Tag: territory

New Homes for Chimney Swifts

  • The almost-finished tower awaits its new residents on the grounds of the Orono School District's nature center next to Lake Claussen. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)

There’s one American bird that has an unusual habitat problem. Chimney Swifts have adapted in the past as humans encroached on their territory. But now changes in human behavior are presenting new problems for the birds. And some people are trying to help them adapt again. Stephanie Hemphill reports.

Transcript

There’s one American bird that has an unusual habitat problem. Chimney Swifts have adapted in the past as humans encroached on their territory. But now changes in human behavior are presenting new problems for the birds. And some people are trying to help them adapt again. Stephanie Hemphill reports.

In his dad’s window-and-door warehouse in the Minneapolis suburbs, Derek Meyer is supervising the boys in his scout troop as they build a wooden tower for Chimney Swifts.

They’re using rough plywood to build a narrow box twelve feet high with an opening about a foot square.

Derek is doing this project to earn the rank of Eagle Scout. In the process, he’s learned a few things about the lives of Chimney Swifts.

“They originally lived in hollow trees but when the settlers from Europe came over they started destroying the trees, so they decided to live in the chimneys, and then people started putting wire over their chimneys, so over the last 40 years they’ve lost half of their population.”

Not just wire, but rain caps and other devices to keep moisture and critters out of chimneys.

The new home these boys are building for Chimney Swifts is destined for the nature center next to a nearby school. The school district was planning to tear down an old brick chimney as part of a remodeling project. Rebecca Field found out about that, and she tried to stop it.

“I said, wait a minute, I’m sure there are Chimney Swifts in there and they’re really good birds because they eat about 2,000 insects a day, each of those birds. And their favorite insect is the mosquito.'”

Field is on the board of Audubon Minnesota, and she’d been watching the swifts hanging around the chimney in the evenings. Individually they look like fat cigars with wings, but when they get ready to swoop down into the chimney for the night, there are so many of them, they look like a funnel cloud.

“How they communicate I have no idea, how they put the brakes on when they dive into that chimney so quickly, it’s a mystery but it’s a fun thing to watch.”

In the end the school district decided to leave the chimney up.

So now, a few weeks later, and just in time for the Chimney Swifts to fly back up from the Amazon, the tower is standing on a concrete pad at the school’s nature center.

School naturalist Marleane Callaghan has already brought all her classes, grades three-through-five, to check it out.

“We’ve talked about the bird, what it looks like, the dimension of it, I’ve invited them to come back with their parents to watch in the school parking lot in the evening up at the high school where they’ve left the chimney, and then to walk on down, to be able to identify them.”

This project is part of an effort by Audubon groups all over the country to raise awareness of Chimney Swifts and their need for homes.

In Minnesota, project director Ron Windingstad wants to convince homeowners to make existing chimneys more welcoming. He says people can take the caps off their chimneys during the summer, or just raise them high enough so the birds can fly in from the sides.

Soon these school kids will be able to see the amazing acrobatics of the Chimney Swifts. Windingstad says they hardly ever stop flying, from morning til night. They’ll even sip water and take a bath in a nearby pond, without stopping.

“They’ll scoop down, lower their bill, and fly across it and drink in the water. They’ll use some of these shrubs around here to break off little twigs about the size of a wooden matchstick or toothpick actually, and use that to build their nests, and they do that while flying as well. They are marvelous creatures.”

For The Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Man vs. Beast

  • Where is it?! Oh! There it is - up in the corner - eeek! (Photo by Tom Wojnowski)

More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:

Transcript

More and more people are moving into areas that are natural habitats for animals. And a lot of people are finding that the animals don’t want to move out of the neighborhood. Kyle Norris reports that this can make for some interesting interactions:


Get this: woodpeckers want to live inside Tom Wojnowski’s house.


“There’s a hole. And when you’re in house here’s what you hear, you hear this: (knocks) and you know you’re being attacked!”


Wojnowski is not so keen on sharing his house with the woodpeckers. He managed to scare that one away, but then another woodpecker made a pretty good-sized hole on the other side of the house.


Wojnowski put up one of those menacing plastic owls, you know, to scare the woodpecker away – and he thinks it’s working. He’ll probably even buy another plastic owl. You know, with those cute eyes, all wide.


Wojnowski lives in a suburb, but it’s sort of out in the country. There are dirt roads, and lots of trees. And lots of wildlife in the area.


Wojnowski started having problems with animals pretty much the day they moved into the house. Actually, he can list off his problems to the ABCs.


“Well let’s start with A. Ants haven’t been a big problem. There’s been a few but none in the house and they’re out there so I leave them alone. B. You have bees and bats.”

Ok, this could go on for a while… so I’m going to jump in here.

Bats were living in the attic. Carpenter bees chewed holes in the siding. So, for “D” you’ve got deer. The deer ate pretty much all the landscaped plants. Ok so now, let’s jump to “F.”


There was this fox. It had been living in Wojnowski’s drainage ditch. And it would bury its kill in the lawn—things like dead, smelly skunks. Yeah.

So, one day Wojnowski was getting his mail and the fox came strolling out of woods. And they locked eyes.


Wojnowski noticed the fox was small and red… and beautiful.

But he was tired of dealing with it.


“So I took this rock and I put it in front of the drainage ditch hole. And he watched me do that and it was almost like ‘what are you doing to me here?’ So then he went next door and went to their drainage ditch.”

Wojnowski is not the only guy who’s battling it out with the wildlife.


As people keep moving into areas near wildlife, there are problems. I mean at a certain point it starts to feel like…(Boxing announcer: in this corner, with acres of ravaged lawns and gardens to their credit, we have the wildlife. (applause and boos) And in this corner, with a hoe, live traps, and a BB gun, we have the human homeowners…” (applause and boos and the ‘ding’ of the boxing bell)


But experts say it does not actually have to be ‘us’ versus ‘them’.

Jennifer Kleitch is a wildlife technician with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources.


She says people need to realize that they’re part of the problem.


Dog food outside is a free meal for coyotes. People who mow their lawns all the way to the edge of their pond create paradise for geese: short grass near water.


And then there’s this kind of thing which can happen with raccoons:


“If we leave out our garbage and they get into it, we get mad and they’re being a nuisance. But we are in essence responsible for them being there and being drawn to it.”


She says people tend look at it as if animals are the problem. But… the people moved into the animals’ neighborhood.


Stephen Vantassel says we’re conflicted about wildlife. He’s a wildlife damage educator with the University of Nebraska Lincoln Extension office.


“We tend to have the Disney effect with wildlife. We have these rather pastoral images of a person walking through a deep forest and seeing the deer in the distance. And then that attitude can change dramatically when they see that same deer ravaging a plant they paid $500 for to have put in their backyard.”


He says when people start thinking of wildlife as “evil” (As in, “that thing that tore up my flower bed is ‘evil’”) well, that can be bad.


The animals are not the enemy… they’re part of the environment… the same environment that people want to live in.


So… Tom Wojnowski? You know, the ABC guy?


Well, he says his perspective has changed a little over time. He still thinks if animals are destroying his property… yeah, well then they’ve got to go. But he’s starting to realize there are things he can do to discourage wildlife from damaging his property… without waging war.


He’s kind of getting into it actually. He’s started reading up on different animals. He says he likes and respects animals… even the mole tearing up his lawn. He thought it was a whole colony. Turned out… it was just one mole. But one heck of a hard-working mole.

Experts say there are plenty of cheap, simple things you can do just to prevent problems.

Like modify bird feeders to guard against squirrels. Chimney caps discourage uninvited guests from dropping in. And people can fill in the cracks and crevices around their home to stop things like bees and mice from sneaking in.

But the experts say that the best thing you can do is cool your jets. Stop viewing the animal as the problem. And realize that the animal is just trying to do its thing.

As for the wildlife around Tom Wojnowski’s place, well, they’re stalled at the letter W. Which is the first letter in his last name. The animals are still trying to learn to live with him.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

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Utilities and Wildlife

  • Land along transmission corridors, like this one, are heavily managed by power companies. (Image courtesy of Oak Ridge National Laboratory)

A new report says power, water, and sewage utilities can play a significant role in
restoring wildlife habitat. That’s because they own or control thousands of acres of land
across the country. Mark Brush has more:

Transcript

A new report says power, water, and sewage utilities can play a significant role in
restoring wildlife habitat. That’s because they own or control thousands of acres of land
across the country. Mark Brush has more:


A new report from the Environmental Law Institute says utilities can improve habitat in
many ways – including how they maintain ‘rights of way’: places where power, sewer and
water lines cut through forests and grasslands. Often companies will mow wide swaths
or use pesticides to control plants in those areas.


Jim McElfish is with the Environmental Law Institute. He says every state has a
voluntary wildlife conservation plan, and utilities can use these plans when making lots
of decisions:


“Imagine if you’re looking to do a siting of a new generating plant. Suddenly you have, in
every state and territory, a resource that tell you where the opportunities are for resource
conservation and where you’re likely to run into problems.”


McElfish says because of the vast amounts of land utilities control, it’s important for
them to take an active role in protecting wildlife.


For the Environment Report, I’m Mark Brush.

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Conflicts Between People and Wildlife

  • People sometimes move to the outer suburbs to be a little closer to nature. But when nature turns out to be a squirrel storing nuts in your attic or a raccoon looking for a free meal in your garbage can, there's conflict. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Throughout the Midwest, it’s becoming more and more common
to see wild animals living in the city and the suburbs. The number of coyotes, deer and Canada geese is growing. And suburbs keep sprawling… but the animals there stay put, and adapt to the new surroundings. That can cause conflicts between the animals… and people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl reports:

Transcript

Throughout the Midwest, it’s becoming more and more common
to see wild animals living in the city and the suburbs. The number of
coyotes, deer and Canada geese is growing. And suburbs keep sprawling…
but the animals there stay put, and adapt to the new surroundings. That
can cause conflicts between the animals… and people. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Ann-Elise Henzl reports:


It can get busy at wildlife rehabilitation centers. At this center, five thousand animals are treated and released each year. There’s a big variety, ranging from raccoons to sandhill cranes.


(Sound of birds chirping)


In spring and early summer, it’s very crowded in the nursery.


“We’ve got a young grackle in here, and he’s really on about the one-hour feeding stage learning the transition between us feeding him and feeding himself…”


Scott Diehl is the manager of the wildlife rehabilitation center at the Wisconsin humane society in Milwaukee. Dozens of young animals are being nursed back to health here in incubators and cages.


“Here’s little teenage gray squirrels in here playing around and goofing off and their play activity actually teaches them how to – it helps build their muscles, and teaches them how to climb…”


Many of the babies are here because their parents were run over by cars. That’s what happened to a female mallard who’s being examined by a wildlife rehabilitator, in the “triage” room.


“He’s just outstretching the wings, he’s feeling over the bones to see if he feels fractures and I can see from here that the left wing that he is examining looks like it has fractured metacarpals, so that’s the outer wing, kind of analogous to our fingers, we’ve got actually a little blood showing there. And so Mike is just going to flush that wound out with a little saline now he’s going to examine things, and quite frankly it doesn’t look like she’s using her legs well either.”


It turns out the duck has numerous broken bones and other serious health problems, so she’s euthanized. Mallards are often hit by cars in cities. That’s because they nest in grassy areas, then walk their babies to the water. That can mean crossing a number of streets.


Ricky Lein is the urban wildlife specialist for the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.
He says people and animals are always getting into some kind of conflict in urban areas.


“Recently I had a person come in who owned twenty acres in a suburban area and talked about how they enjoyed the coyotes as long as they stayed on their territory but the coyote had made the decision to come into their backyard and eat a family cat, and I tried in a very polite way to point out that was the coyote’s territory.”


Lein says urban sprawl also causes problems by creating places that attract some wild animals
like white-tailed deer. They like areas where the woods meet wide-open lawns. That describes many suburban neighborhoods.


As a result, there are now more deer across the Midwest then ever before,
and the population of Canada geese is exploding in the same area. Lein says the geese have found their version of “heaven.”


“A lot of urban parks, condo complexes, whatnot, where you have a pond or storm water run-off pond and they keep five to ten acres of grass mowed around it, and they’ve eliminated hunting… that is heaven to a Canada goose.”


But some communities are considering killing urban geese in order to reduce the population.
Other cities have hired sharpshooters to kill urban deer. So the Humane Society of the United States has created a program called “Wild Neighbors.” Maggie Brasted is the organization’s director for urban wildlife conflicts.


“One of our goals is to help people find solutions so that they can coexist with these wild neighbors, with the wildlife around them, ’cause you know sometimes there are real problems. There are real concerns. It’s not that every time someone is upset about wild animals around them that they should just be told, “Oh just live with it,” there are real issues so we want to be able to offer them real practical solutions other than killing the animals.”


Brasted says there’s a complex relationship between humans and wild animals in urban areas.


“It’s not real simple to just say that you know they were here first or they shouldn’t be here. Or why are they around people? They’re adapting to what we do, they’re adapting to the changes we make. They’re taking advantage of whatever habitat niche that they find.”


Brasted says the wild animals that live in the city and suburbs are there to stay. So people will either have to find ways to live with them or to control their population.


For the GLRC, I’m Ann-Elise Henzl.

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Feral Pigs Run for the Border

  • Feral pigs have become a nuisance in Wisconsin, and DNR officials fear that if their numbers do not decrease, they will do a significant amount of damage. (Photo courtesy of the Wisconsin DNR)

Ag officials are tracking a big pig problem across Wisconsin. Since 1999, growing numbers of feral swine have appeared across the state. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports, officials now fear the spread of the wild pigs:

Transcript

Ag officials are tracking a big pig problem across Wisconsin. Since 1999, growing numbers of feral swine have appeared across the state. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports, officials now fear the spread of the wild pigs:


The woolly porkers have appeared in 23 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties. They’re damaging crops, digging out ground-nesting birds, and killing small deer. They may also cary pseudorabies and swine brucellosis, threatening domestic pigs.


Wayne Edgerton is agricultural policy director of Minnesota’s DNR. He says the problem could easily spread into his territory.


“They can certainly walk across the ice, so this time of the year they can come across to Minnesota. And I’ve heard they’re actually good swimmers. So even in summertime, they could get their way over to northern Minnesota.”


Some people have speculated that Minnesota’s intense winters would kill off any feral swine crossing the border. But Tim DeVeau, a veterinary medical officer of the USDA, says that’s unlikely.


“As long as they’ve got food, and they’re gonna put fat on, they’ll be well-insulated.”


DeVeau adds that in order to keep wild pigs’ numbers under control, at least 75% of the population has to be destroyed every year. He says that’s not happening.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brian Bull.

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Birders’ Passion Helps Scientists

  • The costs of hiring biologists to do a bird count across the U.S. would be astronomical. (photo by Deo Koe)

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:

Transcript

Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:


(sound of footsteps)


Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”


Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.


She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.


Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.


She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.


“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”


Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day. But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.


Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.


“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”


Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.


There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.


The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.


“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”


(sound of quiet footsteps)


Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now…”


Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree. We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.


“It’s not often that you see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”


Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.


“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”


Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.


Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.


That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.


“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks
but we just think it’s important.”


(sound of Georgina Doe walking)


Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist. But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.


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

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Roadblocks to Closing Toxic Waste Loophole

  • Trash and toxic waste cross the U.S.-Canada border every day, and untreated toxic waste often ends up at the Clean Harbors facility. Some are trying to restrict this practice and purge the idea that waste is a commodity.

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps
toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:

Transcript

There’s only one place in North America that still dumps toxic waste straight into the ground without any kind of pre-treatment. A legislator from Ontario, Canada wants this landfill to clean up its act. But trade in toxic waste is a big business. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary Ann Colihan follows some trucks to learn more:


(Sound of trucks)


6,000 trucks cross the Blue Water Bridge every day between Canada and the United States. Just under the bridge, Lake Huron funnels into the skinny St. Clair River on its way to south to Lake Erie. The Blue Water Bridge connects Port Huron, Michigan with Sarnia, Ontario. This is the second busiest truck crossing between the United States and Canada. With post 9/11 security, the border can get backed up for miles in both directions. A lot of these trucks are carrying garbage back and forth across the border. Canadian trash and toxic waste is going to the U.S. and American toxic waste is going to Canada.


During her first month in office, Ontario Member of Parliament for Sarnia-Lambton, Caroline Di Cocco, found out just how much toxic waste was coming into her district.


“In 1999 that year, it was over 450,000 tons. To put it in perspective, the Love Canal was 12,000 tons.”


Di Cocco went on a five year crusade to change the Ontario laws that govern the trade in toxic waste. She adopted the U.N. resolution known as the Basel Agreement, as her model.


“The notion from that Basel Agreement is that everybody should look after their own waste and it is not a commodity.”


Di Cocco is not alone in her fight to slow or stop the flow of garbage and toxic waste from crossing the border. Mike Bradley is the mayor of Sarnia, Ontario. He can see the backup on the Blue Water Bridge every day from his home.


“One of the ironies on this is that while Michigan is very much upset, and rightly so, with the importation of Toronto trash, there are tens of thousands of tons of untreated toxic waste coming in from Michigan crossing the Blue Water Bridge into the Clean Harbors site.”


The Clean Harbors facility is the only place in North America that does not pre-treat hazardous waste before it dumps it into its landfill. Frank Hickling is Director of Lambton County Operations for Clean Harbors. He says imports from nearby states in the U.S. accounts for about forty percent of its volume.


“It’s from the Great Lakes area. We do reach down and take waste that our facility is best able to handle. We’re right on the border.”


Rarely do lawmakers on both sides of the border agree on an environmental issue. But pre-treatment of hazardous waste is the law in all fifty states, Mexico and every other Canadian province and territory except Ontario. Pre-treatment reduces the amount of toxic waste or transforms it into a less hazardous substance. But Hickling says disposing hazardous waste in Clean Harbors is a better economic bet.


“Obviously, if you don’t have to pre-treat it, it is cheaper there’s no doubt about that. But what isn’t obvious is the security of the site. Pre-treating waste doesn’t help immobilize the material forever.”


Clean Harbors’ company officials say their landfill won’t leak for 10,000 years. They say that the U.S. pre-treats hazardous waste because they expect their landfills to leak in hundreds of years or less. Hickling says the blue clay of Lambton County that lines Clean Harbors landfill gives them a competitive edge as a toxic dump.


“The facility is in a 140-foot clay plain and we go down about 60 feet. So there’s 80 feet below.”


But Clean Harbors has had big environmental problems. When volume was at its peak in 1999 the Clean Harbors landfill leaked methane gas and contaminated water. Remedial pumping of the landfill is ongoing.


Caroline Di Cocco found other ways to deal with toxic waste rather than simply dumping it in her district.


“First of all, there has to be a reduction of the amount of generation of this hazardous material. The more expensive you make it for industry to dispose of it, the more they are going to find creative ways to reduce it. Then there are what they call on-site treatments and closed-loop systems. You see technology is there but it’s expensive and again we go to the cost of doing business. And so a lot of the hazardous waste can be treated on site in a very safe way. And then what can’t be, well then you have to have facilities to dispose of it. But I believe that the days of the mega dumps have to end.”


Meanwhile, Clean Harbors looks at what the new Ontario regulations for pre-treatment will cost them.


“Certainly when you’re making the investment in pre-treatment and you’re adding all that cost for no additional environmental benefit we’re going to have to be getting larger volumes to ensure its profitability.”


Until we see a reduction in the loads of toxic waste that need to be dumped in Clean Harbors, it’s likely the trucks will roll on down the highway.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mary Ann Colihan.

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Bald Eagle Soars to Recovery

  • As efforts to restore bald eagle populations succeed (this eagle was rehabilitated and released in Colorado) researchers are finding that newer populations of bald eagles are nesting closer to humans. Photo courtesy of the USFWS.

A Minnesota research project might help get the bald eagle off the endangered species list. Any state with an eagle population needs a plan to monitor and protect the birds before they can be taken off the list. Learning where eagles nest might help protect the habitat they need to flourish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Gunderson reports:

Transcript

A Minnesota research project might help get the bald eagle off the
endangered species list. Any state with an eagle population needs a plan to
monitor and protect the birds before they can be taken off the list. Learning
where eagles nest might help protect the habitat they need to flourish.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Gunderson reports:


Jim Grier knows eagles. For 44 years he’s watched the birds and climbed
into their nests. The North Dakota State University Zoology Professor is leading the study of Minnesota eagle habitat.


(plane engine starting)


The research starts in the spring. Grier spends hours flying in a four seat
Cessna with a Minnesota Department of Natural Resources pilot, looking for
eagle nests.


“We’re gonna come real close to this one Dan, coming right around on the
right side, we’ll lift the wing. Oh man, that’s an old nest too.”


An eagle sits in tree nearby. This location is marked on a map as an active
nesting site. There are more than 700 bald eagle pairs in Minnesota.
After the nests are located and mapped, the hard work starts on the ground.


Jeremy Guinn is a graduate student. He spends weeks driving, hiking, and
canoeing to eagle nests. He typically gets to two or three a day.
As he approaches a nest Guinn peers through binoculars looking for signs of
life.


“There’s at least two up there. The other one’s hunkered down.”


A young eagle looks down from a nest high atop a cottonwood tree in a
farmer’s pasture. The adult eagles are likely fishing in a nearby lake.
Guinn conducts a detailed study of the area around the nest.


“What kind of trees they use, what kind of forest they choose to place their
nest in. How close to the water they are. And also to determine the amount
of human activity that they choose to nest around.”


Eagles are more often choosing humans for neighbors. Because eagle
populations are growing so quickly, traditional forest nesting areas are
becoming crowded. Each pair of eagles needs their own territory, so young
pairs are often forced to look for less traditional nesting sites.


“I’ve seen eagles on powerlines, in the back yard of a cabin, some even
overlooking the cabin where the nest is hanging over the roof of a cabin. And also
more wild or traditional sites as you usually think of eagle nests.”


It appears bald eagles are quite adaptable. They need a tall tree to build a
nest, and water nearby where they can catch fish. But one of the key questions
is how well they tolerate human neighbors.


Jim Grier is heading up the study. The North Dakota State University Eagle researcher says each new generation of eagles seems a bit more tolerant.


“A lot of the eagle nests now that are in closer contact with human activity,
the young birds that grow up in those nests, looking down and seeing all
the human presence around them, as long as people aren’t shooting at them or
bothering them, as long as everybody is minding their own business the
eagles basically accept humans are part of the natural environment.”


The study Jim Grier is doing should provide a better understanding of how to
make sure eagle nesting sites are protected. States must meet two challenges before the bald eagle is taken off the endangered list. There must be a plan to monitor eagle populations in the future and eagle nesting habitat must be protected.


But monitoring eagles is labor intensive and expensive.


Eagle researchers say there needs to be a more efficient way of
checking on the birds. Some say enlisting volunteers to monitor nests may be
one answer. But there are questions about the scientific validity of that
method.


Researcher Jim Grier says it might be two or three years before everyone can
agree on a plan to protect eagles in the future.


Minnesota Department of Natural Resources nongame specialist Joan Galli
says she’s not predicting when the bald eagle will come off the endangered
species list.


“This is a species where the recovery is good and the news is good and
things are going well and you would think that it would be easy to delist. And that
has certainly not been the case, it’s been quite a challenge.”


The study of bald eagle habitat in Minnesota should be completed later this
year. The Department of Natural Resources and the Federal Fish and Wildlife
Service will use the results to develop a more comprehensive plan for
managing the bald eagle across the nation.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Gunderson.

Wolf Takes Long Trip South

  • Canis lupus: Gray Wolf – Photo courtesy of Michigan Department of Natural Resources © 2001.

The gray wolf is making a comeback in the upper Midwest, and for some young wolves the area may be getting a little too crowded. It’s not unusual for young wolves to travel long distances to stake out a territory of their own, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… one wolf’s trip has surprised everyone:

Transcript

The gray wolf is making a comeback in the upper Midwest. And for some young wolves the area may be getting a little too crowded. It’s not unusual for young wolves to travel long distances to stake out a territory of their own, but as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports… one wolf’s trip has surprised everyone:


The wolf was first seen two and half years ago as a young pup in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. At that time he was caught in a trap, and wildlife officials tagged him as “Wolf No. 18.” They fitted him with a radio collar and followed his movements for nine months before they lost track of him.


About a year and a half… and over 450 miles later, the wolf’s luck came to an end. A bow hunter from central Missouri saw the wolf snooping around his sheep pen. The hunter shot and killed the wolf – apparently mistaking it for a coyote. He realized his mistake when he noticed the radio collar.


Typically, young wolves travel west or northwest from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, so when Michigan Wildlife Division Supervisor Jim Hammill heard the news that one of their wolves had turned up in Missouri… he could only think of one explanation:


“My first reaction was that somebody possibly killed the wolf in Michigan and transported it to Missouri and they found the carcass of the animal down there… but that was not what happened… and you know this animal was seen alive in Missouri before it was killed, so you know, it’s obvious that this was a natural movement and, uh, really sort of a stunning thing to have happened.”


Stunning because Hammill has never heard of a wolf traveling this far south before. They’ve seen wolves travel as far west… and northwest, but typically those wolves have an easier trip. Wolf Number 18 would have had to overcome huge obstacles, such as a number of major highways, a number of rivers including the Mississippi, and large open spaces like farms.


Hammill says this wolf’s trip will likely shed some light on the gray wolf’s behavior. And that may be especially helpful to biologists in the northeast – a region that hasn’t heard the howl of a wolf for some time:


“A lot of folks up there feel that there’s no way that wolves could re-populate the area without a trap and translocation program. But, you know, I wonder about that because of the kinds of movements that we’ve been seeing here in the Midwest.”


Wolf 18’s body has been shipped back to a Michigan Department of Natural Resources lab. There – they’ll try to piece together just what this wolf encountered on his historic trip south. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.