Foreign, invasive species often get into US waters by
hitching a ride in the ballast water of ocean going ships. Now,
a new research center will work to stop the spread of these invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:
Transcript
Foreign, invasive species often get into U.S. waters by hitching a ride in the ballast water
of ocean-going ships. Now, a new research center will work to stop the spread of these
invasive species. The research center hopes to develop new treatment systems aimed at
catching the critters before they get out. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:
The new research center will be built on the edge of the Duluth-Superior port in
Wisconsin. It’ll include storage tanks to represent ballast tanks on freighters. Researchers can introduce exotic species into the tanks, and test various treatments
designed to kill the pests.
Duluth port director Adolph Ojard says currently, ships are exchanging ballast water in
the ocean before entering U.S. ports:
“We have found that it is effective, but we want to be more effective, and the only way
we can do that is to develop full treatment systems on board the ship.”
Systems to be tested include filters, centrifuges, ultra-violet light, and chemicals. Ojard says it’s likely a combination of treatments will be most effective. He says
researchers will be looking for systems that can work in both older and newer ships.
U.S companies are responding to new regulations expected to go into effect in Europe soon. The European Union is considering strict new controls on chemicals. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
U.S. companies are responding to new regulations expected to go into
effect in Europe soon. The European Union is considering strict new
controls on chemicals. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
The European government is considering legislation that would require
companies to provide detailed information on the chemical make-up of
all products. Not just new products, but existing products too.
Michael Wilson is a researcher at the Center for Occupational and
Environmental Health at the University of California Berkeley. He says
the new rules will prompt American companies to make healthier
products.
“Producers are not going to want to introduce a chemical into the EU that
could potentially fail to pass the authorization process. And so, already
they’re starting to think about alternatives to carcinogenic chemicals, for
example.”
The American Chemistry Council says the approach in the U.S, which
encourages voluntary actions on the part of industry, works fine.
Two gourmet chefs managing the kitchen at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth are adding organic vegetables to the menu. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Sharon McKeever takes a pot of soup off the stove in the kitchen at St. Luke's Hospital in Duluth. Food managers are adding hormone-free milk and organic fruits and vegetables to the menu. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
St. Luke's Hospital recycles food service items like large cans and jars. The kitchen also saves unused meals for the local food bank, and sends food waste to the compost pile. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that’s making efforts to spice up their menu:
Transcript
Some hospitals are trying to heal the food that they serve. The GLRC’s
Stephanie Hemphill takes us to one hospital that making efforts to spice
up their menu:
(Sound of elevator)
St. Luke’s is the smaller of Duluth’s two hospitals. Their motto could be
“we try harder.” Several years ago, the hospital put two chefs in charge
of the housekeeping, laundry, and food.
In the kitchen, there’s the usual industrial stoves and dishwashers, and a
long assembly line where workers fill the trays for patients, based on
what they’ve ordered.
“The patient fills out the menu, I’ll have this entrée and that salad and this
beverage; then as the tray moves down the conveyor belt, they look at the
menu and put on the appropriate products.”
Mark Branovan was a gourmet chef at restaurants in California’s wine
country. In that part of the world, they take their fresh fruits and
vegetables very seriously.
“We did very little of our produce buying from the big distributors; we
had local guys that would grow lettuce for us, and herbs for us, and tomatoes…
anything we wanted. So that just kind of rolled over for us into, if
we can do it for a restaurant, why can’t we do it for a hospital?”
It’s harder to do in this part of the country, where you can grow lettuce
for about half the year and you’re lucky to get a tomato at all. But
Branovan and his colleague, LeeAnn Tomczyk, decided not to let that
stop them.
Tomczyk was a chef in a trendy restaurant in Wisconsin before she took
the job at the hospital. She says when she first came here, she was
appalled at some of the things on the menu.
“YOu know the patient was able to pick a jell-o salad and a piece of cake.
Well, to me jell-o is a dessert but to them it was their salad and that
was their vegetable, and that wasn’t right.”
Tomczyk and Branovan started to add more fruits and vegetables,
including organic items, to the menu, but they learned to pick their
battles.
“When I tried to change some of the casserole dishes, and some of the
traditional northern Minnesota fare, I was met with some serious
resistance from our customers and our patients who said, ‘Yeah, we have
tater tot hot dish on our menu because we like it.'”
One of the first items to change was the milk. Now the hospital serves
hormone-free milk to patients in the rooms and workers in the cafeteria.
Tomczyk says she’s convinced hormone-free milk and organic food are
healthier. She says an organization devoted to helping people heal, like a
hospital, needs to think about healing in broad terms, even globally. She
says buying local food avoids long-distance transportation, with its heavy
reliance on polluting fossil fuels.
“And the introduction of pesticides and herbicides, and that getting into
our water systems, it’s that whole cycle, and we’re using more and more
these days, and I think it’s just got out of hand.”
The hospital is also committed to reducing waste. It freezes unused
portions and gives them to soup kitchens and homeless shelters. It sends
its food waste to the city compost pile.
St. Luke’s is a member of a hospital buying group that negotiates prices
with big producers like Pillsbury. Each hospital is supposed to buy a
certain percentage of its food through the buying group. When Branovan
and Tomczyk asked the distributor for hormone-free milk, the distributor
didn’t carry it.
“We had to actually get a waiver that says they will allow us to buy off-
contract.”
Branovan got a similar waiver to buy organic fresh fruit, and greens for
the cafeteria salad bar. He hopes to add more organic and locally-grown
foods.
Branovan says St. Luke’s is the first hospital in the region to ask the
buying group to supply hormone-free milk and organic vegetables, but
hospitals and schools on the west coast and east coast are doing it on a larger
scale.
James Pond is editor of Food Service Director, a trade magazine.
He says the movement will grow.
“The pricing advantages will in some ways level out, where if it becomes
important enough to the clientele, the food service operators will respond
by providing products in this manner.”
Some hospitals organize a farmer’s market to serve their workers, as a
way to introduce them to organic and local foods. Then they add those
foods to the cafeteria and patient meals. At St. Luke’s, they feature
organic food at company parties.
The sea lamprey, up close. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)
This is an example of what the invasive species, sea lamprey, will do to a lake trout. The mark left on the lake trout shows how sea lamprey attach to their victims and suck their blood. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)
One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the decline of many of the native species. The lake trout has been in trouble from over-fishing and because of an invasive species called, the sea lamprey. Conservation agents use a pesticide to keep the lamprey down, but it’s expensive, and sometimes it kills other fish. Now, researchers have discovered a lamprey pheromone that could help the fight against the sea lamprey. Stephanie Hemphill has that story:
Transcript
In our next report in the series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes we hear about how a native
fish has been hurt by an invasive species that swam into the lakes through a canal. Lester
Graham is our guide through the series.
One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the decline of many of the native species.
The lake trout has been in trouble from over-fishing and because of an invasive species
called, the sea lamprey. Ever since it invaded the Great Lakes, scientists have been trying
to keep the invasive sea lamprey under control.
Conservation agents use a pesticide to keep the lamprey numbers down, but it’s expensive,
and sometimes it kills other fish. Now, researchers have discovered a lamprey
pheromone. They think the chemical attractant could be a big help in their fight against
one of the most destructive invasive species in the Great Lakes. Stephanie Hemphill
has that story:
The sea lamprey came into the Great Lakes through canals more than a hundred years
ago. The slimy parasites attach themselves to big fish and feed on them until they die.
Each lamprey can kill 40 pounds of fish in its lifetime.
Between sea lampreys and over-fishing, the big native fish, the Lake Trout, was wiped out
in the lower Great Lakes. Only a few survived in small pockets in Lake Huron. Lake
Superior is the only place Lake Trout survive in healthy numbers.
There’s an aggressive 15-million dollar a year program to keep sea lamprey numbers
down. Part of the effort is using a chemical called TFM that kills the lamprey.
Wildlife managers spread the lampricide in streams in the spring. It kills some of the
young lamprey as they swim down into the lake.
University of Minnesota biologist Peter Sorensen says he and other scientists noticed that
TFM kills not just the juveniles, but the larvae that live in the streambed too. They also
realized, after a stream is treated, very few adult lamprey come back to the stream to
spawn, or lay new eggs.
“And this led to an observation decades ago, which was key, that adult lamprey must be
selective in how they pick streams. They only pick a few, and if you remove the larvae
they don’t seem to go in there.”
Scientists suspected the larvae might play a role in the spawning migration of adults.
That might mean the larvae are putting out a pheromone that tells the adults it’s a good
place to spawn. Just one larva attracts a lot of adult lamprey, indicating the pheromone
is very potent.
It was up to Jared Fine to determine what the chemical is. Fine is a PhD student working
with Peter Sorensen. For two years he sifted through the water in tanks holding lamprey
larvae.
“Separating the different chemical compounds, testing them biologically, seeing which
ones have activity, coming back to the active ones, further separating them, and just
repeating this until you get down to the one or two or three compounds that have the
activity.”
Fine narrowed it down to three compounds. He purified them and gave them to a colleague in the chemistry department, Thomas Hoye. Hoye created a synthetic version of the most potent pheromone. He says it should be possible to produce it on a large scale, and that means it could be used to treat the
Great Lakes. The question is, how much would he need?
“You know, would it be a tank car load, would it be a football field, would it be a dump
truck? It’s none of those. Would it be a barrel? No. Is it a bucket-full? No. In
fact it’s only about 500 grams, that’s just one pound, would treat all that water for a
month.”
And that’s all it would take, because the lamprey only spawn for a month, but the
treatment would have to happen once a year. Peter Sorensen says when lamprey
approach a stream to spawn, their clock is ticking. They have a powerful urge to lay
eggs, and once they’ve done that, they die.
“They are driven animals. Frankly they’re kind of on autopilot and pheromones are
what’s driving that autopilot to a very large extent, and now that we’ve got it, I think we
can really powerfully use that to our advantage.”
Sorensen says fisheries managers could use the pheromone to attract more lampreys to
streams outfitted with traps.
“You know the key here is the fact that this pheromone is natural, safe, and should be
very inexpensive to add.”
Fisheries managers hope the pheromone will help reduce the cost of controlling the
lamprey and add a new weapon to their arsenal.
The news on lamprey couldn’t have come at a better time for wildlife managers
around Lake Superior. After years of relatively constant numbers, the lamprey
population jumped dramatically this year. Scientists say lamprey may be finding new
spawning grounds in the mouths of streams, where lampricide is less effective. They’re
hoping they can use the pheromone to draw the lamprey to traps further upstream.
The sea lamprey drastically changed the Great Lakes ecosystem. (Photo courtesy of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission)
Researchers say they’ve discovered a migration pheromone
in sea lamprey. It’s a natural attractant that could boost efforts to
control the invasive parasite. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Researchers say they’ve discovered a migration pheromone in sea lamprey. It’s a natural attractant that could boost efforts to control the invasive parasite. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Each lamprey can kill forty pounds of fish in its lifetime. Managers use a pesticide to keep the lamprey numbers down, but it’s expensive, and sometimes it kills other fish.
University of Minnesota biologist Peter Sorensen says he’s isolated a chemical signal put out by lamprey larvae. The larvae live in streams, and the signal apparently tells adult lamprey that the stream is a good place to lay eggs.
“We’ve got a cue that’s very powerful, very safe, we don’t need very much of it, and it can control the distribution of the lamprey in a way that other things can’t.”
Sorensen says the pheromone can be used to corral lamprey into areas where they can be trapped or treated with pesticide. The pheromone is being tested in a river in Michigan.
Egg collectors kept precise records about where and when their prize possessions were gathered. They carefully removed the contents of the egg, then nested the shells in cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. (Photo courtesy of Carrol Henderson)
The squiggly coloring on this rufous-backed shrike egg is from blood that accumulated in the shell as it formed. It was collected in India in 1919. (Photo courtesy of Carrol Henderson)
Carrol Henderson spend weeks photographing and cataloging the 3,600 eggs in the Handsaker collection. Now he's helping the Handsaker family donate the collection to a research institution. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
More and more people say their favorite hobby is bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago, birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby very differently. They collected bird eggs. A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
More and more people say their favorite hobby is
bird-watching. Many travel to hot bird-watching spots, and keep
lists of which birds they see and where. A hundred years ago,
birders were just as enthusiastic, but they practiced the hobby
very differently. They collected bird eggs.
A Midwestern farm family recently discovered an ancestor’s egg collection when they were
remodeling an old farmhouse. Experts say the collection has a
lot to offer to scientists studying birds today. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Carrol Henderson considers himself a very lucky man. He’s the director of the non-game wildlife program at the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He grew up on a farm in central Iowa.
Last summer, he learned that a family in his old neighborhood was renovating a farmhouse. It had belonged to Ralph Handsaker. When Handsaker died thirty years ago, the house was boarded up and left alone.
“… And when the family started renovating this old farmhouse for the great-great-grandson, John Handsaker, along with a number of old animal mounts and interesting things, there were these two large chests with about fifteen drawers each, that were totally filled with little sets of wild bird eggs.”
The smallest egg, from a hummingbird, was small enough to sit on top of a dime. The biggest was an ostrich egg almost six inches long. Some were creamy white, others were speckled, others streaked with color like a Jackson Pollack painting.
There were more than 3,600 eggs, representing more than 400 species of birds from all over the world. And they were in perfect condition.
“Each set of eggs was very neatly labeled with information about the day they were collected, who the collector was, and information about the habitat where the egg was collected. Some of these eggs went all the way back to 1875, and they were collected by over three hundred different people from all over the world.”
This is how nature-lovers expressed their passion in those days. They called themselves oologists. They kept their eggs in drawers lined with cedar sawdust to protect them from insects. They also kept meticulous records.
“So the scientific data was very high quality among these avid collectors. So even today, these provide very important nest records for birds that are now gone. Like in my home county of Story County, Iowa, there were Marble Godwits, King Rails, Prairie Chickens, and Bobwhite Quail, and those are all gone now.”
The birds disappeared as people turned prairies into farms. But Carrol Henderson says the records in the bird collection provide detailed information about where and when they nested.
“And another intriguing thing is that when these people blew out the eggs, there was still a lining of the egg white or albumen left inside the egg. And that still has the original DNA genetic material, so it actually would be possible for scientists to do DNA analysis of these eggs to take a look at how they may compare with birds nowadays.”
Henderson says these collectors didn’t think they were harming the birds. That’s because if their eggs disappear, most birds will lay another set. But competition for the eggs of rare birds was disastrous.
“One person in Philadelphia had a collection of over seven hundred Peregrine Falcon eggs. Another Peregrine egg collector went to the same cliff and collected all the eggs from the Peregrines every year for 29 consecutive years. And then finally the nest was abandoned. And he said it was abandoned due to encroaching civilization. That was where egg collecting really had something of a dark side.”
Eventually, attitudes began to change. In 1918, the federal government passed the Migratory Bird Treaty Act, to protect birds and eggs. But the government let three collectors keep on collecting. One of them was Ralph Handsaker. So his collection goes into the early 1950’s.
Carrol Henderson says there’s a lot to learn from these eggs. One of the best lessons is about human responsibility. Henderson says people these days enjoy nature differently than they did a hundred years ago. But we can still learn something from earlier methods.
“It’s like a little time machine: stepping back in time, seeing what was here, and then looking at what’s changed, and what does that mean for our own conservation efforts, how can we do a better job today to collect information and use that for our own conservation of wildlife species?”
Carrol Henderson’s article about the Handsaker egg collection will appear in the October issue of Birders World magazine. The Handsaker family is planning to donate the collection to a major university.
Cormorant populations have risen exponentially from their previously dismal numbers. (Photo courtesy of the NOAA)
Across the Great Lakes region, the recovery of the cormorant
is booming. But some anglers and resort owners think the cormorants are eating too many of the fish that people like to eat. In some areas, wildlife managers have resorted to killing cormorants on popular fishing lakes. In one case, critics say there’s not enough evidence to justify the killing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Across the Great Lakes region the recovery of the cormorant is booming. But some anglers and resort owners think the cormorants are eating too many of the fish that people like to eat. In some areas, wildlife managers have resorted to killing cormorants on popular fishing lakes. In one case, critics say there’s not enough evidence to justify the killing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Larry Jacobson is the third generation in his family to run the Hiawatha Beach Resort on Leech Lake, about two hundred miles north of Minneapolis. Three years ago, on fishing opener weekend, all of his twenty-one cabins were full. This year, he had no guests. Jacobson says the word has spread that fishing is down on Leech Lake. He blames the cormorants. The birds nest on a small island in the south end of the lake. Eight years ago, there were fifty nests; last year, there were two thousand five hundred.
“The cormorants eat about a pound fish a day. The way the population was just exploding out there, you could see writing was on the wall, that this was really going to make dramatic impact.”
Jacobson says his guests are still catching big walleye, but the smaller, pan-sized walleye are getting hard to find.
There are several reasons why the walleye population might be down, but Jacobson and other business owners blame it on the cormorants, and they’ve asked the Department of Natural Resources to do something about the birds.
“Leech needs to be maintained as high quality fishery. There’s such an economic impact to the area from walleyes, that if you don’t maintain it that way, everyone’s going to be suffering.”
(Sound of boat motor)
Resource officials are responding to the resort owners’ concerns. The Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe owns the island. John Ringle is wildlife manager for the tribe.
“Okay we’re headed right at Little Pelican Island right now.”
Little Pelican Island is about three acres of sand and scruffy shrubs. Hundreds of cormorants cover the shore. Ringle says they fish out here in the open waters of Leech Lake.
“They’re omnivorous so they’re eating all sorts of different varieties of fish. Right now they’re probably eating large numbers of perch.”
Ringle is working with state and federal agencies to reduce the number of cormorants nesting here, eating fish, and crowding out other birds, such as the endangered common tern.
Normally, cormorants are a federally protected bird, just like eagles. That’s because they were almost wiped out by the insecticide DDT before it was banned in 1973. But a new rule allows resource officials to harass and even kill cormorants where they’re damaging other wildlife.
This summer, workers are sitting in hunting blinds on Little Pelican Island, shooting cormorants. They use air rifles to make as little noise as possible, so the other cormorants aren’t spooked away.
So far, they’ve killed more than two thousand birds. They plan to leave about five hundred nesting pairs alive. Ringle says nobody’s happy about shooting cormorants, but he says he thinks it’s necessary.
RINGLE: “My philosophy is that as mankind utilizes the resource, we have to manage them, we’re not in finite supply.”
HEMPHILL: “Do you think we know enough to manage them?”
RINGLE: “Not really. I think the public is demanding action prior to any conclusive study being conducted.”
And that’s a big problem for Francie Cuthbert. She’s a professor and cormorant researcher at the University of Minnesota. Cuthbert says the agencies that want to cut down the cormorant population skipped an important part of the management process: finding out what’s actually happening on Leech Lake.
“They’re really being driven by complaints from citizens and resort owners who are concerned about local economics, and who just don’t like the birds; they’re afraid of the numbers. If we responded to all natural resources conflicts this way, we’d be in a state of chaos.”
Cuthbert says even with the cormorants’ dramatic comeback since the days of DDT, there still aren’t as many as there were a hundred years ago. She says rather than kill cormorants, wildlife officials should try to boost the number of fish.
The state of Minnesota is working on that. It’s stocking Leech Lake with walleye for the first time this year. Conservation officials are studying some of the birds they killed to find out what they’re eating. And the state is also limiting what size of walleye anglers can catch so the fish can recover.
That makes resort owners like Larry Jacobson nervous, because he says a lot of anglers don’t like the limits. But at least he’s glad someone’s doing something.
“The fishery is a business, there’s no question about that. If you want to sustain our economy in this area, you’ve got to manage the lake.”
Workers will continue shooting cormorants occasionally through the summer. And the control effort could continue. Experts say it’ll take several years for the fish to recover enough to draw anglers back to the lake.
David Peterson is president of NaturNorth Technologies. The business is a spinoff from the University of Minnesota-Duluth's Natural Resources Research Institute. It has a patent on a process to extract large quantities of pure betulin, a component of birch bark. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
When extracted and purified, betulin is a crystalline powder. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Skip Sandman is a traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He says it's getting harder and harder to find mature birch trees for his medicines. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
A start-up company is banking on birch bark. The papery bark can be used for more than baskets and canoes. It’s used in skin creams, and scientists are studying it for use in treating skin rashes and even cancer. But Native American healers have been using birch bark for years, and some of them are worried about the supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Have you ever noticed – walking in the woods – those cylinders of bright white bark, lying on the forest floor? Those are the remains of a birch tree. The inside of the tree rots away quickly, but the bark lasts much longer.
“The birch tree has some incredible defense mechanisms that protect the tree from weather, from rain, from sun, keep the moisture in, keep moisture out.”
David Peterson knows birch trees pretty well. He was a top manager at the Potlatch Paper Mill near Duluth, Minnesota. The plant processes thousands of trees every day, and burns the bark to make steam.
“I always was interested in trying to come with a way of using some of these low value waste streams generated from pulp paper mills and other places, it seemed like such a horrible waste, to take these really interesting compounds and put them in a boiler for boiler fuel.”
Peterson’s new company, NaturNorth Technologies, plans to make something worth a lot more than boiler fuel. The company has patented a process to extract large quantities of a chemical, betulin, that gives birch bark its anti-bacterial and anti-fungal qualities.
Mill workers remove bark from a tree that’s harvested for lumber or paper-making. It’s shredded into pellets, and put through a chemical process that extracts the betulin. It ends up looking something like salt.
“Here’s a sample of betulin, and you can see how bright and white it is. It’s got a chalky feel when you touch it.”
Apparently, what birch bark does for the birch tree, it can also do for human skin – protect it from the assaults of the physical world. Betulin is already used in some creams and cosmetics, but NaturNorth plans to be the first company in the world to market it on a large scale.
The idea of selling lots of betulin from birch bark makes Skip Sandman nervous. He’s a Native American traditional healer for the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe. He uses birch bark for medicine. He says it’s a pain-killer and blood-thinner and can be used for intestinal disorders.
“Fortunately, when people use it for medicines and stuff, one small tree does go a long way. But you might have to travel 15, 20 miles to find the right type of tree.”
Sandman says the bigger trees – ten to twelve inches in diameter – have a bigger supply of the properties he uses in medicine. And lately he’s had to go farther to find those big trees. He says that’s because timber companies have cut down so many of the big trees and now they’re working on smaller and smaller trees.
“But you see the logging trucks go by, and they’re just whacking down everything. Well they think it’s only a tree. But when the trees are gone, then what do we do?”
Sandman says in the Ojibwe creation story, each plant and animal promised to help people in some way, and birch trees offered their healing qualities. He says it’s important to use them respectfully, and not for profit, but only to help people. He says he approaches the tree with an offering of tobacco.
“I will put tobacco down and ask and talk to that tree, because it is alive.”
The folks at NaturNorth are hoping to make money from birch trees, but they’re also excited about helping people. David Peterson says he gets letters from people who want some betulin to treat a skin condition.
“When you get those letters, you can’t help but to feel that somebody out there that’s gonna benefit eventually from these compounds, I think it’s quite sobering and humbling.”
NaturNorth has started marketing betulin to cosmetics companies, and scientists are studying betulinic acid for its disease-fighting potential. Peterson says it’ll be several years before NaturNorth generates a profit.
A new coating on a road surfaces could lower its freezing point, preventing ice formation. (Photo by Cristian Pricop)
Drivers are testing out a new road coating that could reduce accidents in the winter. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports, it might also mean fewer trips for highway salt trucks:
Transcript
Drivers are testing out a new road coating that could reduce accidents in the winter. And as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports it might also mean fewer trips for highway salt trucks:
Russ Alger directs the Institute of Snow Research at Michigan Technological University. He’s come up with an aggregate that can absorb road salt. The aggregate is glued to the road surface with a tough epoxy. Alger says the aggregate can hold onto road salt for an entire season. That means when it gets cold, the salt will prevent ice from forming.
“And so in essence what we’ve done is we’ve lowered the freezing point of the pavement itself, and what that means is, twenty degrees pavement temperature now, ice won’t form at the surface of it.”
It also means road crews can use less salt, and make fewer trips to trouble spots. The new coating was installed on a bridge in Northern Wisconsin. Alger says accidents there have been reduced dramatically. It’s also being tried out on some runways at Chicago’s O’Hare airport.
These are "zooks." They're a form of currency used by the Zook Society, a group that barters for homemade products. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
The Zook Society members trade each other for food and other items from their gardens and homes. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
Some jars of food being offered, including peaches and grape syrup. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)
People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:
Transcript
People in search of homemade foods are finding an old-fashioned
way to get them: bartering. Gardeners and cooks who have a special pasta
sauce are trading with others who make homemade applesauce. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill recently attended
a barter gathering and brings us this audio postcard:
“Hi, it’s nice to see you again.”
“Have mostly baked goods today.”
“Maple syrup, grape syrup, eggs.”
“Apple butter, squash soup, and frozen split pea soup. Um hm.”
“Worm juice! What the heck is worm juice?”
Buckley: “My name is Jenifer Buckley, and I’m one of the people who got the Zook Society together. This is an informal bartering group of people who home-process and garden.”
“We have lefse! We went down to the farm this part weekend, and Mary learned from her mom, so it’s totally homemade. And we would like two zooks for each bag.”
Buckley: “We decided on the zook as a unit of currency, because everybody agreed the Zucchini is easy to find. We wanted to make sure, for example if I have sauerkraut and somebody else has eggs and somebody else has jam, that we could all three of us barter for those things, so we decided on the zook as currency.”
“This is the three-generation salsa, my grandma’s salsa recipe. My grandma just died this summer. I made some with her last summer, but this summer I made it myself.”
“We have a pint of applesauce from this year’s crop, a good year for apples, and I guess this is about a three-zook item, does that sound fair?”
Buckley: “What often happens is that people are asking relatively little for their products, so people will say, ‘That’s not enough, you should ask for more for that!’ Because in general, I think people tend to undervalue what they do; a lot of time goes into baking and processing and so forth.”
Rhodes: “My name is Gina Temple Rhodes, and this time I brought some new things that I had never brought before. I brought Hinkelsteins, which are cookies made from oat flour, dates, So that was pretty popular. It’s a little strange – you bring things and hope they’ll sell because if they don’t you feel a little disappointed and have to take it home.”
Buckley: “It’s about bringing trade and economics down to the community level; it’s about trying new products. So in that respect there’s little bit of incubator going on here.”
“Try Paula’s? They’re a zook apiece.”
“Dave, are we supposed to eat these or plant these?”
Susie: “I’m Susie, and I brought worm juice, from our worm compost bin. It’s full of nutrients and you can use it to boost your house plants or in your garden. And I see nobody’s snapped it up yet, so I may have to go out and do promotion.”
Dawson: “I’m Katie Neff Dawson. We came away with some canned peaches – I’m kind of a peach freak so we got those. Cooper was into the peanut butter things, they look like Bit-O-Honey things, they’re really good. I think we all got lip balm because that was a good deal – lip balm for one zook. It’s a real diversity, and you come away with a wonderful meal, and it’s just a good community, good people getting together.”
“Bye, all! Thanks for the good food!”
HOST TAG: “Bartering home-made goods in Duluth, Minnesota. Stephanie
Hemphill produced that report for the GLRC.”
