Tag: revive

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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Pushing the Idea of Pedestrian Malls

  • Last spring, the New York city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic, creating pedestrian-only plazas. (Photo courtesy of Sean Marshall)

Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.

Transcript

Since the 1960s or ‘70s, people have flocked to suburban malls to shop and hang out. A lot of cities tried to get people back downtown by keeping cars out—they shut down streets and created pedestrian malls. Nora Flaherty reports the downtown pedestrian malls seldom worked, but some planners think it’s worth a try again.

If you go to New York City’s Times Square, you’ll encounter a lot of lights, a lot of noise, throngs of tourists and office workers, and guys hawking theatre tickets…

But these days, you won’t encounter a tangle of cars, cabs, and busses. That’s because last spring, the city government decided to close parts of Times Square to traffic and create pedestrian-only plazas.

Rochelle Paterson works for the city. She says that the extra breathing space suits her just fine.

“I always thought 42nd street was so congested—and sometimes you need a place to sit and just relax.”

Now, New York is densely populated and people are used to walking to get around. It’s busy here. But pedestrian malls in other cities have often attempted to bring crowds into areas that cities wish would be busier.

A few decades ago, cities all over the country were feeling the pain as indoor malls opened in the suburbs….and lots of those cities hoped pedestrian malls would make downtowns centers of activity again.

Poughkeepsie, New York was one; and its mall did end up becoming a center of activity…

Just not the kind they were hoping for. The city shut down traffic. Built a nice pedestrian walkway. But then things went wrong. The city repealed laws against public drunkenness and loitering. A county social services office moved into the mall.

And then came drugs, gangs, and prostitution.

Ron Knapp is the police chief in Poughkeepsie; He was just starting his career in 1974 when the pedestrian mall was first built:

“So you kind of had a tough element out there that you had to deal with. And as those laws loosened up it hurt the mall, and as the businesses further went out, and once you’re in that downhill cycle it’s hard to stop.”

In 1981 Poughkeepsie decided to reopen the area to traffic as part of an effort to—again—revitalize downtown. Most of the 200-or-so American cities that tried out pedestrian malls were not successful. Reid Ewing is a professor of City and Metropolitan Planning at the University of Utah, and he works with the American Planning Association:

“Ped traffic had been light before and businesses not doing that well with people fleeing to the suburbs in the 60s or 70s. And so the ped malls actually exacerbated the problem.”

People thought parking was a hassle. The downtown pedestrian malls were just not convenient.

There have been success stories, though—like Pearl Street in Boulder, Colorado, and Church Street, in Burlington, Vermont. And those successes tended to have a few things in common:

They were not in depressed downtowns; they were in areas where there tended to be a lot of students and tourists, and where people felt safe; and cities needed to provide a lot of activities—things like farmers markets—to bring people in.

In other words, a pedestrian mall could make an already-pretty-nice area, nicer…but it couldn’t pull an area out of the kind of a downhill slide.

….But having learned some tough lessons, a lot of urban planners like Reid Ewing are saying it’s time to try again.

“It’s just consistent with so many things happening today…dealing with climate change, the US obesity epidemic. Getting people out walking who would otherwise get in their cars. It’s a small thing but it’s an important part of this puzzle.”

Planners concede pedestrian malls cannot work just anywhere. But they can work…to make some areas more vibrant, and more environmentally friendly.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nora Flaherty.

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Bringing a Fish Back From the Brink

  • The American Shad became so rare that hatcheries had to help restore depleted populations (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-Achour explains:

Transcript

A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s
capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-
Achour explains:

I bet you can’t recognize this sound.

It is the sound of a female shad – it’s a type of fish – having its eggs squeezed out into a metal
bowl.

“In the bowl, it looks like applesauce.”
That’s biologist Catherine Lim. We are on a boat in the middle of the Potomac, 20 miles south of
Washington DC, harvesting and fertilizing shad eggs. Lim picks up a male shad and gives it a
squeeze.

“Yeah, he sprayed out there.”

She mixes the brew around and adds water.

“We’ll bag them up and send them to the fish hatchery.”

This is all part of an effort to restore the population of the American Shad. For millions of years,
the large silver-iridescent fish have swum in from the Atlantic and up the rivers of the East Coast
every spring to spawn. They return to the same place where their lives began, guided by a
unique geological odor that seeps from the earth and mountains that feed each river.

Once upon a time – only a century ago – these fish were so numerous they turned the water silver
and made rivers move.

At least that’s what Jim Cummins says, he’s a biologist.

“On the Susquehanna, there were so many of them they created a wave as they came up the
river, a standing wave.”

On the Potomac they fueled entire industries. According to newspaper reports, Washington DC
exported 4 million barrels of salted shad every year in the 1840’s.

“The wagons would come into Georgetown were so heavy that they crammed up the city – I think
it’s the first report of gridlock in Washington.”

The fish fed more than just commerce – they nourish everything from crabs to dolphins. Bald
Eagles actually evolved to time their egg laying early, so their chicks would hatch just as the Shad
and their relatives appeared in the river. And then came overfishing, dams, and pollution.

“In the 1960’s, there were times when the migratory fish came up to spawn in the area and met
that pollution, and hundreds of thousands of them died and made a stinking mess.”

The clean water act was passed in 1972, but by 1980, the fish were almost wiped out. A
moratorium on fishing at the time was too little too late. Water quality gradually improved as
waste water treatment plants were upgraded and aquatic grasses returned. But still, no Shad.

So Cummins began the Shad restoration project.

They had to use several nets – each hundreds of feet long – just to catch one fish. They got help
from fisheries and even elementary schools. Dams were fixed to let fish go around them. The
Shad population exploded.

At a boat house just outside of DC, anglers Steve Bocat and Louis Covax are enjoying success
that up until recently, few alive have seen here.

“It was great we had incredible fishing. I mean, between the two of us, we had, what, 50-60 fish
up to the boat?”

Another sign of success, a pair of Bald Eagles recently returned to the area following the fish –
the first in decades.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sabri Ben-Achour.

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Sharing Prairie Chickens

  • A male prairie chicken showing off for the hens. (Photo by Dan Gunderson)

Most of the native prairie east of the Mississippi is now farmland, but there are still a few isolated spots where remnants of prairie survive… and with them a prairie icon… the greater prairie chicken, but prairie chickens need a lot of habitat… and in places such as Illinois, Wisconsin and other states, only a few hundred birds survive. One state is having better luck, and some of its birds are being moved to help revive other prairie chicken populations. The GLRC’s Dan Gunderson reports:

Transcript

Most of the native prairie east of the Mississippi is
now farmland, but there are still a few isolated spots
where remnants of prairie survive; and with them a
prairie icon: the greater prairie chicken. But prairie
chickens need a lot of habitat, and in places such as
Illinois, Wisconsin and other states, only a few
hundred birds survive. One state is having better
luck, and some of its birds are being moved to help
revive other prairie chicken populations. The GLRC’s
Dan Gunderson reports:


The prairie chickens are ghostly shapes in the grey
predawn light of this spring morning.


(sound of prairie chickens in)


The cocks cackle as they fight off other males. They
inflate the orange sacks on their necks and make a
mournful echoing sound. Tail feathers erect they strut
about trying to impress the hens, who sit quietly
watching.


This 5,000 acre chunk of native prairie in Minnesota
has never been plowed. The prairie chickens have
always lived here. Today it’s owned by the Nature
Conservancy and known as the Bluestem Prairie.
Brian Winter manages the land. This morning he’s in a
small plywood blind counting prairie chickens on their
booming ground. About 40 males are strutting their
stuff.


“In Minnesota it’s a success story and we hope it gets
to be an even more successful success story than what it is
right now.”


Genetic diversity is one of the keys to a species
survival. In many states, prairie chickens are so
isolated the gene pool becomes weak. In Minnesota
there are flocks of prairie chickens along the western
edge of the state. Brian Winter says those flocks are
close enough to keep the gene pool from getting
stagnant.


“So there’s interbreeding as birds disperse in the fall.”


(sound of chickens tussling)


“Nice fight just took place right there. The research that’s been done looking at the genetics shows the
Minnesota population is one of the best in terms of
genetic diversity.”


Brian Winter says 20 years ago there were an
estimated 2,000 prairie chickens in Minnesota.
Today the population is approaching 10,000. The
prairie chicken is stable enough in Minnesota that
there’s been a limited hunting season the past two
years. In the past few years, several hundred
Minnesota chickens have helped rebuild populations
in North Dakota, Illinois and Wisconsin. Later this
summer, Minnesota prairie chickens will be captured
and moved by the Wisconsin Prairie Chicken Society,
in an effort to save a population declining in size and
genetic diversity.


Dave Sample with the Wisconsin DNR says the state
hopes to set aside 15,000 acres of grassland for
prairie chicken habitat in the next ten years. But he
says the birds won’t survive without a genetic infusion.


“In order to increase genetics in a compromised
population you do need to bring an infusion in from
outside. You pretty much have to go where genetics
are good and bring those birds in to mix with ours.”


Sample says there’s no guarantee the Wisconsin
prairie chicken population will survive, but he thinks
expanding the genetic pool will be a big step in the
right direction.


Earl Johnson is Regional Wildlife Manager for the
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He
says the prairie chicken success reflects a
conservation success. Johnson says the federal
Conservation Reserve Program has turned thousands
of acres of marginal farmland back into grassland.
That makes good prairie chicken habitat. Johnson
says Minnesota is very fortunate to have a healthy
prairie chicken population.


“What’s the long term future for the prairie chicken? I’d hate to guess, but we are happy to help any states
that want our assistance by transplanting birds.”


Johnson calls the prairie chicken the prairie poster
child. Hundreds of people come from across the
country every spring to sit in blinds and watch the
mating dance. Johnson says interest is growing every
year. At the Bluestem Prairie, the Nature
Conservancy blinds are full almost every day during
the spring. Brian Winter says people from every state
have traveled here to see the spring spectacle unique
to the prairie grassland.


Despite its success, the prairie chicken population is
only as stable as its habitat. Winter says the prairie
chicken may be the most visible prairie resident, but
what’s good for the prairie chicken is good for many
other species as well.


“It’s going to be meadowlarks and bobolinks and
mallard ducks and a whole variety of grassland birds
that just require grassland habitat to survive, and
without it they’re just not going to be there.”


And that’s going to require larger grassland areas.
Too much of the prairie has disappeared in many
states to support healthy numbers of prairie chickens.
That means if the prairie chicken is to survive more of
the marginal farmland, the poorer quality farmland,
needs to be returned to prairie.


For the GLRC, I’m Dan Gunderson.


(sound of mating prairie chickens)

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Designing a Green Neighborhood

  • "Green" single family homes built by GreenBuilt in the Cleveland EcoVillage. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:

Transcript

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:


(sound of street)


The morning sun is peaking through an overcast sky along a street lined with simple Victorian style homes. In this Cleveland neighborhood, two of these homes are brand new. Unlike their century old neighbors, they’re green buildings… built with the environment in mind.


One, is the home of David and Jen Hovus. It was built to actively conserve resources and to have a low impact on the environment. For example, all of the lights are on timers.


“I had to go out of my way to find timers that would control compact fluorescent lights, so that I wasn’t wasting too much electricity.”


Even the fan venting moist air from the bathroom… is on a timer. The furnace too, is a high-efficiency unit.


(sound of walking)


Hovus’s environmentally friendly surroundings don’t stop at the backyard gate. He lives in a special neighborhood called the Cleveland EcoVillage. And on his way to work, he sees green building principles and sustainable practices all along the way. Like the community garden, where even the tool shed is made of recycled material.


“There was a 120-year-old maple tree that was cut down. Folks brought a portable saw mill and they sawed it into lumber and that’s what they used for the framing. It’s actually a strawbale construction as well.”


The idea to revive a struggling neighborhood with sustainable solutions, started with the city’s environmental planning organization, EcoCity Cleveland. Back in 1997, they investigated dozens of the cities neighborhoods. And choose the west side neighborhood where Hovus lives, because it was close to transit, had a strong Community Development organization and had support of the local councilman.


David Beach is EcoCity Cleveland’s Executive Director. He says besides environmentally sound buildings, the neighborhood gives the option of a car-free life.


“Where everything you need is with in walking distance. So you’re living space, your work place, and some of your shopping can be right in that one neighborhood. And then you hop on that rapid transit and in five minutes your downtown or you’re at the airport.”


Everything within a half-mile radius of the transit station is in the EcoVillage.
Resident David Hovus stands at the entrance, with fierce wind coming off of Lake Erie.


“This used to be… there was literally a set of stairs leading down to the platform. There was essentially a bus shelter on the platform and that was it. And if you didn’t actually know where the entrances were, you’d never know there was a train station here.”


So EcoCity Cleveland and the neighborhood convinced Cleveland’s Transit Authority to spend nearly $4 and a half million dollars on a new station, based on environmentally sound principles. It’s the only Green Transit Station in Ohio.


“And now we’d got a nice warm building that uses passive solar heating and a lot of green building features.”


Mandy Metcalf is the EcoVillage Project Director. She continues our tour of the neighborhood down a walking path.
Four blocks later, twenty new green-built town homes come into view. In the same simple Victorian style of the neighborhood, they blend right in. They’re also very energy efficient.


“One resident said that his January bill was only forty dollars for gas, which is pretty impressive.”


But, the majority of the homes in the EcoVillage are more than a century old and very energy inefficient. While they’re considered “affordable housing,” a mortgage payment on top of a heating bill of more than $300 dollars makes them difficult to afford. So Metcalf’s organization helped homeowners discover where their energy was being wasted.


“What the best things, the most cost effective things that they could do to retrofit their houses. And now we’re going to match them up with loan programs and encourage them to go through with it.”


While older homes are being updated, the Ecovillage is making plans to improve the green space surrounding the local rec center. And within two years, they hope to entice a green building grocery store to the area.


For the GLRC, this is Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

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