Planting More Trees on Coffee Farms

  • Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. (Source: MarkSweep at Wikimedia Commons)

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

Transcript

Songbirds on their way south might
find more trees at coffee plantations. Lester
Graham reports there’s a shift in thinking by
coffee growers. And a new study might encourage
more farmers to plant shade trees:

A few decades ago, coffee growers in Latin America were given incentives to clear the
shade trees on their plantations. More sun equals more coffee beans. They also found
more sun meant more weeds. So they had to spray expensive herbicides.

Now a new study published in BioScience shows cutting down those shade trees has
also left the coffee plants more exposed to damage from bad weather. Ivette Perfecto
at the University of Michigan is one of the authors.

“The vulnerability of the farms are much higher if they eliminate the shade. The shade
trees provide like a buffer against extremes.”

Many coffee growers in Latin America are now replanting the shade trees. The added
benefit is the trees provide habitat for wildlife, including those migrating birds that spend
their summers here and travel south to that region.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

One Man, a Marsh, and Birds

  • Ken Brunswick at the Limberlost marsh (Photo by Sam Hendren)

Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:

Transcript

Biologists say we’ve lost about half
of the number of songbirds we had just 50 years
ago. Part of the reason is the loss of habitat.
Many birds need wetlands. Sam Hendren has the
story of one man’s love of those birds and his
work to save their home:

When Ken Brunswick was a kid, he wanted
to study birds. Brunswick grew up near the
western Ohio town of St. Henry in the 1950s. He
says it didn’t take long to read all the books
about birds in the local library.

“I knew exactly where all the bird books were
because at that time that’s what I had my heart
set on, being an ornithologist,” Brunswick says.

One of the books that inspired Brunswick
was written by Gene Stratton-Porter. She was a
popular novelist in the early 1900s. Stratton-
Porter was best known for her fictional accounts
set in and around an Indiana swamp called the
Limberlost. She was also an amateur naturalist
and wrote several books about birds.

“I was in the eighth grade in that little two-room
schoolhouse reading ‘What I Have Done With
Birds’ by Gene Stratton-Porter, and the teacher
walked up to see what book I was reading, and
looked at it and the teacher said, ‘You know that
place isn’t very far from here.’ And I didn’t know
what she was talking about.”

The Limberlost actually was only a few miles
west across the state line. Stratton-Porter
moved to the area in 1888. But to the locals, the
trees were valuable lumber and the swamp was
a waste of land. Stratton-Porter wrote that
commerce attacked the Limberlost and began,
she said, its usual process of devastation. By
1910, two decades of destruction were
complete.

“This Loblolly Marsh was what I consider the
heart of the Limberlost area and this marsh was
actually the last thing that was drained in this
area so the farmers could start farming it,” says
Brunswick.

Brunswick became a farmer himself. He
started a dairy only a mile from the old Loblolly
Marsh. Through the years he learned more about
the swamp and the birds that lived there.

Later he formed the Limberlost
Remembered project. The group’s mission: to
bring Loblolly Marsh back to life. And they’ve
made a lot of headway.

Brunswick, who’s 63, is retried from farming.
He’s now an ecologist for the Indiana
Department of Natural Resources. He oversees
the Limberlost restoration.
We take a look at the changes aboard his ATV.

He’s maneuvering along a path near the edge of
the marsh. It’s thick with prairie cord grass,
switch grass and blue stem. Some of the grasses
have been planted here; other plant seeds have
lain dormant for decades and are now reclaiming
the ground on their own.

Out in the marsh the water is a gentle sea of
green and wildflowers abound around the edges.
But Brunswick’s love of the birds has not gone
away. And he’s thrilled to see them returning to
their marsh home.

“This is the area where we see American Bittern
once in a while. There’s been Virginia Rail, we
hear Sora Rail in here also. Sora is just a real
little bird that has just the dandiest sound when
it makes its call,” Brunswick says.

These birds and others like them are in
trouble. Most of the wetlands and prairies where
birds once thrived have disappeared.

Brunswick’s dream of becoming an
ornithologist never happened. But his work to
save the Limberlost has been his way of doing
something for the birds he loves.

“Actually when I think about this work I’m doing
it takes me back to that dream I had when I was
a kid in that two room schoolhouse. That dream
of being an ornithologist was taken away and
here, about 30 years later, seeing this land
flooding, I’m seeing birds that, some of them, I
never saw before.”

And the work of an old farmer has restored
the wetlands and natural areas that farmers
before him destroyed.

For The Environment Report, I’m Sam
Hendren.

Related Links

Songbirds’ Numbers Flying South

  • A Nashville Warbler - one of the birds that Matt Etterson heard during this bird count in Canada (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

Transcript

The numbers and types of songbirds
are dropping dramatically in many areas of
the country. A lot of people are trying to
get a better count on the number of birds
that are still around. Stephanie Hemphill recently went with researchers
on one of the more ambitious bird count projects:

The jumping off point for this trip is a tiny airport with a grass runway in
northern Minnesota, about 20 miles from the Canadian border.

We fly for 15 minutes, over trees and swamps as far as the eye can see. Down
below we get a glimpse of a moose. And, later, a pair of rare trumpeter swans
in their nest.

The helicopter sets down in what’s known as a floating bog. Its runners are
sitting in six inches of water.

We jump out in knee-high boots and rain jackets, and douse with DEET to try
to keep the mosquitoes away.

I’m following Heidi Seeland, a graduate student who seems to know her way
around a bog.

We’re in knee-deep water. Then it’s thigh-deep Pretty soon it’s waist-deep. I try
to step on a clump of sphagnum moss. But it sinks. It holds onto my boot, and
I’m sitting in water.

Heidi helps me up, and we catch up with the others.

They fan out on different points of the compass. I follow Matt Etterson. He’s an
ornithologist, a bird expert. We slog through the bog for nearly half an hour.
Etterson is aiming for a piece of higher ground, where the trees are a little
taller, better for nesting.

Suddenly he stops. He’s found the spot he was looking for. He sets his watch
for 10 minutes and pulls out a notebook.

Etterson cocks his head this way and that, jotting the names of the birds he can
hear, and the time he hears them. He doesn’t pay any attention to the mosquito
biting the back of his neck. He just listens and takes notes.

“We had a couple of hermit thrush — that’s the singing to the north of us. A
veery called a couple of times to the west of us. A Nashville warbler, and a
couple of western palm warblers, and that was about it. It was pretty quiet
otherwise,” Etterson said.

We trudge through the muck for another 20 or 30 minutes and he repeats the
process.

It’s two hours later, and the three researchers meet at the helicopter landing spot
and compare notes. They’re excited about Etterson’s veery and Nashville
warbler. The others heard a Connecticut warbler and a Lincoln’s sparrow.

They would have been really happy if they’d heard a golden-winged warbler.
It’s one of the most threatened of bird species. The number of golden-winged
warblers has declined by some 80% during the last 50 years.

Today’s trip is an experiment to see how well it works to count birds in remote
places, using a helicopter.

It’ll take five years to finish the bird count here. Then, in 10 or 20 years, they’ll
do it all over again, to see how the birds are faring.

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Protecting a Rare Songbird

Researchers have studied where a very rare bird spends the summer, but now they’re learning they might need to pay more attention to where it spends the winter. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Researchers have studied where a very rare bird spends the summer, but
now they’re learning they might need to pay more attention to where it
spends the winter. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:


The Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest songbirds in North America.
It spends the summer near the Great Lakes, mostly in Michigan, and the
winter in the Bahamas. The bird’s been on the endangered species list
since 1966. Efforts to control predators and manage habitat in
Michigan have helped the warbler recover, but scientists haven’t known
much about what the warbler needs in winter.


Dave Ewert is the director of conservation science for the Nature
Conservancy’s Great Lakes program. He says his team’s research
indicates that warblers are fattening up on fruit right before they
leave the Bahamas in the spring.


“So if we can identify these sites that produce a lot of food just
before migration, we think that may be a really important key for
conservation implementation in the Bahamas in the future.”


Ewert says the team will need a few more years of research before
recommending specific sites to preserve in the Bahamas.

For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Migration Season Brings Bird Flu Worries

  • Julie Craves stands in the area where she sets up mist nets during migration to catch land birds. (Photo by Christina Shockley)

Researchers have been monitoring the spread of a potentially deadly strain of avian influenza overseas. Health officials worry the H5N1 strain could mutate into a form that could infect humans. Some researchers say the virus could make its way to the United States as early as this fall… by way of wild migratory birds. The GLRC’s Christina Shockley reports:

Transcript

Researchers have been monitoring the spread of a potentially deadly
strain of avian influenza overseas. Health officials worry the H5N1
strain could mutate into a form that could infect humans. Some
researchers say the virus could make its way to the United States as early
as this fall… by way of wild migratory birds. The GLRC’s Christina
Shockley reports:


Wild birds carry all sorts of influenza viruses. Most are of no threat to
people, but the H5N1 strain is different. When it gets into people… it’s
often fatal. Overseas the strain has killed whole farms of poultry such as
chicken and ducks… it’s also infected other types of animals, including
cats.


The H5N1 strain has not been found in the United States, but most
experts say it’s just a matter of time before it is. Some say infected
domestic poultry or smuggled pet birds will likely bring the virus to the
U.S. Others say the virus could come here by way of migrating birds…
that are on the move now.


Steve Schmitt is the lead veterinarian for Michigan’s Department of
Natural Resources. He says birds from Asia… that are possibly infected
with the H5N1 strain are on their way to Alaska right now. There, they
could mingle with birds that will later fly back to the United States.
Schmitt says there are four major flyways over the U.S.… the Pacific,
central, Mississippi, and Atlantic.


“There are birds that will winter in Asia and then come back and nest in
Alaska. If they bring the virus back with them, then they could transmit
that to birds that are in Alaska that come down any of these four major
flyways, and that of course is a big concern, moving it all over the
country.”


Schmitt says most birds that nest in Alaska use the Pacific flyway along
the Pacific coast… to migrate south to the U.S. and Mexico. He says
that means, if the virus were to come to the United States via migratory
birds, the pacific coast would probably be its first stop in the lower 48.
Schmitt says then, birds that use the other flyways could become
infected.


“Most of the migration is north-south, but you do have a few that will
move – jump over to another flyway, and when that happens, the
potential to move the virus to that new flyway happens. Once it’s in a
new flyway, that north-south movement would take over.”


Programs are underway an Alaska and throughout the United States to
test wild birds for various strains of avian influenza, including H5N1.
Experts say waterfowl and shore birds are the most likely carriers of the
dangerous strain, but some say land birds – such as migrating songbirds –
should be tested, too.


(Sound of birds)


Julie Craves studies land birds at the Rouge River Bird Observatory on
the University of Michigan’s Dearborn campus. She catches and bands
thousands of wild birds each year during their spring and fall migrations.


This year, Craves will participate in a study that hopes to eventually test
hundreds of thousands of birds across the U.S. and Latin America for
avian flu strains.


“It’s just a great opportunity with people handling birds already, we may
find out some very interesting things about which subtypes are present in
land birds, and if indeed this disease does come to North America, we
will have a head start on seeing what types of migratory pathways are
being used by birds.”


Craves says very little is known about how avian flu moves among land
birds, and experts say each time the virus is transmitted to a different
species it mutates, and each time it mutates, the chances are greater that
it will change into a form that’s easily passed among humans. That’s a
big concern, because such a mutation could lead to a quick spread of
human cases across the globe.


But some say that might never occur… they say the strain might be
unable to mutate into one that’s dangerous to humans.


Arnold Monto is a professor of epidemiology at the University of
Michigan. He says there will be a problem if the strain mutates, but it’s
unlikely people will get the virus from migrating birds.


“I doubt very much whether we’re even gong to see even a handful of
cases in the United States, should avian influenza arrive, and it probably
will, with the migratory birds coming down from Alaska, perhaps next
fall.”


Monto says most of the human transmissions overseas have been from
poultry being raised in the back yard, and not from wild birds. That
means visiting the ducks and geese in the park… and feeding songbirds
in the back yard… are not high-risk activities. Monto says people should
take basic precautions, such as washing hands, to avoid contracting any
sort of flu virus.


Many experts say, on the list of things to worry about, catching a deadly
form of avian influenza is no where near the top of the list of dangers.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

Related Links

Sand Mine Company Restoring Dunes

Anyone who drives a car in North America likely has
an engine block molded from sand. Fairmount Minerals supplies 400-thousand tons a year of industrial sand to manufacturers like Ford Motor. Fairmount prides itself as an environmentally responsible company. Now they’re going beyond what’s required to restore land for wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:

Transcript

Anyone who drives a car in North America likely has an engine block molded from sand. Fairmount Minerals supplies 400,000 tons a year of industrial sand to manufacturers like Ford Motor. Fairmount prides itself as an environmentally responsible company. Now they’re going beyond what’s required to restore land for wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:


“Okay, we’ll go all the way to the east side of the property…”


Craig Rautiola comes from a family of Finnish rock miners in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He looks like he could have played linebacker on his high school football team. Now he manages four sand mines for Fairmount Minerals near the Lake Michigan shore.


“You can see a front-end loader on your right, it’s just doing a little cleanup work right now…”


Rautiola’s red Ford pick-up bounces over a rough track past a network of conveyor belts, pipelines, and silos, and 100-foot-high pile of sand. The 350-acre site is called Wexford Sand.


(Sound of heavy machinery)


Previous owners dug into the gently rolling hills to remove the sand, then left the land exposed, but Rautiola says his company has a different approach.


“We have a vision of the future that we can run a responsible operation and make a reasonable profit and provide a good product to society, but we can do so in a way that we can restore land to better than original. And we really believe that. I know that sounds like some marketing statement but we really believe that we can do a better job with this piece of land than versus the way we accepted it in the beginning.”


But to get at the sand operators still have to clear about five acres of woods a year. They used to put back the topsoil, grade the land, plant some grass and call it good. Now Rautiola says they’re getting more creative.


“We’re getting a lot more sophisticated in how we define restoration. Restoration today means getting creative with our topography trying to create water features, trying to get diverse with plant species, diverse with insect life.”


The restoration includes a series of ponds kept aerated to support fish and amphibians year around.
There’s an irrigated nursery where three thousand seedlings are under cultivation to see which ones will thrive.


Rautiola used to count success by watching deer and wild turkey return, but now he sees songbirds and shorebirds as indicators of restoration that’s working. That’s because birds require diverse habitat.


“This mature forest might be great for a scarlet tanager, but an indigo bunting would rather be over in the blackberry bushes. Over to the north we had over a hundred bank swallows just a month ago. We’re trying to attract other threatened species like osprey.”


Rautiola brought in experts to show him how to get more diversity on the site. One of them is Kay Charter. She started Saving Birds Through Habitat. The group runs a small wildlife education center in northern Michigan.


Charter says native species of grasses, plants, and trees produce the most diversity. They attract a variety of insects preferred by birds and other small critters.


“You’re going to have Yellow Warblers in here, you’ll have Common Yellowthroats in here, you’ll have Willow Flycatchers in here, you’ll have all kinds of things in there… Catbirds.”


Charter has documented forty species of songbirds and shorebirds nesting at Wexford Sand. She says that’s pretty amazing for an industrial site, but she insists the effort is necessary to lessen the impact on wildlife. She notes some worldwide populations of songbirds have declined fifty percent in the last forty years.


“I think it’s important for the future of our planet. We all have to be involved in conservation or we’re in greater trouble than we’re in today because mining does take something out of the land. But if you can put it back in a way that is used by many species then you don’t leave the footprint that you might otherwise have left.”


Fairmount Minerals has given Craig Rautiola free reign to restore the site at Wexford Sand, and he’s going all out with the effort because he believes it’s the right thing to do.
Kay Charter of Saving Birds Through Habitat hopes the company’s commitment catches on with the whole industry.


“I think it can give all of us hope that business and corporations and companies in this country aren’t all filled with greedy people at the top.”


On a ridge perched eighty feet above the floor of the sand mine is a stand of one-hundred-year-old sugar maples. Underneath the trees is a million dollars worth of sand in today’s market. And they say it’ll stay there. What they call “Maple Island” will be the centerpiece of their restoration.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

Related Links

More Warming Warnings for Wildlife

A new report on global warming forecasts more uncertainty
for North American wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

A new report on global warming forecasts more uncertainty for North American wildlife. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


The Wildlife Society is a group of biologists, habitat managers and educators. The society has
looked over hundreds of peer-reviewed studies from the last few years on global warming and
wildlife. The report says the one degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperatures over
the past century is already having some effect on species like songbirds.


The Wildlife Society also says a predicted larger increase in global warming will generally push
wildlife and habitats northward. Douglas Inkley of the National Wildlife Federation says this
northward push means migration corridors will need to be expanded.


“Generally on a North-South axis, would be the best direction to put those in, so that the wildlife
are able to move as the climate changes.”


The report also urges more measures to reduce emissions of pollutants that contribute to global
warming. The Wildlife Society will take up formal policy recommendations at its meeting in
March.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Forests for Lumber or Wildlife?

  • Loggers and environmentalists fight continually over the use of national forests. Managers at many national forests around the country are developing new long-range plans. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of
national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range
planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service
designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several
forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service
says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage
more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the
new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still
can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:


(sound of car door closing, footsteps in woods)


Jerry Birchem is a logger. He’s visiting one of his harvest sites on
land owned by St. Louis County, in northeastern Minnesota. The highest
quality wood will be turned into wooden dowels… other logs will go to a
lumber mill… the poorest quality will be turned into paper.


Birchem tries to get the highest possible value from each tree. He says in the last ten
years, the price of trees has tripled.


“We have to pay more for timber and the mills want to pay less, and we’re caught in the
middle of trying to survive in this business climate.”


Birchem likes buying timber from the county, like at this logging site. He hardly ever
cuts trees from the national forest anymore. He’d like to, but the Forest Service doesn’t
make much of its land available for logging. The agency says it doesn’t have enough staff
to do the environmental studies required before trees can be cut on federal land.


Jerry Birchem says loggers need the Forest Service to change that.


“You know there needs to be processes set in place so you know, it doesn’t take
so long to set up these timber sales. I mean, they’ve got to go through so
many analyses and so many appeals processes.”


Birchem says it should be harder for environmental groups to get in the way of timber
sales. But not everybody agrees with Birchem.


Clyde Hanson lives in Grand Marais, on the edge of Lake Superior. He’s an active
member of the Sierra Club.


He says it’s true loggers are taking less timber off federal lands in recent
years. But he says the Forest Service still isn’t protecting the truly special
places that deserve to be saved.


He says a place like Hog Creek should be designated a wilderness area, where no trees
can be cut.


(sound of creek, birds)


“Very unique mixture, we must be right at the transition between two types of forest.”


Red pine thrive here, along with jackpine and tamarack. It’s rough and swampy country,
far from roads. So far, loggers have left these trees alone.


But with the value of trees skyrocketing, Hanson says the place will be logged eventually.


Forest Service planners made note of the fact that the Hog Creek area is relatively
untouched by humans. They could have protected it, but they decided not to.


“And we think that’s a mistake, because this is our last chance to protect wilderness and
provide more wilderness for future generations. If we don’t do it now, eventually there’ll
be enough roads or enough logging going on in these places that by the next forest plan
it’ll be too late.”


But the Forest Service says it is moving to create more diversity in the
woods. It wants a forest more like what nature would produce if left
to her own devices.


The agency says it will reduce the amount of aspen in the forest. Aspen has been
encouraged, because it grows fast. When it’s cut, it grows back quickly, so loggers and
paper companies can make more money.


The trouble is, an aspen forest only offers habitat for some kinds of animals,
such as deer and grouse. Other animals, especially songbirds, need older trees to
live in.


So the Forest Service wants to create more variety in the woods, with more old trees than
there are now. But how to get the forest from here to there, is the problem.
Duane Lula is one of the Forest Service planners. He says fires and windstorms are nature’s way of producing
diverse forests. They sweep the woods periodically, killing big stands of older trees, and
preparing the soil for pines and other conifers. Jackpines, for instance, used to be more
common in the northwoods. Lula says the only practical way for man to mimic nature is
by cutting trees down.


“We can’t have those fires anymore just because people live here, there are private
homes here. There’s no way that we could replicate those fires. Timber management is one way of regenerating those jackpine stands in
lieu of having major fires.”


But Lula says the main purpose of timber cutting in the new plan is to move the forest
toward the diversity the agency wants, not to produce wood. And he says that shows the
Forest Service is looking at the woods in a new way.


“The previous plan tended to be very focused on how many acres you were going to
clearcut, how much timber you were going to produce, how much wildlife habitat you
were going to produce, and this one is trying to say, if we have this kind of desired
condition on the ground that we’re shooting for, then these other things will come from
that.”


As it does in the planning process in other national forests around the Great Lakes, the
Forest Service will adjust the plan after hearing from the public. Loggers,
environmentalists, and everyone else will have a chance to have their say. A final version
will be submitted to the Regional Forester in Milwaukee early next year. It could then
face a challenge in court.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Migrations

Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But knowing that offers only limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren:

Transcript

Changes to our world – and to our environment – have been a matter of course throughout history. But that knowledge only offers limited comfort to Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Mike VanBuren.


Many years ago, when I was a rookie newspaperman working in northern Michigan, I often drove from my home in Mancelona to Whitefish Point on Lake Superior.

Whitefish Point was a glorious place to visit – particularly during the spring and fall, when raptors, waterfowl and songbirds were migrating through the Great Lakes region. Hundreds of thousands of birds funnel through the Point each year, thanks to land and water features that create a natural flight corridor.

I enjoyed going there to walk the beaches, watch the birds and see the giant freighters pass by on their way to and from the busy locks at Sault Ste. Marie.

Whitefish Point was a peaceful place in those days. And I was often alone, as I stood on the shore with my face against the invigorating Superior winds.

But something unsettling has occurred in the two decades since I made those pilgrimages. The Point has been discovered by large flocks of tourists. And the narrow road that reaches north from Paradise is sometimes clogged with cars, SUV’s and tour buses.

I returned to the Point recently, hoping to find the same peace and serenity I’d enjoyed there as a young man. I was pleased to discover that the old lighthouse – first lit in 1849 – had been carefully restored, along with a handful of whitewashed outbuildings.

That would have been enough for me.

But developers apparently thought the Point needed something more to attract visitors. They built a new facility to house the Great Lakes Shipwreck Museum, along with a large gift shop – complete with meeting space and flush toilets. Wooden walkways had also been laid across the sandy dunes to allow greater access to the surrounding forest and beach.

I didn’t see many birds that day, although the folks at the tiny Whitefish Point Observatory could probably have told me where they were. I did see a lot of people, though.

“All things must change to something new – to something strange,” said Longfellow.

You’d think I’d be used to it by now – that I’d no longer be surprised by change. But I am. It always leaves me feeling a bit disoriented.

In my more lucid moments, I know the Great Lakes region will continue to evolve. And I know I’m as much a part of this process as real estate developers and gift shop proprietors.

Some change is even good – although the definition of “good” varies from person to person. Life itself is an uncertain migration – with constant shifts in our needs, attitudes and relationships to the outdoors.

I think it has always been that way.

As I retreated that day from the Point and drove south toward the Mackinaw Bridge, I thought about the Native Americans who lived beside Lake Superior long ago. Like me, they probably watched earlier generations of hawks, eagles and owls cross Whitefish Bay – and marveled at their beauty and grace.

I can imagine their ghosts, skirting the shores of the bay in birch bark canoes on cool moonlit nights – searching for some familiar landmark that will lead them home.

Perhaps one day mine will do the same.

***Mike VanBuren is an environmental writer who lives near Richland, Michigan. ***

Bird Decline Tied to Exotics

According to the National Audobon Society, some species of
songbirds have experienced a 30 percent decline in their population
over
the past decade. Now, there’s evidence that non-native plant species
may
be contributing to the problem. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

According to the National Audubon Society, some species of songbirds have experienced

a thirty percent decline in their population over the past decade. Now, there’s

evidence that non-native plant species might be contributing to the problem. The Great

Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


American robins and wood thrushes like to build their nests in shrubs. Typically, they

choose tall bushes with long thorns that keep predators away. But as those plants are

replaced by non-native species, the birds are forced to move into the new shrubs. And

that makes them vulnerable to predators.


Christopher Whalen is an avian ecologist with the Illinois Natural History Survey. His

study found birds that nest in exotic shrubs were twenty percent more likely to lose

their eggs to a predator.


Because of the different way these plants grow, the exotic shrubs provide a

suitable-looking confluence of branches at a lower height above the ground. So, nest

height drops a meter and a half to two meters on average.”


That makes it easier for raccoons to invade. Whalen’s study focused on Illinois, but

he says birds are doing this throughout the Northeast and Midwest.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.