A projected image of London's Olympic Stadium for the 2012 games (Photo courtesy of London 2012)
There’s been a lot of talk during the Beijing Olympics about China’s
efforts to be more environmentally friendly. The host of the 2012 Summer
games hopes to do even better. Julie Grant reports that London is billing its
Olympics the first low environmental impact games:
Transcript
There’s been a lot of talk during the Beijing Olympics about China’s
efforts to be more environmentally friendly. The host of the 2012 Summer
games hopes to do even better. Julie Grant reports that London is billing its
Olympics the first low environmental impact games:
London already has great sporting venues, so it plans to use places like Wimbledon for the Olympics.
The city doesn’t want to build new facilities that will just sit there after the games are over. Taxpayers in Sydney, Australia, are still paying millions annually for underused facilities built for the 2000 Olympics.
London is building an Olympic Park, but has chosen an old industrial site in a neglected section of East London and hired local workers for the clean up.
90% of the demolition materials have been recycled or reused.
Also, the city doesn’t want the symbol of the games – the flame – to burn fossil fuels and add to the global warming problem. So Olympic officials are searching for a low carbon alternative.
Milking Devon cattle are rare domestic breeds from an earlier day, some dating back to the 18th century. The animals hold genetic information that some people think is too valuable to lose. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The Garfield Farm Museum is preserving antiquated domestic breeds of farm animals, such as these Black Java chickens. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The Garfield Farm Museum, between Geneva and Elburn, Illinois, brings together farming experiences of the past 150 years with an appreciation of the natural environment, according to its website. (Photo by Lester Graham)
When you think of endangered species, farm animals might not top the list. But some types of farm animals are in danger of going extinct.
Certain breeds of common barnyard creatures are no longer considered commercially viable, and are being allowed to die off. But as the GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports, there’s an effort to preserve some rare varieties of
livestock:
Transcript
When you think of endangered species, farm animals might not top the list. But some
types of farm animals are in danger of going extinct. Certain breeds of common barnyard
creatures are no longer considered commercially viable, and are being allowed to die off.
But as the GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports, there’s an effort to preserve some rare varieties
of livestock:
When you buy a pound of ground beef or a pack of chicken legs, you probably don’t
think about what kind of cow or chicken the meat came from. And in most stores,
you don’t have a choice. Beef is beef and chicken is chicken.
Of course, there’s many different kinds of cows and chickens, but most farmers stick with
just a handful of types. They prefer animals that are specially bred to produce more meat
in less time.
That’s all well and good if your motive is profit.
But some people think the move towards designer farm animals is risky.
Jerome Johnson is executive director of Garfield Farm Museum.
(Sound of turkeys gobbling)
Johnson says breeds like these Narragansett turkeys carry genetic traits that could be
desirable in the future. They don’t require as much food, for instance. That could be an
attractive feature as costs continue to rise:
“Some of the high-producing, high-yielding animals today, they may require a lot of
input. In other words, a lot of feed, more expense since so many things are derived from
petroleum, from the diesel fuel that powers the tractors to the production of fertilizer
and the like, and chemicals for herbicides and all… that as the cost of that goes up, it may
actually be cheaper to raise a different type of animal, that doesn’t require that much.”
Johnson also says some common poultry breeds get sick more easily. That’s part of the
risk farmers take when they choose meatier birds. Normally that might not be a problem,
but if Avian flu spreads to the US, some of the older breeds might carry genes that could
resist the disease. If those breeds disappear, that genetic information would be lost.
But some farmers choose rare livestock breeds for completely different reasons.
(Sound of baby chicks)
Scott Lehr and his family raise several varieties of pure-bred poultry, sheep, and goats on
their northern Illinois farm. These chicks are just a few weeks old…
(Sound of baby chicks)
“These are all pure-bred birds. These are birds that have been around a long time. Some
of the breeds that are in there, there’s Bantam Brown Leghorns, Bantam White Leghorns.”
Some of the poultry breeds are so rare and exotic they’re practically collector’s items.
Lehr’s son enters them in competitions. But the animals on their farm aren’t just for
showing off. Scott says they use the wool from their herd of Border Cheviot sheep for a
craft studio they opened in a nearby town:
“There’s quite a bit of demand growing for handspun wool and the rising interest in the
hand arts, if you will… knitting and spinning and weaving and those kinds of things… are
really beginning to come into, I guess, the consciousness of the American public in many
ways. It’s evolving beyond a cottage industry.”
And the wool of rare breeds like the Border Cheviot sheep is popular among people who want handspun wool.
(Sound of Johnson calling to giant pig, “Hey, buddy, how ya doin’?”)
Back at the Garfield Farm Museum, Jerome Johnson offers a handful of grass to a 700
pound Berkshire hog. This Berkshire is different from the variety of pig with the same
name that’s relatively common today. Johnson says these old-style Berkshires have a
different nose and more white hair than the modern Berkshire. They also tend to be fatter,
which used to be a more desirable trait.
The museum’s pair of old-style Berkshires are literally a dying breed. Johnson says the
boar isn’t fertile anymore:
“They were the last breeding pair that we knew of. These were once quite common but
now are quite rare. And we maybe have found a boar that is fertile that is up in
Wisconsin that was brought in from England here a couple years ago that we could try
crossing with our sow to see if we can preserve some of these genetics.”
(Sound of pigs)
Advocates of rare livestock breeds say the animals can be healthier and sometimes tastier
than the kinds raised on large commercial farms. And although you won’t find many
farm animals on the endangered species list, they could have important benefits for future
farmers.
Sidewalks don’t go a lot of the places we’d like to walk. So people do what people have always done: cut through empty lots… or woods… or across railways. A lot of these pathways, worn down by use, never seem to make it onto maps. The GLRC’s Jennifer Guerra reports one group thinks they ought to be mapped… and their stories told:
Transcript
Sidewalks don’t go a lot of the places we’d like to walk. So people do
what people have always done: cut through empty lots… or woods… or
across railways. A lot of these pathways, worn down by use, never
seems to make it onto maps. The GLRC’s Jennifer Guerra reports one
group thinks they ought to be mapped… and their stories told:
When Hilary Ramsden moved to Detroit from England, she thought the
best way to explore the city was to bike it.
“And I was run off road by cars, and people shouted and screamed at me.
So I decided to cycle on sidewalk but then I noticed sidewalks came to
end, and started singing little paths.”
Ramsden points to a little ribbon of dirt that run thru a neighbor’s yard
or cut through a vacant lot…
“And I noticed there was a whole network of these paths through the
city. So I started exploring them!”
Soon Ramsden’s co-worker, Erika Block, starts tagging along on the
walks, and since none of the trials they want to take are listed on any
maps, the two just start wandering:
“And then we started thinking about mapping and what’s really
represented on traditional maps and what’s missing.”
Block thinks of maps as a kind of storytelling. So if the short cuts and
gravel paths that people take aren’t listed on a map, then the stories of the
people who use them aren’t being told. So Block and Ramsden – who
run a theatre company in the city – decided to turn their walks into a performance
art piece of sorts. It’s called The Walking Project.
Once a week they pick out a section of Detroit and walk it. To track their
route, they use a handheld Global Positioning System device. They also
bring along digital cameras to snap pictures and record conversations
they have with people. Eventually, the photos, recordings and GPS tracks will
all be uploaded to a computer and transformed into a sort of 3-D digital map.
“And so a representation of place is going to be more than just lines and
dots and symbols on a map, it hopefully will become the video, and audio, and drawings
and conversations that people bring to it.”
And that’s really what these walks are about for Hilary Ramsden…
meeting people.
“…oh look at path here…this is a great shortcut. Is there a story here?
Tons of stories here, but no one walking here to ask at the moment. I’d
be interested in talking to someone.”
About twenty minutes into the walk, we cut across a gravelly path that
runs through a small field. There, we run into a homeless man. The
minute Block and Ramsden say hello, the man starts talking. About
himself, about the path and about the field we’re standing in…
(Sound of talking)
Block and Ramsden snap pictures and record everything he’s saying.
Their hope is to one day have it all linked to a virtual map that places this
man and his image on this particular Detroit dirt path, and because Block
recorded their conversation, his story will become a part of the map, too:
“People will ultimately be able to drag and drop images to build their own maps
of these places that tell different stories. And I think people are fascinated by
other people’s stories, and I think that ultimately the more we know of other
people’s stories the less afraid we become and the more comfortable it becomes.”
Block admits that the technology for creating such a map is at least two
years off. But in the meantime, she and Ramsdon will continue to walk
around and record the stories of those who choose to travel off the beaten
path. In hopes that maybe one day they’ll have a map to call their own.
When foraging bees find food, they fly back to the hive and dance. (Photo by Jenny W.)
Bee researchers have long believed that honeybees use a special dance to show their hive-mates where food is. A study published in the journal Nature provides direct evidence that the dance works. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains:
Transcript
Bee researchers have long believed that honeybees use a special dance to
show their hive-mates where food is. A study published in the journal
Nature provides direct evidence that the dance works. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains:
Honeybees have a complex way of talking about dinner. Forager bees fly out
of the hive in search of pollen and nectar. When they find something tasty,
they fly home to the hive and dance.
Researchers in England caught bees that had watched the dance and tagged
them with tiny radio trackers. Then they followed the bees’ exact flight
paths.
Joe Riley is lead author of the study. He says the research relieves some
doubts about how well honeybees interpret the dance.
“The only thing that was missing was a really convincing demonstration that
this happened. And what we saw what happened was they left the hive,
circled for a minute or two to get their bearings and then flew straight off
in this predicted direction and for the distance that was coded in the
dance.”
Riley says the bees do need a little help once they get close to the food
source: they have to look and sniff around to find the right flower.
Researcher Dr. Kerry Kirwan is experimenting with a cell phone case that will biodegrade. The case contains a flower seed. As the material breaks down, the seed is allowed to germinate and become a flower. (Photo courtesy of The University of Warwick)
Researchers in England have an idea for your old mobile
phones – bury them and grow a flower. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:
Transcript
Researchers in England have an idea for your old mobile phones – bury them and grow a
flower. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:
Most people have one – if not several – cell phones they’ve outgrown. Some keep them
around for no good reason, some just throw them away, and some people actually recycle
them.
Kerry Kirwan at the University of Warwick in England wants to take that idea further.
He’s developing a biodegradable cell phone case that could be buried and would grow
into a flower when you’re ready to upgrade your phone.
“We thought it’d be a rather unique way of getting people to take responsibility of the
disposal of their mobile phones, but also, a way for moving a lot of plastic waste from the
waste stream so it didn’t have to be dealt with.”
Kirwan says he’d like to have the product on the market in a few years. He says the
phone cases would contain a wide range of flower seeds, based on what would grow best
in your climate.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
A $5,000 reward is being offered to anyone who finds a tiny, parasitic worm in the U.S. that kills leaf-eating slugs. The gray garden slug is notorious for destroying crops and ornamental plants in the Midwest. Researchers at Ohio State University have been looking for the worm that eats the slugs. So far, they’ve examined thousands of slugs sent to them in the mail … but they haven’t been able to find the worm. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports:
Transcript
A five thousand dollar reward is being offered to anyone who finds a tiny, parasitic worm in the United States that kills leaf-eating slugs. The gray garden slug is notorious for destroying crops and ornamental plants in the Midwest. Researchers at Ohio State University have been looking for the worm that eats the slugs. So far, they’ve examined thousands of slugs sent to them in the mail, but they haven’t been able to find the worm. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Natalie Walston reports.
(Natural sound of guinea hens)
The Kingwood Center in Mansfield, Ohio is made up of 50 acres of well-tended English gardens. Paved trails lead through rows of perennials and peonies, around fountains and a duck pond. Hundreds of hostas grow beneath shade trees, but the plants leaves have holes chewed through them. John Makely is Kingwood’s head gardener. He says the conventional methods to kill the slugs eating his hostas are out of the question here.
“The problem that we have here with slug bait is that we do have birds roaming around, peacocks and guinea hens that roam around freely. They sort of grouse, browse I should say, the grounds and we would be afraid that they would pick up some of those pellets and poison them.”
Slug bait consists of a poison that can harm more than its intended target. But right now, it’s the only commercial method available to control slugs. So, now there’s a big push by large, commercial nurseries to find a chemical-free way to kill the gray garden slugs that eat ornamental plants. Ohio State University researcher, Pavinder Grewal says there’s a major economic reason to find a good control method.
“Last year we had a lot of rain here when the corn was emerging. And there have been several fields in Ohio that were totally wiped out by the slugs. Basically zero corn production in some fields.”
Grewal has found a natural slug killer. It’s a tiny parasitic worm, known as a nematode. It is native to England and parts of several countries in South America. Farmers and gardeners in those countries buy them in bulk in powder form and sprinkle the worms on their fields. Scientists think the worm will work in this country as well. But if the worm is imported, it must first undergo years of testing to make sure it will not harm native plants and animals.
“We don’t see any problem because some of the tests that we have performed with the nematode…we find it to be pretty safe to non-target organisms. And, we find that this nematode does not infect all slugs.”
To prove this to the federal government could be difficult. Grewal is looking for the worm, in the United States he took out an ad in various publications. He studies more than twenty thousand slugs, but has yet to find the worm he’s looking for. Now he’s sending people off to remote areas of the country to find it. He hopes to be successful because it could take years of testing before the worms can be brought into this country. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Natalie Walston.
The terrible events in New York City and Washington have left a legacy of personal tragedies. For Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Suzanne Elston, the story of September 11th began as a journey of peace:
Transcript
The terrible events in New York City and Washington D.C. have left a legacy of personal tragedies. For Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator, Suzanne Elston, the story of September 11th, began as a journey of peace.
I’ve never been to New York City. So when we got an invitation to visit the Big Apple and participate in a children’s peace festival, we jumped at the chance. My husband Brian and two of our kids, Peter and Sarah, were going to be part of a church service marking the opening of the 56th session of the United Nations General Assembly.
Sarah was going to carry the Canadian flag and Peter was going to give a reading. The kids were wired and so were we.
Our plan was to leave Toronto Tuesday morning by train. The daylong trip would take us to New York City. We’d have all day Wednesday to do touristy things before the service on Thursday. We’d even managed to get tickets to a Broadway play. It all sounded so exciting that I couldn’t believe that it was actually going to happen.
We’d been on the train for about an hour when we first heard the news. Our traveling companions were 18 members of the Toronto Children’s Peace Theatre, also en route to the peace festival. The director of the company received a cell phone call that gave us sketchy details of the initial attack on the World Trade Center.
At first I refused to believe it. Here we were heading for an international children’s peace festival.
It felt like we were on the voyage of the damned. We continued on our journey, barreling down the tracks to a destination that we knew we would never reach. We heard rumors – the border was closed, there was shooting in the streets. People with cell phones were frantically trying to get a hold of somebody they knew who could give us an update.
The children from the theatre group were particularly upset. For most of them it was their first time away from home, and they were scared. As we discussed the latest details that we’d heard, one of the kids started to throw-up.
We moved to another car and tried to explain to a group of university students from England that they wouldn’t be flying home the next day from New York. As the news continued to filter in, we soon realized that they wouldn’t be flying home from anywhere. An elderly couple at the back of the car sat in stony silence. Their daughter worked at the World Trade Center and they were frozen in fear.
The conductor was stuck like a moose in headlights. Most of the passengers still didn’t know what was going on. My husband finally took him aside and explained that he had to make an announcement. People needed to make arrangements, to talk to their families. But he was just a kid and as scared as the rest of us. He wanted to wait until he had something official from Amtrak’s head office.
Finally, at 11:00 a.m., he made a formal announcement. The border was closed and we all would be disembarking at Niagara Falls. It was Tuesday evening by the time we got home and saw the horrific images of what had happened.
It wasn’t until then, when we were safe and home and together that we had a shocking revelation. The first stop on our sightseeing trip was going to be the World Trade Center. For the sake of a mere 24 hours we could have been buried at the bottom of that rubble like so many others.
Our great journey of peace ended with many prayers. We prayed for the victims and their families, we prayed for peace. Finally, we gave a prayer of thanks that we’d all made it home safely. After witnessing Tuesday’s horror – that was a gift beyond measure.
A projected image of London's Olympic Stadium for the 2012 games (Photo courtesy of London 2012)
