Author: Gretchen Millich

Corporate Campuses Go Green

  • While new factories take up a lot of land, some corporations, such as GM, are setting aside acres for wildlife on corporate campuses. (Photo by Dustin Dwyer)

About a quarter of all private property in the
U.S. is owned by corporations. In the past, many
companies have gone to great expense to maintain
their property with manicured landscaping and green
lawns. Now, as environmental issues are becoming an
important focus in the business world, more
corporations are turning their land into wildlife
habitats. As Gretchen Millich reports,
they are finding it’s good for the environment and
it’s good for business:

Transcript

About a quarter of all private property in the
US is owned by corporations. In the past, many
companies have gone to great expense to maintain
their property with manicured landscaping and green
lawns. Now, as environmental issues are becoming an
important focus in the business world, more
corporations are turning their land into wildlife
habitats. As Gretchen Millich reports,
they are finding it’s good for the environment and
it’s good for business:


Setting aside land for wildlife is becoming a big trend among
corporations in the US. For example, near its plant in Muscatine, Iowa,
the Monsanto Company set aside a 500-acre sand prairie. It’s home to
some rare species, including the Illinois mud turtle. Just outside of
New York City, Exxon Mobil is protecting 750 acres as a habitat for
birds like wild turkeys and wood ducks.


Bob Johnson is president of the Wildlife Habitat Council.
The council brings together businesses and environmental groups to
conserve and restore natural areas. His group has helped set up
hundreds of wildlife preserves at corporate facilities:


“Most of our members are not recognized as being very green and I think
that is really changing now because many companies are trying to find
ways of being a lot more conscientious about materials and energy. But
the real bottom line is habitat. Habitat is the greatest factor in the
control of the decline of species on the planet and I think companies
are realizing this is important for them to do.”


Johnson says there are lots of advantages to being green in the world of
business. Studies show that employees are happier and more productive
when they work for a business that shares their values. Also, it’s much
less expensive to maintain a wildlife habitat than to fertilize and mow
several acres of grass.


Bridget Burnell works at a new General Motors assembly plant near Lansing, Michigan.
Burnell is an environmental engineer. She oversees 75 acres on the factory grounds
that’s been set aside as wildlife habitat:


“What we’re walking up to right now is the first major wetland that you
come across. This is what all the employees can see as they are
driving along the main road east of the plant.”


It’s an unlikely spot for a wildlife refuge: on one side a sprawling
automobile factory, on the other, the intersection of two major
highways. It’s noisy, but still somehow serene.


Birds, turtles, muskrats, and frogs all live here undisturbed. A great
blue heron is flying over the wetland and in the distance, we see three
whitetail deer. Burnell says on nice days, teams of employees come here
to take care of the grounds and sometimes they work with community
groups:


“We’ve had about 20 events this year that we’ve had different community
organizations out here. Some of it’s directly related to educational
type things, like learning about the wetlands and the prairie
and different types of habitat. Others are specific to a particular
project, maybe wood duck boxes or song bird boxes, that type of thing.”


This factory is the only automotive plant to receive certification from
the US Green Building Council for Environmental Design and Construction.
GM saves about a million dollars a year in energy costs and more than 4
million gallons of water. And although there’s no direct cost savings on
a wildlife habitat, GM is finding that preserving natural areas can
improve the company’s image in the community, and also with its
customers and investors.


Bob Johnson of the Wildlife Habitat Council says these wildlife projects
are attractive to green investors, who choose stocks based on how a
company deals with the environment. He says some investors believe that
environmental responsibility is a reflection of how a business is
managed. And a lot of that information is available on the Internet:


“The individual on the street can do that today. They can evaluate this
kind of information and make judgments. So I think people are looking
for ways of distinguishing where they are placing their resources.”


Johnson says since corporations are the largest group of landholders,
they’re in a good position to slow down the fragmentation of wildlife
habitat. He says corporate leaders are discovering that with a little
effort, they can win friends and gain a competitive advantage.


For the Environment Report, this is Gretchen Millich.

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New Developments in Wolf Study

It’s been a challenging winter for moose and wolves on Isle Royale National Park. The moose population has declined to its lowest level since researchers began observing them 48 years ago. It’s the world’s longest running study of predator-prey relationships. With their food supply dwindling, the wolves have responded by attacking each other. The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

It’s been a challenging winter for moose and wolves on Isle Royale National Park. The moose
population has declined to its lowest level since researchers began observing them 48 years ago.
It’s the world’s longest running study of predator-prey relationships. With their food supply
dwindling, the wolves have responded by attacking each other. The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich
reports:


John Vucetich is a wildlife biologist at Michigan Tech University. He says the latest count on
Isle Royale found only 450 moose. That’s down from 11-hundred four years ago. Vucetich says
the food shortage has led one wolf pack to invade the territory of another. During a flyover in
January, he witnessed the killing of an alpha male by rival wolves.


“Just a circle of wolves, all of their noses focused on one spot, you can’t even see the victim wolf
at all, tails along the outside just wagging vigorously and that goes on for two minutes or so, and then
the wolves walk away and there’s nothing left but a bloody lifeless carcass in the snow.”


The situation won’t last long. Vucetich says that by next year, wolves will start to decline and
soon moose will make a comeback on Isle Royale.


For the GLRC, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Coaster Brook Trout an Endangered Species?

A group of private landowners recently asked for help from the federal government to stop what they say is a threat to a rare fish in the region. The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

A group of private landowners recently asked for help from the federal
government to stop what they say is a threat to a rare fish in the region.
The GLRC’s Gretchen Millich reports:


The Huron Mountain Club, along with the Sierra Club, claims a
proposed mine in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula would pollute the only
remaining spawning grounds of the Coaster Brook Trout. They’ve asked
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to declare the Coaster Brook Trout
endangered.


Peter Dykema is a spokesperson for the Huron Mountain Club. He says
the fish was once abundant, but now spawns in only one stream.


“150 years ago, it was one of the most celebrated game fish in America.
It is one of the most beautiful animals you’d ever see and we believe it
will be possible to restore that fish, if not to its original abundance to
considerably greater abundance than we now have.”


Kennecott Eagle Minerals Company wants to dig for nickel and copper
underneath the Coaster Brook Trout’s spawning grounds. Dykema says
an endangered listing would require the company to make sure their
mining activities don’t harm the fish.


For GLRC, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Blight Endangers Apple Orchards

Agriculture advisors are warning some apple growers to be on the lookout for a blight that can kill the trees in their orchard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

Agriculture advisors are warning some apple growers to be on the lookout for a blight
that can kill the trees in their orchard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Gretchen Millich reports:


A bacteria that can kill apple trees called fire blight – could get worse next year in
especially humid areas near the Great Lakes. Fire blight gets worse during wet
weather or hot and humid conditions.


Michigan State University horticulture expert Phil Schwallier says trees that show
signs of fire blight this year could spread the disease to surrounding trees next year.
He’s telling growers in western Michigan near Lake Michigan to start removing
infected trees now.


“Apples have 26 major pests that attack them. So they are under attack all the time.
Fire blight is the most dangerous one because it actually kills the tree. If a tree is
severely infected, we tell them to remove that tree, take the whole tree out.”


Apple growers in west Michigan are still recovering from a severe outbreak of fire
blight in 2000 that destroyed more than 500 acres of apple trees. Ohio, Indiana,
Illinois and Missouri apple growers also struggle with the disease, but experts there
say they’re not expecting any major outbreak next year.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Cougar Warning Posted at Great Lakes National Park

Officials at a Great Lakes national park have posted notices on the hiking trails warning visitors that cougars have been sighted in the park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

Officials at a Great Lakes national park have posted notices on the hiking trails warning visitors
that cougars have been sighted in the park. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich
reports:


Over the past year, more than a dozen cougar sightings were reported in or near Sleeping Bear
Dunes National Lakeshore. Senior Ranger Max Holden says after a cougar followed a volunteer
for 20 minutes, officials decided to post warnings.


“It says that cougars have been reported in this area and be cautious. Try not to run. It says do not
run, but I say try not to run. If you got small children, grab hold of them and pick
them up. If you got a dog with you, keep that on a leash. Try to keep cool and if approached,
wave your arms and shout and make yourself look big.”


Holden says it’s unlikely anyone would be attacked. In the past century, in all of North America,
there have been fewer than 100 attacks on humans by cougars.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Reviving Inner Cities and Slowing Sprawl


Many large and midsize cities in the Great Lakes region are fighting an uphill battle when it comes to revitalizing the city center and preventing unfettered development in the surrounding suburbs. There is one place, however, where a progressive mayor has turned a once deserted downtown into a lively place, full of urban amenities and street life. At the same time, he’s teamed up with nearby villages and townships to slow down the widening circle of unplanned development around the city. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Transcript

Many large and midsize cities in the Great Lakes region
are fighting an uphill battle when to comes to revitalizing the city
center and preventing unfettered development in the surrounding
suburbs. There is one place, however, where a progressive
mayor has turned a once deserted downtown into a lively place, full of urban amenities and street
life. At the same time, he’s teamed up with nearby villages and townships to slow down the
widening circle of unplanned development around the city. Gretchen Millich of the Great Lakes
Radio Consortium reports:


On the list of the most sprawling cities in the United
States, Grand Rapids, Michigan is right in the middle. Over the
last 10 years, the metropolitan area has seen a huge increase in
roads, subdivisions, shopping malls and industrial parks.


But Grand Rapids and neighboring villages and townships
started planning years ago to rescue the city from the problems
that accompany sprawl. And that planning is starting to pay off.


A key factor in Grand Rapids’ success has been the
mayor, John Logie. He’s retiring this year after 12 years in
office. Logie has lived in Grand Rapids for most of his life. He
recalls how the city looked when he returned after serving in the
Navy.


“When I came back to Grand Rapids in the late 60’s, I could have taken my bowling ball in any
downtown street at 5:18 PM and hurled it down the sidewalk as hard as I could, secure in the
knowledge I’d never break an ankle, because nobody was there.”


Logie realized then that his beloved city would not survive unless something was done to revitalize
the downtown and encourage people to live there. In the 1970’s, he helped
write a state law that allowed local governments to set up historic districts. Grand Rapids now has
five historic neighborhoods, including Heritage Hill, where Logie lives in a
Queen Anne style home.


“And also I had read Jane Jacobs book years ago, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities”
and she talks in there about the need to preserve what you’ve got. And
the need to find adaptive re-use when a buggy whip manufacturing company goes out of business
because the automobile has replaced the horse-drawn carriage. There’s a building there that needs
new life.”


To that end, Logie helped write another state law setting up Renaissance zones in inner cities where
businesses and residents could get substantial tax breaks for re-using old
buildings. Grand Rapids now has seven Renaissance districts. The city also changed the zoning on
several old warehouses and industrial buildings to encourage what Logie
calls “layer cakes” – retails stores, restaurants, offices and apartments – all in the same building.
Some of the old furniture factories have been renovated, including the Burkey and Gay building –
built in the late 1800’s. Burkey and Gay went out of business in the 1950’s.


“It had been sitting cold iron for 50 years. And now it’s all back to life. Two-hundred sixty middle
of the road apartments, and some offices.


“We got tired of the quiet life and wanted a little diversity.”


Connie Thompson and her husband Jim used to live in a
new suburb north of Grand Rapids. About a year and a half
ago, they moved into an apartment in the Burkey Gay building.


“We like the downtown city feel, which is really fun. We can walk to a bakery, we can walk to
shopping.”


“Grand Rapids has almost got kind of a European feel to it. There’s a couple of little side walk
cafes – during the summer – it doesn’t work too well in the winter. But, yeah, we
like it. I think we’re more city people than the country people we tried to be for a while there.”


But it wasn’t enough just to work within the city limits. Grand Rapids Mayor John Logie knew he
had to work with planners in the surrounding suburbs to promote better land-use
policies. He convinced local officials in 47 different jurisdictions to set limits on how far their
communities would grow around Grand Rapids.


“We invited each of them to draw a line somewhere in the middle of their real estate. And you
decide where that line should go. And then we’ll create a formula together that you’re going to
encourage future growth inside that line and discourage it out until you get to a certain level of
density – at which point you can move the line.”


Logie says the growth boundaries have kept the population closer to the inner city, cutting down on
long commutes, pollution and preserving at least some of the farmland
around the metropolitan area.


As he prepares to step down as mayor at the end of the year, Logie says he’s proud of what he’s
accomplished. He says it’s not rocket science – just common sense about what
makes a city a good place to live.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

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Biologist Devotes Life to Island Wolves

  • Wildlife biologist Rolf Peterson holds up the antler of a moose. Peterson has been studying wolves and their prey on Isle Royale for more than 30 years. (Photo by Lester Graham)

It’s been a cold winter this year, especially for Rolf Peterson. Peterson is a wildlife biologist who studies wolves and moose on Isle Royale. Every year starting in January Peterson spends several weeks on the island at the northernmost spot in Michigan surrounded by the frigid waters of Lake Superior. The environment is harsh, but Peterson says it’s the best time to observe wild animals, and as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports… his research has uncovered some of our most basic knowledge about predators and their prey:

Transcript

It’s been a cold winter this year, especially for Rolf Peterson. Peterson
is a wildlife biologist who studies wolves and moose on Isle Royale. Every
year, starting in January, Peterson spends several weeks on the island, at the
northernmost spot in Michigan, surrounded by the frigid waters of Lake Superior.
The environment is harsh, but Peterson says it’s the best time to observe wild animals.
And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports, his
research has uncovered some of our most basic knowledge about predators and their
prey:


Isle Royale National Park has been compared to a priceless antique… a place that
will be even more valuable in the future. It’s an isolated wilderness, where wolves are
free to hunt as they have for centuries, protected from the threat of humans. No one is
more aware of the value of Isle Royale than Rolf Peterson, a wildlife biologist at
Michigan Tech University. Peterson has spent much of his life on this island. The
attraction for him is that humans are not in charge. It’s wolves, moose and other wild
animals that have the run of the park.


“In this particular place, society has said we’ll just let things go and do whatever
they do. And that could happen now really only in a national park. This happens to
be an island national park, so it has all the attributes which make it a real natural
outdoor laboratory.”


The study of wolves on Isle Royale was started by Durwood Allen of Purdue
University in 1958. In 1970, he chose Peterson, a graduate student, to help him
wrap up the program. But Peterson didn’t end the study. Instead, he made it his
life’s work. Right now, Peterson is on Isle Royale, tracking the wolf packs and
checking to see how many moose they have killed. This technique only works
in the winter, when the trees are bare and Peterson can follow wolf tracks in the snow
from an airplane.


“The anticipation peaks in January when we finally get here and take those first
couple flights to see what’s happened in the past year. You know which
packs are still here, are they going up or going down. Each year it’s a brand new
revelation, almost guaranteed.”


Wolves first came to Isle Royale in 1949 – by crossing the ice on Lake Superior.
There they found a moose population with no natural predators.


For many years, Peterson believed that the size of the moose population was driven
only by their food supply and the condition of their habitat. But in the 1980’s, he made
one of the most important discoveries about predators in the wild.


“It wasn’t until events during the 1980’s in which wolves either went up real fast or
down real fast and the moose population responded in inverse fashion that
I realized – wow, wolves really do make a difference in many cases. So now
I tend to think that wolves are one of the primary drivers of population change
in their prey.”


What Peterson observed was an interdependency between predator and prey: Moose
provide food for wolves, while wolves prevent overpopulation in the moose herd by
hunting the old, the young and the sickly. It’s an idea that has had implications
in areas around the world, where moose are hunted by humans.


“The wolf has really shaped moose as we know it and in places where we use moose
consumptively, the more we can adopt the harvest patterns of wolves, the more
productive our use of moose will be, because this is the pattern that moose have evolved
with for millions of years.”


Peterson’s family shares his fascination with wildlife. His wife Candy and their
two sons have spent many summers on Isle Royale, looking for wolf and moose
carcasses to add to Peterson’s bone collection.


But during the winter, it’s only Peterson and his assistants who brave the cold of this
wilderness to follow wolf tracks in the snow. Peterson says he intends to
follow those tracks and the interaction between wolves and moose on
Isle Royale for many years to come.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

Survey Says Residents Want Lake Preservation

The results of a survey released this week by the Joyce Foundation show people in the Great Lakes region have strong feelings about the importance of the lakes and the need to protect them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich has more:

Transcript

The results of a survey released this week by the Joyce Foundation show people in the Great
Lakes region have strong feelings about the importance of the lakes and the need to protect them.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich has more:


In it’s opinion polls over the past year, the Joyce Foundation found people have deep concerns
about the Great Lakes, including lower water levels and talk of exporting water to other regions.
Most people who were polled assumed the lakes were polluted, but were unsure of the causes of
that pollution. Spokesperson Mary O’Connell says the foundation will give out 16-million
dollars over the next three years to groups working to protect the lakes. She says the money will
also be used to improve policies on land use, agriculture and transportation, all of which affect
water quality.


“There is very strong popular support for preserving the lakes and we would hope that through
our funding we could translate some of that support to our public policies that will protect the
lakes for future generations.”


The Joyce Foundation, which also contributes funding to the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, is
based in Chicago and has financed many efforts to clean up the lakes.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Gretchen Millich.

Cougars Still Stalking the Region?

For many years, state and federal wildlife officials have considered the cougar extinct in the Great Lakes region. However, many people claim to have seen the large predatory cat long after it supposedly disappeared. Conservationists debate whether these sightings are real and if they are, they wonder whether the cougars are wild or merely escaped pets. Investigations are underway in many states, including Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, and in Canada. Now, a wildlife biologist in Michigan says he has proof that a breeding population of wild cougars is living in the Upper Peninsula. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen Millich reports:

Legislation to Restrict Local Authority

In Michigan, the state legislature is considering a "Right to Farm"
proposal that would prevent local governments from regulating
agriculture. Supporters say it will help the struggling farming
industry by freeing farmers from too many restrictions. But some
farmers say local governments need MORE control when it comes
to large livestock farms. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Gretchen
Millich reports: