The Adopt-A-Watt program allows people to sponsor clean energy (Photo courtesy of Adopt-A-Watt)
A new program gets businesses and
groups to pay towns to switch to alternative
energy. Lester Graham reports it’s a
little like an “Adopt-A-Highway” program:
Transcript
A new program gets businesses and
groups to pay towns to switch to alternative
energy. Lester Graham reports it’s a
little like an “Adopt-A-Highway” program:
Imagine seeing a bank of solar panels that power nearby street lights, and a sign
underneath which recognizes the company that sponsored the project.
Thomas Wither is the founder of the National Adopt-A-Watt program.
“Our program mimics the very successful “Adopt-A-Highway” program. Only instead
of giving supporters community recognition for picking up litter alongside the road,
we have come up with a means of giving community recognition for supporting clean
energy and the funding for alternative fuels.”
Wither says several airports are among the first to use the “adopt-a-watt” program.
Sponsors get the benefit of being connected to clean energy – like solar power – and
airports, towns, and other government entities get the cost of using clean energy
subsidized by those sponsors.
For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.
Aldo Leopold found fame by writing "A Sand County Almanac"... but even sixty years after his death, scholars say his theories about living in harmony with nature are influencing conservation practices today. (Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives)
Aldo Leopold writing near the building he called "the shack" with dog Flick in 1942. (Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives)
If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in
common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost
sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Aldo Leopold is probably best known for writing A Sand
County Almanac. That’s a collection of essays about finding harmony
with nature. His ideas about preservation changed while working for the
Forest
Service in the southwestern U.S. Rick Stel of the Aldo Leopold
Foundation
says one day in the early 1900’s Leopold shot a wolf thought to be a threat
to
cattle. The female had pups with her.
“And he says he got there in time to see the
fierce green fire die in her eyes… and it was at this time he realized
we’re going about this in the wrong way… we really need to look at all
creatures and everything as a community.”
Leopold’s epiphany led to writings that won him national attention. he
eventually moved to Madison, Wisconsin – first to work in forest
research and later at the University of Wisconsin. There, he taught the
nation’s
first course in game management.
In 1935, he bought an abandoned farm in the sandy floodplain of the
Wisconsin River. It became the inspiration for many of the essays in A Sand County
Almanac.
(sound of unlocking door)
Most tours of the site start at an old chicken coop that was the only
building left when Leopold bought the place and is the only structure
now. The shack, as Leopold called it, has no electricity or furnace.
(sound of fire)
On chilly days tour guides light a fire in the fireplace and talk about
the ideas Leopold developed while visiting the shack with his family.
The Leopold Foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Leopold worried about
becoming disconnected from nature.
“His February essay talks about the two spiritual dangers of
not owning a farm. One is to assume food comes from a grocery store, and the second is that heat comes from a furnace.”
Outside the shack Leopold and his family worked to return the land to its
pre-agricultural state. They planted thousands of pine trees. The also undertook
one of
the first prairie restorations. The Leopold family spent a lot of time
discussing how
people were damaging the environment.
(sound of brushing)
About one hundred yards from the shack Buddy Huffaker brushes off
a plaque that’s set in the ground. at this spot, Leopold sawed apart a
lightning-damaged oak tree that he called the good oak. He wrote
about the experience in a famous essay that Huffaker says is really
about natural history.
“As he and his family saw through the growth rings of the oak, he
goes back in time to see how people have disregarded other natural
elements in the landscape – the decimation of turkeys and other
species that we hunted into extinction locally or entirely.”
But turkeys, sandhill cranes and a few others species have come
back–in part because of Leopold’s conservation ethic. Now his
followers are trying to protect more things.
To spread Leopold’s message some groups have started sponsoring
readings of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. At a library in Lake
Geneva
Wisconsin Jim Celano reads from the essay about the good oak.
“Now our saw bites into the 1920’s the Babbittian
decade when everything grew bigger and better in heedlessness and
arrogance – until 1929 when stock markets crumpled. If the oak heard them
fall, its
wood gives no sign.”
Celano is a former commerical real estate developer who now heads
a land conservancy group. He says he’s trying to convey Leopold’s
ideas to other developers.
“That we’re not here to say no to development… but to ask
they be sensitive to what they’re developing. And when you step on
their parcel, after their development is done, that the first thing you
notice is what they’re preserved and protected.”
(sound of woodpecker and traffic)
But even Aldo Leopold’s famous land around the shack is not immune
from modern threats. As a woodpecker hammers overhead, the noise
from a nearby interstate highway intrudes into the scenery. The
Leopold foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Aldo Leopold knew the future
would bring new threats to the natural world.
“But I think that’s Leopold’s challenge to us. He
understood progress was going to continue. He just wanted us to
contemplate what we wanted that progress to be. And how far it
should go.”
And with sales of A Sand County Almanac bigger now than when it was
published in 1949, it ‘s a future Aldo Leopold might be helping to
shape.
Largeflower bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora) is one of the wildflowers declining at many of the sites studied by University of Wisconsin researchers. (Photo courtesy of Dave Rogers, UW Herbarium)
Don Reiter manages wildlife at the Menominee Tribal Forest in northeastern Wisconsin. The forest retains a healthy diversity of plant life, and has a low deer population. (MPR photo/Stephanie Hemphill)
University of Wisconsin researcher Tom Rooney says forest and wildlife managers should try to maintain a diversity of forest types, and not favor deer or any other particular species. (Photo courtesy of Tom Rooney)
Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished
part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many
deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research
suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare
plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:
Gardeners in many suburbs and rural areas know deer are good at
mowing down hosta, tulips and other favorite plants. In the woods,
deer munch on the small plants that live on the forest floor… plants
such as orchids, lilies, and other wildflowers.
Fifty years ago, researchers at the University of Wisconsin surveyed
hundreds of acres in the state, and made careful records of the plants
on those sites. In those days, the deer population was a lot lower
than it is now. In the last couple of years, two biologists went back to
many of those same sites and counted the plants living there now.
Tom Rooney says at most sites they found fewer different kinds of
plants.
“It tends to be the same species occurring over and again on the site.
You’re losing the rare species and picking up more and more
common species.”
He says they tried to link the decline in rare species to the fact that
the forest is getting older. But they found no evidence for that.
Instead, lead researcher Don Waller says the evidence points to
deer, which have increased dramatically over the last fifty years.
“The worst changes we’ve seen, ironically were in a couple of state
parks and a protected natural area, that showed losses of half or
more of species in 50 years. However, in these sites there was no
deer hunting, implying high densities of deer may be causing a lot of
the effects we see in the woods.”
Plants that rely on insects for pollination declined more than other
types of plants. Waller thinks it might be because the insect-
pollinated plants have showy flowers, which could catch the eye of a
wandering deer. As the flowering plants decline, the insects and
birds that rely on them for food could decline as well – bees, moths,
butterflies, and hummingbirds.
Waller says it’s worrisome because scientists don’t know how
particular insects and plants work together to support each other.
“As we’re losing parts of the ecosystem, we’re really not sure what
their full function is, they might play some crucial role we’re not aware
of and only too late might we become aware of the fact that this loss
led to an unraveling or threats to other species.”
Waller says the only places they studied that still have a healthy
diversity of plants are on Indian reservations. The Menominee Tribal
Forest in northeastern Wisconsin is pretty much like it used to be fifty
years ago.
(forest sounds under)
In this forest, there are only about ten deer per square mile. That’s
about as low as the deer population gets in Wisconsin. It’s not that
the tribe is hunting more deer; it’s the way the forest is grown.
Deer find lots to eat in young aspen woods; there’s less for them to
eat where pines and oaks and maples grow. Don Reiter is the wildlife
manager here. He says in the 360 square miles of the Menominee
forest, there’s really four different types of woods.
“We have pulpwood, we have northern hardwoods, white pine, red
pine, and again, the forest ecosystem as a whole, there’s plenty of
food out there for the deer.”
And because there aren’t too many deer, young pines and hemlocks
– and orchids and lilies – have a chance to grow.
In the upper Great Lakes states, wildlife officials have been trying to
thin the deer herd for several years. That’s because state officials
have been aware deer were causing problems by eating too many
plants. The recent study provides dramatic evidence.
In Minnesota, for instance, hunters are shooting four times the
number of deer they shot fifty years ago.
Steve Merchant is forest wildlife program consultant for the
Minnesota DNR. Merchant says the agency has liberalized its rules,
to encourage hunters to kill even more deer. But the number of
hunters hasn’t gone up in recent years. And lots of private
landowners post no-hunting signs.
“We need to have some help from people, people still need to get out
and hunt deer, and landowners need to provide that access for
people to harvest deer.”
Merchant says Minnesota is gradually trying to restore pine forests,
which were cut down for lumber and replaced with fast-growing
aspen. More pine forests could cut down on the deer population…
“But as long as we still have the strong demand for the aspen
markets that we do, and we manage those aspen forests in a
productive manner for wood fiber, we’re going to create a lot of good
white-tailed deer habitat.”
Merchant says it would take decades to change the woods enough to
reduce the deer population. And in the meantime, we’re losing more
and more of the rare flowers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Ice storms and tornadoes over the last six months have made a mess of many of the woodlands around us. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma suggests that there is a resilient beauty in the forest that is something more than orderliness:
Transcript
Ice storms and tornadoes over the last six months have made a mess of many of the woodlands around us. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma suggests that there is a resilient beauty in the forest that is something more than orderliness:
A walk in the woods along the bank of the St. Joseph River reminded me of what an unkempt place the forest is. In this rare stretch of old growth forest in park land spanning Indiana and Michigan, one readily finds what John Muir once called a “wild storm culture.” A huge oak stands snapped at midpoint, the pieces of its crown scattered like rubble. The once stately tree clings to life. The remains of decaying logs crisscross a field of milky white trillium flowers like a ransacked sampler. Below them a thick mat of last year’s leaves blankets the rich loam of the river’s shore.
It strikes me that it’s not at all the way I would have arranged it. No one clears away the debris to let the beauty of the flowers show. No one takes down the ruined trunk and plants a new sapling. No one straightens up nature’s mess.
But then, this is not a garden, it’s a forest. Gardens inspire admiration for the way the gardener has crafted and arranged the natural beauty of flowers, shrubs, and trees. A forest inspires something else again-that sense of amazement that life flourishes amidst the chaos and destruction of the “wild storm culture.” It is, I think, a sense of awe. Amidst the remnants of the storm’s chaos, beauty blooms. The broken and the shattered stand side by side with the enduring and the strong. The delicate petals shine against the rotting leaves.
Its perfection is not in symmetry. Rather, it strikes a chord with dissonant notes. It is an acquired taste. Ansel Adams once wrote. “We all continually move on the edges of eternity.” Take a walk in the woods and discover what he meant.
Host Tag: Bob Hamma is the author of “Earth’s Echo,
Sacred Encounters with Nature,” published by Sorin Books.
The Adopt-A-Watt program allows people to sponsor clean energy (Photo courtesy of Adopt-A-Watt)
