breeding program. In 1987, the last wild bird was caught.
Bill Heinrich recalls there was plenty of controversy over that decision.
“People thought well you should let them go extinct with dignity or you can try to
breed them in captivity but you might fail and then you would have lost them in the
wild that much quicker.”
But the move saved the birds from being killed by hunters or from eventual lead
poisoning.
And, the breeding program, well, let’s just say the numbers speak for themselves.
Down to 22 birds in 1987, today there are now 327 California Condors. And more
than half of those birds are back in the wild.
Bill Heinrich says next spring some of these condors will be released some where
around the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
That’s where the birds will once again be exposed to one of the factors that lead to
their decline. It’s not hunters these days. The birds are protected by the Endangered
Species Act. But lead poisoning. Condors feed on gut piles and carcasses left by
hunters. If a hunter uses lead bullets, the bullet will explode sending tiny fragments
of lead through the meat. It’s enough to make a condor sick. Heinrich says lead
poisoning remains the single biggest threat to the birds.
“You know if hadn’t been for the lead issue coming up, I would have thought, I
didn’t have any reservations about it being successful until the lead problem cropped
up.”
Every year, biologists have to test the birds for lead poisoning. They’ve been working
with the Arizona Game and Fish Department to hand out free non-lead bullets to
hunters in the area. Last year, not a single condor died from lead poisoning. This
year, biologists have had to treat six birds, all of which are expected to make a full
recovery.
In California, the state has banned lead ammunition because of the lead poisoning
concern. But hunters don’t think lead bullets are a real problem, and they really
don’t want to pay for different kinds of bullets because that is a lot more expensive.
Linda Nellet brought a few of her
birds to a backyard-chicken seminar in Chicago. She
and other seasoned urban chicken keepers hope to keep
chicken-raising legal and neighborly in their tight,
urban landscape. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:
Transcript
Maybe it’s easy to imagine chickens
cooing and clucking on American farms, but
how about in big-city backyards? Well,
keeping chickens is legal in the nation’s
three largest cities, but in one of them,
chicken-lovers nearly lost that right.
Shawn Allee tells how some urban
chicken-keepers were nearly caught off guard,
and how they plan to keep their chickens in
the coop:
No one’s sure how many chickens are in Chicago’s backyards. But honestly, few people
thought about it until last year.
That’s when one woman showed up at a city hearing.
“Hi. My name is Edie Cavanaugh, and I’ve lived in Chicago, since 1968.”
Cavanaugh told aldermen she’d caught messy, noisy chickens clucking around her
neighborhood.
She was stunned the city wouldn’t round them up.
“I was told chickens are permitted as pets in Chicago, and I said that’s impossible,
this is a city.”
Cavanaugh’s story ruffled plenty of feathers.
You see, even some aldermen didn’t know that keeping chickens as pets or for eggs in
Chicago is okay.
“I was riding down the street, and I seen a rooster. I was like, ‘What is this?’”
For a month, it seemed Chicago’s city council would ban chicken-keeping.
People who already had chickens worried their birds were destined for the stew pot.
But Chicago aldermen kept chicken-raising legal.
Chicago’s pro-chicken contingent saw the fight as a wake-up call. Some figured, if they
wanted to keep birds, they’d better police themselves.
“So, welcome everybody for coming to the first-ever Chicago backyard Chicken
workshop.”
Martha Boyd is starting seminars about urban chickens.
She’s part of the Angelic Organics Learning Center, a group that promotes urban
agriculture.
Boyd is confident city-people can raise more of their own food if they’re neighborly
about it.
“So the idea of the backyard chicken workshop is so we can have this thing grow
without creating more problems and potentially, then, having the backlash to the
backyard chickens.”
For this first seminar, Boyd invited chicken-raising veterans to a church basement.
One is Tom Rosenfeld.
His advice to urban chicken lovers? Talk to your neighbors. And, hey, if they cringe, get
creative.
“It also helps to bribe them, because if they think they’re going to get some eggs out
of the deal or they think they’re kids come over and pet them or whatever, then of
course they’ll be a little more understanding when one day you leave the door open
and there’re chickens running around the yard or other issues.”
Rosenfeld says those ‘other issues’ arise pretty quickly. In fact, just a few hours after
chickens eat.
“A lot about chicken keeping is about poop because they do it a lot. They do it in
surprisingly large quantities at a time.”
Rosenfeld says you can literally get ankle deep in the stuff if you’re not vigilant.
But bribery helps here, too. Rosenfeld says chicken poop makes excellent garden
compost.
“Our neighbors love it. They’ll come by with a bucket and that’s their way of
participating.”
Rosenfeld says the last issue that ticks off neighbors is noise.
There’s no such thing as a chicken muzzle, but there’s still a solution – and there’s no
bribe necessary.
You see, male chickens are the noisy bunch, so if you just want eggs…
“You don’t need a rooster. It’s a sad reality as a male chicken keeper to realize that
roosters aren’t necessary. They’re only necessary if you want chicks.”
Rosenfeld says urban chicken-raising could catch on where it’s legal – if people keep a lid
on noise and smells.
As for places where it’s not legal?
You might want to change the law at city hall – just don’t try to bribe your alderman with
fresh eggs.
Signs of VHS, from the Michigan DNR (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
Transcript
A common treatment in fish hatcheries may slow – or even stop –
the spread of an invasive virus that’s killing fish across the Great Lakes.
Jonathan Brown has more:
It’s called Viral Hemorrhagic Septicemia. Humans can’t catch it, but it
causes internal bleeding in fish.
The virus is hurting the region’s multi-billion-dollar sport fishing industry.
Now, researchers are finding that adding iodine – a common practice in fish
hatcheries – could prevent the virus from spreading.
Steve LePan is a biologist for the state of New York. He says a study at
Cornell University found Walleye eggs treated with an iodine solution were
not infected with VHS.
“We can’t say for sure that it’s exclusively the iodine that kills it. There may
be other things we do to the eggs that also affect the virus, as well.”
Those ‘other’ treatments include bathing Walleye eggs in Tannic Acid for a
few minutes before incubation.
LePan says there’s still a lot to learn about VHS, but he’s cautiously
optimistic that hatcheries can breed fish uninfected by the disease.
The nest of a Swainsons warbler. (Photo by Judith McMillan)
The 'Nesting' exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History (Photo courtesy of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History)
The nest of a Vermillion flycatcher. (Photo by Judith McMillan)
Nests in the collection of the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. (Photo by Gretchen Cuda)
The nest of a Painted bunting. (Photo by Judith McMillan)
A parasite visits - this nest holds the egg of a cowbird. Cowbirds surreptitiously lay eggs in other birds' nests. The birds that made this nest discovered the egg, and mounded the nest around it so it would not be incubated. (Photo by Gretchen Cuda)
Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:
Transcript
Some of the world’s most intricate
architecture is not always constructed by
humans. Sometimes the most skilled architectural
wonders are designed by nature. Gretchen Cuda reports on an exhibit that celebrates
birds’ nests:
Judith McMillan didn’t find her inspiration in tree branches. She found it in the
basement of the museum where she works. She was rummaging through drawers
there when she came across a hundred-year-old collection of bird nests.
“This Museum must have 10 cabinets full of bird’s nests.”
She was fascinated and immediately knew she had a new subject for her art.
McMillan is a photographer who has been volunteering at the Cleveland Museum of
Natural history for 20 years. In her latest exhibit, titled “Nesting”, she captures some
of natures most inspiring, and often overlooked architecture – the nests of birds.
(sound of exhibit crowd)
“I was looking for nests that were different from each other so that you could see that
these birds were little architects. And there were so many different kinds of materials
used – and then the eggs could be so different. Some with little tiny speckles, some
with different colors some with little calligraphic streaks around them, so it was that
variety that I wanted to capture.”
All the photographs are in black and white – because she really wanted people to
concentrate on the architecture without being seduced by the color. She’s fascinated
by the way different birds chose very specific materials to work with – everything
from marsh reeds, grape vine, or little knotty twigs – like this one.
“This is a vermillion flycatcher – it’s almost like it’s made of pick up sticks in the way
their pushed together.”
And to emphasize the diversity of structures birds can create she shows me an
Orioles nest that’s five inches deep and formerly hung like a basket from a tree.
“I actually had to shine a flashlight down in it when I was taking the photograph in
order to get the eggs to show up.”
Most of the nests and eggs were collected around the turn of the 20th century by
amateur naturalists who never thought twice about disturbing the natural wildlife.
But the practice eventually fell out of fashion as people became more
environmentally conscious and large nest and egg collections were often turned over
to museums – explains Andy Jones the museum’s ornithologist.
“People whose grandfathers were dealing with eggs as a hobby, well their
grandfathers are passing away and so they contact their local university or natural
history museum, and say, ‘hey do you want these?’”
Those specimens were originally collected just because they were pretty. These
days, they’re still beautiful, but they also serve a scientific purpose. Scientists can
look at things such as the thickness of the shells, or the type and number of birds
found in a specific location and tell a lot about the birds. They can see where birds
used to live and how far their territories reached. They can even tell if a bird that’s
extinct now once lived in an area.
Judith McMillan hopes her photographs will not only show how beautiful the birds’
handiwork was, but will also inspire people to do something about saving the birds
that are still here.
“I didn’t understand until I started using a camera myself how you can isolate
something and make people look at it differently–And I hope through my
photographs I’m getting people to take a fresh look at things. It’s hard to have an
appreciation of nature unless you really look at it and start to really care about it.”
Recent surveys have found that many songbirds are disappearing. If people don’t
start caring, those photographs and drawers full of nests might become the only
reminders of many more species that go extinct.
Whooping cranes have been abandoning their nests, and eggs, in search of food (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
The experiment to create a migrating flock
of whooping cranes in the Eastern US is having a
parenting problem. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
About 70 whooping cranes now migrate between the Southeast US and the Midwest.
Wildlife experts have been hoping that more pairs of the birds would start hatching eggs
and raising chicks in the wild.
This spring, at their northern home in Wisconsin, several female cranes did lay eggs and
sat on the nests during cold weather. But when it warmed up, the adult birds abandoned
their nests to look for food.
George Archibald is co-founder of the International Crane Foundation.
“If there is a food stress, when it becomes warmer their drive to feed may increase much
more than when it’s cold.”
Some of the crane eggs were saved and hatched out by wildlife centers.
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.
Egg collectors kept precise records about where and when their prize possessions were gathered. They carefully removed the contents of the egg, then nested the shells in cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. (Photo courtesy of Carrol Henderson)
The squiggly coloring on this rufous-backed shrike egg is from blood that accumulated in the shell as it formed. It was collected in India in 1919. (Photo courtesy of Carrol Henderson)
Carrol Henderson spend weeks photographing and cataloging the 3,600 eggs in the Handsaker collection. Now he's helping the Handsaker family donate the collection to a research institution. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
More and more people say their favorite hobby is bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago, birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby very differently. They collected bird eggs. A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
More and more people say their favorite hobby is
bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep
lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago,
birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby
very differently. They collected bird eggs.
A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were
remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a
lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Carrol Henderson considers himself a very lucky man. He’s the director of the non-game wildlife program at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He grew up on a farm in central Iowa.
Last summer, he learned that a family in his old neighborhood was renovating a farmhouse. It had belonged to Ralph Handsaker. When Handsaker died thirty years ago, the house was boarded up and left alone.
“… And when the family started renovating this old farmhouse for the great-great-grandson, John Handsaker, along with a number of old animal mounts and interesting things, there were these two large chests with about fifteen drawers each, that were totally filled with little sets of wild bird eggs.”
The smallest egg, from a hummingbird, was small enough to sit on top of a dime. The biggest was an ostrich egg almost six inches long. Some were creamy white, others were speckled, others streaked with color like a Jackson Pollack painting.
There were more than 3,600 eggs, representing more than 400 species of birds from all over the world. And they were in perfect condition.
“Each set of eggs was very neatly labeled with information about the day they were collected, who the collector was, and information about the habitat where the egg was collected. Some of these eggs went all the way back to 1875, and they were collected by over three hundred different people from all over the world.”
This is how nature-lovers expressed their passion in those days. They called themselves oologists. They kept their eggs in drawers lined with cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. They also kept meticulous records.
“So the scientific data was very high quality among these avid collectors. So even today, these provide very important nest records for birds that are now gone. Like in my home county of Story County, Iowa, there were Marble Godwits, King Rails, Prairie Chickens, and Bobwhite Quail, and those are all gone now.”
The birds disappeared as people turned prairies into farms. But Carrol Henderson says the records in the bird collection provide detailed information about where and when they nested.
“And another intriguing thing is that when these people blew out the eggs, there was still a lining of the egg white or albumen left inside the egg. And that still has the original DNA genetic material, so it actually would be possible for scientists to do DNA analysis of these eggs to take a look at how they may compare with birds nowadays.”
Henderson says these collectors didn’t think they were harming the birds. That’s because if their eggs disappear, most birds will lay another set. But competition for the eggs of rare birds was disastrous.
“One person in Philadelphia had a collection of over seven hundred Peregrine Falcon eggs. Another Peregrine egg collector went to the same cliff and collected all the eggs from the Peregrines every year for 29 consecutive years. And then finally the nest was abandoned. And he said it was abandoned due to encroaching civilization. That was where egg collecting really had something of a dark side.”
Eventually, attitudes began to change. In 1918, the federal government passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, to protect birds and eggs. But the government let three collectors keep on collecting. One of them was Ralph Handsaker. So his collection goes into the early 1950’s.
Carrol Henderson says there’s a lot to learn from these eggs. One of the best lessons is about human responsibility. Henderson says people these days enjoy nature differently than they did a hundred years ago. But we can still learn something from earlier methods.
“It’s like a little time machine: stepping back in time, seeing what was here, and then looking at what’s changed, and what does that mean for our own conservation efforts, how can we do a better job today to collect information and use that for our own conservation of wildlife species?”
Carrol Henderson’s article about the Handsaker egg collection will appear in the October issue of Birders World magazine. The Handsaker family is planning to donate the collection to a major university.
Chemicals in the water are mixing up fish's gender (Photo courtesy of US Fish and Wildlife Service)
