Tag: experts

Whooping Cranes Not Hatching

  • One of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young in the wild, but so far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and gone on to migrating. (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

Transcript

Wildlife experts are trying to bring back a flock of migrating whooping
cranes in the eastern United States. But there’s a problem. Scientists are
having trouble getting the whoopers to hatch chicks in the wild. Chuck
Quirmbach reports – researchers are taking a closer look at the ten-year-old
rehabilitation effort:

It’s not easy to get whooping cranes to reproduce, but here in Baraboo,
Wisconsin, researchers have had success at getting captive cranes to produce
chicks.

For the last ten years, the Whooping Crane Eastern Partnership has created a
flock of more than 100 whoopers. Researchers hatched the birds
– and trained them to migrate by flying behind ultralight aircraft ….or to
follow adult cranes. The birds now fly between the upper Midwest and
southeastern U.S.

But one of the goals of the Partnership is to get more cranes to raise young
in the wild. So far, only one crane chick has been successfully hatched and
gone on to migrating.

Jeb Barzen is with the International Crane Foundation. He says they can’t
keep supplying the flock with chicks hatched in captivity:

“It’s expensive. it’s expensive in time, expensive in money…expensive in overall conservation effort, because what you put into whooping crane reintroduction you can’t put into other conservation projects at that time. so to be fully successful …you want that population to be
able to survive on it’s own.”

So far, about 16 million dollars has gone into re-introducing whoopers to
the eastern u.s. More than half of that money came from private donors.

The birds’ main summer home is here at the Necedah National Wildlife Refuge
in Wisconsin.

It’s not that the cranes don’t get close to each other. If you watch the cranes here, you can spot single cranes and the occasional couple.

Jeb Barzen pauses to watch two tall white cranes having a territorial dispute:

“Ooh! these birds are threatening each other. that’s a preen behind the wing
threat…that the second bird is doing…so these are not birds of the same
pair.”

Researchers don’t know why the birds are not raising more wild chicks. But
they do have some theories. Even when cranes do make nice and produce an
egg – the relatively young cranes may be too inexperienced to be patient
parents. Black flies may drive the birds off their nest. Or the parents
may be low on body fat and take off to find food.

The crane researchers are gathering data to find out what cranes need for a
successful nesting site. They’re using tracking radios to follow some of the
birds.

Anne Lacy is with the International Crane Foundation. Today she’s driving
around southern Wisconsin listening for the whoopers.

“it’s important to look at what choices they make as a young bird
before they breed…to know how they choose those areas….they need for
water for roosting at night…they need that eventually for nesting.”

This kind of research is being ramped up this spring. That’s because an
independent report raised some concerns about the crane recovery effort.
The report was done by consultants hired by the Whooping Crane Eastern
Partnership. It mentions problems with financial oversight, scientific
coordination, and whether the birds’ main summer home – at the Necedah
wildlife refuge – is the best place for them.

Louise Clemency is with the US Fish and Wildlife Service. And
she is a co-chair of the eastern partnership. She says the crane recovery
effort won’t make any big changes overnight.

“We’re trying to the time to draw the right conclusions so we can
take the right next step.”

Clemency says decisions on the whooping crane experiment could come next
year. In the meantime..she hopes that some crane eggs laid this spring at
the Necedah refuge will hatch.

For The Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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Tire Pressure and Gas Mileage

  • Tire experts say that your tire pressure does, in fact, effect your gas mileage (Photo by Karen Kelly)

Earlier this year John McCain
and Barack Obama traded jabs over how
important tire pressure was in saving
gas. Lester Graham reports the experts
say it does make a difference:

Transcript

Earlier this year John McCain
and Barack Obama traded jabs over how
important tire pressure was in saving
gas. Lester Graham reports the experts
say it does make a difference:

Tim Bent is the Environmental Affairs Director at Firestone Tires. He says you ought to
check your tire pressure.

“Many people don’t maintain their tires well enough. They don’t check their tire
pressure frequently enough. And that does result, not only in lower gas mileage, but
premature tire wear which could be a safety issue as well.”

Bent says you should check tire pressure once a month. How much of a difference can
it make?

“A couple p.s.i could result in a few percentage points in fuel mileage.”

And at today’s prices, that can add up at the pump.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Sowing Trust With Farmers

For years, environmentalists, government workers, and others have been puzzled about why more farmers don’t make use of environmentally friendly land management practices. Now, researchers have found some of the reasons farmers persist in farming the way they do; and why they don’t listen to outside experts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has more:

Transcript

For years, environmentalists, government workers and others have been
puzzled about why more farmers don’t make use of environmentally friendly
land management practices. Now, researchers have found some of the reasons
farmers persist in farming the way they do and why they don’t listen to
outside experts. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(diner sounds)


When you walk into Fran and Marilyn’s diner you immediately smell bacon and
coffee. It’s still dark and this is the only storefront open this early in
the morning in Jerseyville, Illinois. Local merchants, blue-collar workers
and farmers meet here to catch up on the local gossip. This is a place where
most people wear jeans and work boots. Belts with big buckles are fitted
with leather holsters to hold pliers or side cutters. No one wears their cap
backward here.


As farmers ramble in, they eye the guy with the tie and microphone
suspiciously. After asking more than a dozen farmers over a three hour
period to talk, only one was willing to sit down with us.


That’s to be expected according to recent research on the behavior of
farmers. One of the major findings was that farmers don’t trust outsiders
very much. So, we came here to find if that was true.


Clayton Isringhausen farms land just outside of town. He agrees with the
researchers at the University of Illinois who found farmers for the most
part just want to be left alone.


“You know, that’s one of the reasons, probably, a lot of us do farm because we think we can make our own decisions and produce the products the way that we think is the best way to do it and we don’t want anyone trying to tell us anything different.”


Isringhausen says judging from his friends and neighbors, the researchers
were right when they found that farmers don’t trust outsiders… or at least
the organizations they represent… especially if they’re with government
regulators or environmental groups.


“I don’t think farmers distrust them because of the individual. They may distrust them because of who they’re involved with. ”

And the researchers found that distrust extends to just about anyone outside
of the farming community. The researchers say farmers tend to make decisions
based on their own experience, or on the advice of neighbors, or recommendations from the manager of the local grain elevator where they buy
feed, pesticides, and seed. Not because someone in a tie tells them what
they ought to do.


David Wilson is one of the University of Illinois researchers who questioned
hundreds of farmers about how they make decisions.


“Farmers are like many, many other people where they create in their own minds, in their own imaginings, a sense of villains and victims and salvationists to their way of life.”


And Wilson found most farmers see themselves as the victims… and government
agencies that interfere with their lifestyles, such as the Environmental
Protection Agency… as the villains. So when government programs or
environmental groups try to persuade farmers to stop using certain
pesticides that cause pollution problems, or to till the soil differently to
reduce erosion, or to stop using growth enhancing hormones in livestock,
farmers tend to get defensive.


(truck and grain elevator sounds)


Ted Stouffe farms 350 acres and also works at the grain elevator in Shipman,
Illinois. He says some environmental groups seem to be reasonable, but he
thinks others have hidden agendas.


“If they’re truly what they say they are, I have no problem with that. But I think that there’s somebody or something out there is trying to lead – excuse the expression – city people to believe that we’re creating a monster out here. And, whoever that is needs to be stopped, and they really don’t know the issue.”


Getting past that suspicion is difficult. Many environmental groups don’t
make a lot of progress in working with farmers. Chris Campany is with the
National Campaign for Sustainable Agriculture, a coalition of farm
organizations, environmental groups, and others. Campany says the trick is
to find farmers who are good stewards of the land, respected by
environmentalists and by farmers, and work with them to help find common
ground between the groups. He says the next step is getting rid of
pre-conceived notions and asking the important questions.


“Why’s the farmer doing what he or she is doing in the first place? What are they responding to? And what are some examples out there of alternative ways to do things that not only may be more environmentally sound, but may be more economically viable too?”


But the researchers at the University of Illinois found that economic
argument only goes so far. Again, David Wilson…


“Many outsiders have gone into the farming community and said ‘We can change these guys’ practices if we can make an economic appeal to them.’ But, it’s really much more complex than that because farmers don’t just think economically. Farmers think in ways that are highly personal to them.”


And until those outsiders understand that, the researchers say they won’t
have a whole lot of influence with farmers.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.