An insect called the Emerald Ash Borer has already destroyed thousands of ash trees in Ontario and Michigan…and in February, it was discovered invading the northwest corner of Ohio. Agriculture officials there are trying to contain the bug before it spreads to still more states. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
Transcript
An insect called the Emerald Ash Borer has already destroyed thousands of ash trees in Ontario
and Michigan…and in February, it was discovered invading the northwest corner of Ohio.
Agriculture officials there are trying to contain the bug before it spreads to still more states.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:
At stake across the Great Lakes region: millions of dollars of wood that’s used for furniture,
cabinets, flooring, and baseball bats. That’s why Ohio agriculture officials have quarantined an
area around Toledo, banning residents from transporting ash wood out of the area. They’ve also
sprayed pesticide on nearby un-infected trees and taken even more drastic action among the 4,000
trees the beetles had already struck.
David Shlike works for the Ohio Agriculture Department.
“At ground zero, out a quarter of a mile, we cut everything, took it down. And had to chip it. We
hauled these chips to Michigan, and they were incinerated. It’s just a devastating pest and that
pest is going to be hatching out here anytime now between the 1st of May and the 15th of May,
and we were trying to take away its food source.”
It will be a few more months before it’s clear whether or not Ohio’s action has stopped the bugs’
advance.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.
A demonstration of making syrup without modern tools. Hot rocks are placed into a hollowed out log to boil the sap. (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park
District)
A cast iron cauldron (above) was once used to boil down the sap. It was replaced by the tin, flat-bottomed evaporator which provided much more even boiling and better syrup. (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park District)
Draft horses pull the sap tank through the forest to the "sugar house." (Photo courtesy of the Geauga Park District)
April is the month for the highest maple syrup production in North America – and a time when many towns and villages in the Great Lakes states hold pancake breakfasts. The practice of tapping trees for syrup or sugar goes back centuries, long before European settlement. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Urycki reports, the methods used to make syrup have changed only a little with time and technology:
Transcript
April is the month for the highest maple syrup production in North America – and a time when
many towns and villages in the Great Lakes States hold pancake breakfasts. The practice of
tapping trees for syrup or sugar goes back centuries, long before European settlement. But as the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Urycki reports, the methods used to make syrup have
changed only a little with time and technology:
In a world where sugar is infused in almost every processed food we eat, it’s hard to imagine a
world without it. But before Europeans introduced honey bees to North America, most native
Americans could only turn to the trees. In a grove of sugar maples, called a sugar bush, Park
naturalist, Dan Best, illustrates the painstaking way Indians boiled down the sap without metal
utensils. It starts with pouring the gathered sap into a hollow log.
“I’m taking this fire-heated rock that’s absorbed a lot of heat from the fire and placing the sap
in the hollow log here. All day and all night for days at a time to get any quantity of sugar made.
Later, white settlers brought cast iron cauldrons. And a bigger improvement in maple sugar
production came with the invention of tin sheet metal. That allowed farmers to pound metal
tubes, or spiles, into the trees and then hang lightweight buckets.
“Tin buckets, like I say, have been used for since the 1860’s. Some places, smaller sugaring
operations, today still find it feasible to use buckets. It’s mounted on a hole under the rim of the
bucket right on the metal spile, so you can keep it, you pivot it right on the spile and empty it into
a gathering pail and today most people use 5-gallon plastic buckets for gathering pails.”
Doesn’t this harm the tree to some degree to be losing sap?
“Not really, if you tap according to the guidelines roughly speaking for every foot of diameter
that you have you can have a bucket. You have to have a good 12 to 18 inch tree to be able to put
on a single bucket. You get up 24 inches so you can put two buckets on and so on but these days
you don’t put any more than three buckets on the trees – too many stresses these days on maple
trees. Between air pollution and the drought we’re having, and so fourth, that we really look
closer. Today’s producers look very close at the health of individual trees.”
(sound of horse team)
Traditionally, the buckets were emptied into a large holding tank. Draft horses like these pulled
the tank on a sled through the forest to a sugar house. Viola Skinner remembers her parents using
a team.
“The tank that we had in our sugar bush had a rail on it and it was drawn by horses on a sled and
with the rail on it we could all jump up and hang on to the rail and go for a ride and we thought it
was fun and games. We didn’t realize we were working dumping into the gathering tank, so
that’s how we did it.”
Amish farmers are still using that method. Fourteen states from New England along the Great
Lakes to Minnesota and Canada produce maple syrup. A common method today is to run plastic
tubing from one tree to another. Sap usually runs by gravity down to a holding tank, saving work
and lessening erosion caused by driving on steep slopes. The tanks of sap are then boiled down
in a sugar house – 40 gallons of sap to get one gallon of syrup. Hans Geiss looks over one
evaporator, which, like most, are fired by wood.
“Probably about 85 to 90-percent are still wood fired.”
So what degree of sweetness do you want here?
“If you take it up from an average of 2 % sugar to about 67 % sugar.
What happens if you’re a little too sweet or a little under sweet?
“If you’re very much below 66% sugar the syrup won’t keep, it will ferment. If it’s much over
67% it will crystallize in the can; it’s like rock candy on the bottom. So you got to be pretty
much right on.”
Maple candy has been the specialty of Debbie Richards’ family. Her grandparents built a sugar
house in 1910 and it’s been the family’s only business ever since.
Richards buys syrup from area Amish farmers to make candy. The sap runs when daytime
temperatures rise above freezing and nighttime temperatures drop below.
Did you have a later season this year?
Yes, quite a bit later. The last three years the season has started earlier than usual. The season
most commonly starts between Valentine’s Day and President’s day. Wasn’t until March that
most people tapped.
Simply because the weather was so cold?
“Right.”
Are there fewer people doing this as maple forests get cut?
“I wouldn’t say there’s fewer people doing it, but the size of the operations are smaller. With
developments going in and roads being widened a lot of the sizes of the farms are being cut
down.”
Although the season started late, Richards says this was a good year, with the sap having a high
sugar content. Sweet news for the maple syrup industry.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Urycki.
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a rule that would allow people to kill the Double-Crested Cormorant. The bird was once federally protected. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is proposing a rule that would allow
people to kill the double-crested Cormorant. The bird was once federally
protected. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
The double-crested Cormorants have become a nuisance because they eat a
lot of fish and their waste destroys trees and grass. The U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service wants tribes and conservation officials to identify Cormorants that pose a problem. They would shoot the birds with shotguns or destroy their
nests and eggs. Commercial fish farmers would also have the right to destroy
the birds.
Ray Rustem is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He
says wildlife officials will need a coordinated effort to be successful.
“Well, these are very intelligent birds and hunting is going to be a lot more
difficult because they will learn very quickly if there is a boat around they are going to get shot at
and they’re going to avoid those kind of things.”
In the ’70’s, the pesticide DDT had killed most of the double-crested Cormorants in the Great
Lakes region. They’ve since recovered and now number about 1 million.
The federal government is accepting comment on its proposal to kill these birds.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Chris McCarus.
A soon-to-be-published study concludes that deer overpopulation is having a devastating, long-term impact on forests. The study will come out next month in the journal Ecological Applications. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz reports:
Transcript
A soon-to-be-published study concludes that deer overpopulation is having a
devastating, long-term impact on forests. The study will come out next month in the
journal Ecological Applications. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz reports:
The U.S. Forest Service study was conducted in Pennsylvania’s
Allegheny National Forest. It examined deer densities
ranging from 10 deer to 64 deer per square mile.
As deer increased, tree species declined.
Red maple, sugar maple, white ash, yellow poplar, and
cucumber trees were all adversely affected, and native yew has been practically eradicated in the forest.
Steve Horsley is the study’s co-author. He says the next step is to determine
whether the impact of deer on forests is as great in areas where there
are also housing developments and
farmland.
“Deer tend, for example, when agriculture is in the mix, to
spend their time eating alfalfa and corn,
which have more digestible energy than most of the
plants that you find in the woods.”
Horsely says in the meantime, deer populations must come down,
preferably to less than 20 per square mile. In the Allegheny National Forest, that would mean cutting the
population in half.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Cindi Deutschman-Ruiz.
Frank Youngman playing on the Sound Garden. Photo by Tamar Charney.
These days a lot of modern music depends heavily on technology. Guitars are electric and beats electronic. But since ancient times human beings have found a way to make music with the things they found in nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has the story of one man who is helping his neighbors rediscover the roots of music:
Transcript
These days a lot of modern music depends heavily on technology. Guitars are electric and beats
electronic. But since ancient times human beings have found a way to make music with the
things they found in nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney has the story of
one man who is helping his neighbors rediscover the roots of music:
In the woods behind Frank Youngman’s log home in Cadillac, Michigan there’s a small fire in a
fire circle. The smoke is wafting around logs that hang from the trees that surround the fire. It
curls around old car springs and break drums that also hang from the nearby trees. And big
hollowed out logs are propped up just inches off the ground.
On this cold, snowy Saturday there are five teenage boys and two adults banging on the logs and
car parts with sticks. And making music on what Frank Youngman calls his Sound Garden.
(music)
“I was out cutting firewood with our kids one day. And we were throwing it in the back of the
truck and it kept hitting each other. The logs were hitting each other. I just started noticing they
had all these different pitches and so I said, ‘kids throw ’em back out here.’ So we start laying it
out on the ground and we sorta constructed this crude xylophone. And pretty soon we were just
playing. I’d start a grove and they’d start playing and the four of us were on our knees around
these logs on the ground playing and we had a blast. After that, I kept thinking, wouldn’t it be fun
to have some instrument out in our woods here that when were walking by on the trail or skiing,
you could just stop and play a little bit.”
And eventually he built it. Youngman is a music teacher and band director, so he had an ear for
picking out the right logs with which to build his dream. Small logs are arranged to create
primitive xylophones and marimbas. Big logs act as bass drums. And the pieces of scrap metal
are miscellaneous percussion instruments. And any chance he gets, he’ll drag people out here to
play.
“Someone will start something just a click, cluck, cluck. Real simple little thing and then
someone layer in on top of it and it’s been fun cause they start to get the idea that we can slow
down and let it happen over a longer period of time and let it develop.”
He says after a while the people playing will start communicating and sharing musical ideas with
looks, nods, and beats.
(music)
As the rhythm gets going Ryan Newson and Mike Filkins emerge from their sullen teenage shells
and begin dancing and grooving to the beat. Like many people in town they first thought Frank
Youngman’s Sound Garden was really, really weird, but slowly they came around.
“You can’t explain the fun of playing it. You just have to go out there. The diversity of sounds
you get when hit stuff that you’re not even used to. When you play a drum set all day you just get
eight or nine different sounds you can play with, but with this it’s just a new set of sounds you can
screw around with and do what you want.”
The experience of playing the Sound Garden can vary from time to time. Frank Youngman says
night time playing has a different vibe from daytime playing. He thinks the Soundgarden’s best in
winter because the snow muffles the sounds and the woods are quiet, but then again other seasons
also have their appeal for instance warmer weather brings a chorus of frogs.
“In the spring, its great when the spring peepers. I’ve gone out by myself and you start hearing all
this sounds of springs birds and the peepers are just deafening at night sometimes and even they’ll
get a rhythm going and you get thousands of those things – rrrepperr rrrepper – they just get this
kind of pulsing rhythm and I’ve gone out and played with the peepers which sounds kind of
Crazy and maybe it is.”
Whether or not its crazy, the Sound Garden resonates with teenagers and adults alike, according
to 17-year old Mike Filkins.
I can imagine there will be people trying to build these now. This is just unbelievable. I was very
surprised how much it took off and how many people like it.”
And, in fact, a second Sound Garden has been built. After word got out about Frank Youngman’s
backyard one, the director of Cadillac’s Convention and Visitors Bureau suggested he create one
for the town’s new riverside Greenway. It’s just been finished in time to ring in the New Year
during Cadillac’s first night celebration.
(music)
“It’s a pretty primitive experience, you know, but I think it does kind of get back to musical roots
in some ways. It starts with rhythm – beating on a log – whether its signaling, talking over great
distances or just listening to each other and just responding.”
(music)
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
WEB INFO: For more information about the Sound Garden or Cadillac’s First Night celebration
which include demonstrations and a Sound Garden performance, www.cadillacmichigan.com.
As the heart of winter approaches, it’s tempting to withdraw from the outdoor world and wait till spring. But Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Tom Springer thinks the forgotten benefits of winter far outweigh the hardships:
Transcript
As the heart of winter approaches, it’s tempting to withdraw from the outdoor world and wait till
spring. But as Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Tom Springer thinks, the forgotten
benefits of winter far outweigh the hardships.
Outside my window there’s an old sugar maple, grey and bare against the late autumn sky. I’ve
raked up most of its leaves and spread them as mulch on my vegetable garden. It seems like the
tree and me have nothing better to do than wait for spring.
But for a tree, the real work of winter has just begun. To prepare for frigid weather, trees undergo
a process known as hardening off. Their sap withdraws from the twigs and branches and returns
to the roots. And the tree’s roots will continue to grow until the ground freezes solid.
When it comes to surviving winter, I think trees have the right idea. It’s in their nature to slow
down and focus on interior growth. Unfortunately, most of us don’t do that. Instead of adapting to
winter, we try to escape it. We dash from our heated house into a semi-heated garage. We drive in
heated cars – which often have heated seats and even heated steering wheels – and we work in a
heated … Well, you get the idea.
But what would happen if we tried harder to accept winter on its own terms? Might we be happier
and healthier?
Researchers say that people can get surprisingly acclimatized to winter weather. As our bodies
get accustomed to cold, we shiver less and our skin retains more heat. In Australia, scientists have
studied aborigines who sleep outside naked in cold weather. They don’t get hypothermia. In
Japan, shellfish divers have been known to spend hours in the ice-cold ocean, wearing nothing
more than a cotton swimsuit.
Spending more time outside in winter can even make you happier. That’s good news for the 10
million Americans who suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. SAD is a form of depression
that’s triggered by the short winter days. Some people take anti-depressants to fight SAD. Yet
researchers find that many people can overcome it without using pills. They just need to get
outdoors and absorb some authentic daylight.
Do you suppose Mother Nature is trying to tell us something? For 50,000 years of human
history, winter was a time of rest and rejuvenation woven between the cycle of seasons. And I
doubt that 75 years of electric indoor heat has changed that. For instance, our bodies still crave
good food in winter – not just fudge and party mix, but homemade soup or a juicy pot roast. And
there’s still something about the solemn purity of winter that calls us to focus inward. To boost
the spirits, there’s nothing like a quiet walk on a snowy Sunday afternoon. It’s also the best time
to read the uplifting books that have languished on the nightstand since summer.
This is, without question, the most trying of seasons. It gets depressingly dark by 6 o’clock, and
the wind howls at the door like a hungry wolf. But the frozen solitude of winter is not a thing to
be feared. Winter is simply an old friend returned, who waits in unspoken silence to wish us well.
Tom Springer is a free lance writer from Three Rivers, Michigan.
Scientists are working to control a new non-native beetle that’s destroying hundreds of thousands of ash trees in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Scientists are working to control a new non-native beetle that’s destroying hundreds of
thousands of ash trees in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Erin Toner reports:
The Emerald Ash Borer is native to Asia, and probably made its way to the United States
through wood packing materials. Therese Poland is an entomologist with the
USDA. She says so far, the beetles have destroyed 100 thousand ash trees in southeastern
Michigan and southern Ontario.
“We think it’s been here for at least five years and even with some of the other exotic
beetles that have been discovered in recent years, when they were first discovered they
weren’t as widespread as this.”
Poland says there’s a quarantine over the infested areas to keep the beetles from moving
to new areas. Officials are inspecting nurseries to make sure they’re not selling infested
trees. They’re also checking whether tree care companies are disposing of trees properly.
But officials admit they probably won’t be able to stop people who unknowingly transport
infested firewood or yard waste.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.
Most of us think of earthworms as beneficial creatures. Gardeners are always happy to spot a worm in the flowerbed because they add fertilizer to the soil. Many anglers say they’re the best thing for catching fish. But scientists are beginning to learn worms aren’t so friendly to Great Lakes forests. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Most of us think of earthworms as beneficial creatures. Gardeners are always happy to spot a
worm in the flowerbed because they add fertilizer to the soil. And many anglers say they’re the
best thing for catching fish. But scientists are beginning to learn worms aren’t so friendly to
Great Lakes forests. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports.
(fade up Girl Scouts)
This Girl Scout troop is learning about worms. Judy Gibbs is a naturalist at the Hartley Nature
Center in Duluth. She shows the girls how to coax worms out of the soil. They pour water laced
with powdered mustard into the worms’ burrows.
It irritates the worms and they come squiggling up by the hundreds.
“Pour it in. Wait a minute. Here it comes. It doesn’t like the mustard and it comes right up.
Look at this one (laughter). oh, there’s another one. Look at it go!” (shrieks)
On their walk through the woods, the girls look for dead leaves. There aren’t many. Judy Gibbs
explains why.
“Here’s a leaf stem that’s being pulled into this hole. Who’s doing this? Ants! No. Worms.
There’s big night crawlers. You know what a night crawler is? They grow straight down into the
ground, and they come up at night and pull leaves down into their burrows. And they eat the leaf
right off. That’s why we’re not finding any leaves.”
Worms eating leaves might seem natural, but it turns out these worms aren’t native to these
woods. The last glacier buried most of what is now the Great Lakes region. When it melted,
plants and animals returned to create a community of maples, pines, songbirds, and tender plants
growing on the forest floor, like trillium…but not earthworms.
Cindy Hale is a biologist who studies the native wildflowers that grow in northern hardwood
forests. She loves the spring bloomers that take root in the spongy layer of decaying leaves on
the forest floor. Trillium, bloodroot, solomon’s seal.
Hale says many of these plants are disappearing.
“Sites that forty years ago were carpets of trillium have been slowly over the last two decades
declining to almost nothing, and people were scratching their heads, trying to figure out just
what’s going on.”
Earthworm populations are thickest close to cities. But Hale says people bring worms with them
when they come to the woods.
At first, settlers carried them in, along with the animals and plants they brought from Europe or
the east coast. These days, worms are spread by people who drive in the woods – loggers, ATV
riders…
“But in particular, fishing bait is a huge way that worms get moved around in our region.
Because there’s so many lakes and so much fishing.”
Hale and her colleagues set up test plots along an advancing line of worms in the Chippewa
National Forest in central Minnesota. The worms crawl about three yards further into the forest
each year. Hale is studying how the soil and the plants have changed as the worms advance.
Worms eat the decaying leaves on the forest floor. They mix that organic matter into the mineral
soil beneath it. And in time, they can use up all the organic matter and leave only mineral soil
behind.
That means the plants that have evolved to take root in the leaves on top of the soil have lost their
home.
Hale says these changes could affect every plant and animal that lives in the woods. She says,
for instance, even birds have declined by nearly 50% in the last fourteen years.
“Because ovenbirds nest in that forest floor, so if you lose the forest floor, then you may well
affect ground-nesting birds such as that. So when you start thinking about it, the potential
ramifications across the ecosystem get really wild.”
Hale says one of the big challenges in studying this problem is that there’s been very little basic
research – like how many worms are there are and where.
To gather more information and to get more people involved, Hale created a web-based learning
program. She’s asking teachers from around the country to have their classes do worm counts
and other research. Hale plans to add their data to the web page.
In Minnesota, the Department of Natural Resources is working with interest groups to try to slow
the spread of worms. Next year’s fishing regulations will include instructions not to dump your
worms at the end of a day of fishing.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill in Duluth.
In the early 1800’s, the forests of the upper Great Lakes were dominated by enormous white pines. By the close of the century, most of these white pine forests had been cleared by aggressive loggers with little or no experience in forest management. Other species of trees like aspen began to flourish in the spaces where the white pines once grew, and the forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota were changed forever. Now, some environmental groups would like to see the forests returned to their natural state, and one group is taking the issue to court. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has this report:
Transcript
In the early 1800’s, the forests of the upper Great Lakes were dominated by enormous white pines. By the close of the century, most of these white pine forests had been cleared by aggressive loggers with little or no experience in forest management. Other species of trees like aspen began to flourish in the spaces where the white pines once grew, and the forests of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota were changed forever. Now, some environmental groups would like to see the forests returned to their natural state… and one group is taking the issue to court. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell has this report:
(Natural sound: walking through snow)
This patch
of land in Michigan’s Huron-Manistee National Forest was clear-cut last year. That means all the aspen trees were cut down, fed into a chipper, and hauled away to make particleboard and paper. All that was left was a wide-open field. A dense stubble of new growth is already emerging from the snow, though — a forest recreating itself. But here’s what bothers Marv Roberson, a forest policy specialist for the Sierra Club:
Nearly all of the new trees are aspens…
“You can see coming up, aspen that’s most of it less than a year old, some of it’s three feet tall already, and since it comes from root suckers, what it’s done is it’s gotten a head start on all the competition, so next summer when all these little trees have their leaves out, the floor of what used to be a forest and will be again, will have shade on it and so a lot of the smaller trees that want to come up from seeds that didn’t get a chance this summer won’t be able to.”
Aspens are known as
a “pioneer species.” Whenever there’s a major disturbance — a fire, a tornado, or clear-cut — aspens recover quickly. And they take over, squeezing out any other species that might try to grow there. Roberson says he doesn’t believe that would happen nearly as often if the forests weren’t clear-cut. He says the aspens would eventually grow old, die and fall down. And then, in the absence of a major disturbance, the white pines would thrive again.
It’s enough of an issue that the Sierra Club has filed a lawsuit against the United States Forest Service. The group is asking that the Forest Service do a study to analyze the long-term effects of clear-cutting aspen on federal land. In the meantime, they’re asking for a moratorium on aspen logging in certain parts of the national forests…
“The reason for our lawsuit is not to stop the harvesting of aspen. The reason for the lawsuit is to get the forest service to do an analysis of what the effects are. We’re right now going through the biggest forest experiment in North American history. We’re altering the kinds of forests that we have and we don’t know what the long term results are.”
The lawsuit has suddenly raised the stakes in what has been an on going discussion about the future of the national forests. Every ten to fifteen years, the Forest Service creates a new management plan for each National Forest in the Great Lakes region. The discussion often involves representatives from environmental organizations, wildlife preservation groups and timber companies. But it rarely ends up in court. Forest
Service officials are not allowed to comment on the specifics of the lawsuit. But Regional Planner Sam Emmons says any decisions on forest planning involve a lot of thought, foresight and input from the public…
“The Forest Service is looking for a diversity of timber species and diversity of wildlife habitats and understands that whatever transitions that are made have some effect on the local sawmills and pulp mills and the folks who live up in the North Woods.”
The forests are an important part of life in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The federal government estimates that logging and forest-related activities annually contribute nearly 30 billion dollars to the economies of just those three states. For many of those who live in the region, logging is what pays the bills. Jim Schmierer of Michigan Technological University’s Forestry Program says residents in the Upper Great Lakes forests approach issues about the forests with a blend of intelligence, experience and passion…
“Maybe grandpa was a logger or they’ve been managing a family woodlot for fifty years and so there’s a real strong connection to the land in a lot of cases up here with people who that are very familiar with forest practices, so it’s kinda unique, a much different situation than some in the west, so definitely an interesting dynamic here.”
For that reason, the Sierra Club lawsuit has created some resentment among those who make their living from logging aspen. John Lamy is President of the Timber Producers Association of Michigan and Wisconsin. He says the Forest Service’s management plans involve a lot of public input and compromise. He says he doesn’t understand why the Sierra Club had to get the courts involved…
“I just feel that since everybody had a chance to participate in the plan and develop the plan and that plan has been approved that we should allow that process to go forward and the Sierra Club is choosing to go through the courts to change a major part of that plan.”
Marv Roberson of the Sierra Club says his group has been trying to work within the system. But he says the Forest Service isn’t getting the message. So the lawsuit is simply a last resort. In the end, the Sierra Club may be getting its way even without the lawsuit. Since the 1960’s the aspen population in the upper Great Lakes has actually declined. Roberson acknowledges this and offers this analogy: If a patient’s temperature goes from one hundred five degrees to one hundred three degrees, he might be getting better. But he’s still sick.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.
The Asian longhorned beetle, native to China, is a serious threat to hardwood trees in the U.S. So far, populations of the beetle have been confined to Chicago and New York. Foresters are concerned that more non-native species will be introduced through expanded global trade. Photo courtesy of USDA-APHIS.
Forests in the Midwest may be under siege from exotic species more often in the future… partly because of international trade. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams explains:
Transcript
Forests in the Midwest may be under siege from exotic species more often in the future… partly because of international trade. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:
The Asian longhorned beetle is native to China.
The beetle caught a ride to the U.S. in the wooden packing material of
imported goods. So far, the beetle has been found in New York and
Chicago.
Once a tree is infested with beetles, the best way to stop the beetles from spreading is to destroy the tree.
A National Academy of Sciences study predicts that threats to native species will increase as trade opens up between the U.S. and China. The authors say that China may become a new “donor region” for species that could become invasive.
Entomologist Deborah McCullough is an author of the study.
“You can kind of visualize this whole complex of insects and weeds and plant pathogens in Asia that haven’t had a pathway, they haven’t had a route to be brought to the country yet… and we really don’t know what all could end up coming in.”
Dr. McCullough says because China’s range of climates and plant life are similar to that of the U.S., many species that make it over here have a chance to become established.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
