animals - The Environment Report

Public Outcry Absent From Invasives Problem

Government, industry, and activists work to inform people about individual threats of non-native invasive species. However, there is no comprehensive approach to reducing biological contamination of the Great Lakes region.

One of the biggest environmental problems facing the Great Lakes is the introduction of foreign plants and animals. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel are causing havoc to the lakes. Local, state, and federal governments know about the problems. But there’s not been much public pressure on the governments to do much about them. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

One of the biggest environmental problems facing the Great Lakes is the introduction of
foreign plants and animals. Invasive species such as the zebra mussel are causing havoc
to the lakes. Local, state, and federal governments know about the problems. But there’s
not been much public pressure on the governments to do much about them. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Here’s a factoid for you. In the United States alone in the 1980’s and ’90’s, it’s estimated
that it cost more than two-billion dollars to keep zebra mussels from clogging up water
intake pipes. Two-billion! Guess who paid for that? You did – in higher bills.

Zebra mussels are an invasive species. That is, they are native to a foreign place and they
were transported here – like many invasives – by a ship. Zebra mussels were sucked up in
ballast water in a foreign port and then pumped out in a Great Lakes port. The zebra
mussels have spread all over the Great Lakes, in huge numbers. They attach to
everything, including intake pipes. They’ve crowded out native mussels. And zebra
mussels eat the microscopic plant life at the bottom of the food chain, making fish more
scarce and causing fish prices to go up.

And that’s just the beginning. There’s been something like 160 invasive species such as
foreign fish, aquatic nuisances, plants, and insects brought into the Great Lakes region
one way or another and each one has caused problems. Dutch elm disease kills trees. A
fish called round goby eats the eggs of native sport fish. Invasive mites are killing off
honey bees.

“People aren’t outraged about it. And they’re not outraged about it because, I think, we in
the public interest community and the government side haven’t done what it takes to
clearly communicate why this is a problem to people.”

Cameron Davis is with the Lake Michigan Federation, an environmental group that
works to get policies changed in the Great Lakes basin. Davis says most of the time
people just don’t understand that because the government is not doing enough to stop
invasive species from entering the country, it ends up costing them and takes a toll on the
natural environment.

“When zebra mussels, for example, get into drinking water intakes, municipalities have to
pay to keep those things out of there. That means higher rates for you and me. For other
people, fishing is impacted. Invasive species getting into the lakes can mean competition
for those native species like yellow perch because of round gobies, because of zebra
mussels and other invasive species getting into the Great Lakes.”

The government agencies which work on these kinds of problems know about them and
some things have been done to try to prevent new invasive species from being introduced
or control them once they’re here.

Tom Skinner is a regional administrator for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
and also heads up the EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office. Skinner says there
are several obstacles to stopping the invasions.

“One is identifying all the possibilities out there. Two is identifying how they get into the
lakes. Three is coming up with a technical solution to deal with the invasive nature of the
species. And four is getting the resources to make sure that you put the technical
solutions into place.”

And there’s another problem – government agencies, much like people, tend to deal with
one problem at a time. For example, sea lampreys entered the Great Lakes after a canal
was opened. They decimated lake trout populations. Government agencies attacked that
problem. Asian carp are threatening to spread from the Mississippi River system into the
Great Lakes through a canal. Government agencies are putting up barriers. One problem
equals one fix.

Tom Skinner’s counterpart in Canada, John Mills with Environment Canada, says
governments are beginning to realize that stopping the spread of invasive species cannot
just be fixed one problem at a time.

“It isn’t a simple problem of just focusing in on ballast water. It’s a much broader
problem. You can get organisms coming in on wood or other commodities that will take
up residence in the basin and create havoc.”

So, there are lots of ways for invasive species to enter the Great Lakes region. But the
Lake Michigan Federation’s Cameron Davis says no one seems to be looking at the
overall problem.

“We’ve got a number of different gateways to get into the Great Lakes, but we have all
kinds of different departments looking at A) individual gateways, or B) looking at
individual species. Nobody’s really there to pull it all together. We have a big
institutional problem that way.”

And there’s no one movement among environmental groups or consumer groups to
pressure the governments to step back and look at the policies that allow shipping and
trade to continue to easily transport invasive species into the Great Lakes region.

The EPA’s Tom Skinner says government agencies are working on it.

“We’re going to continue to work with the Coast Guard, with the Corps of Engineers,
with our friends to the north in Canada and try and come up with a comprehensive
solution to these various invasive problems. But, it’s easy to say; it takes a great deal of
work and effort to do that.”

And government agencies are not getting any real kind of public pressure to do it because
the public doesn’t realize the price it’s paying for invasive species.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Birders Flock to Hawk Mountain

Each fall, thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:

Transcript

Each fall, about thousands of hawks, eagles, and other birds of prey fly hundreds of miles
in search of warmer climates. And between August and December, nearly 70-thousand
people will climb to the top of a bird sanctuary called Hawk Mountain to get a closer
look at those birds. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder reports:

“Those of you haven’t found the osprey, it’s over there at owl’s head, naked eye here to
the right.”

On a clear day, the view from atop Hawk Mountain stretches for more than fifty miles.
But on this particularly hazy Saturday afternoon, bird-watchers are pushing their
binoculars and telescopes to the limits.

“Well, we’re making them out there, they’re coming in. It’s like you just gotta wait ’til
they get a little closer than what they typically do. They’ve been popping out of clouds
and haze all day for us.”

Doug Wood is a volunteer at Hawk Mountain in Eastern Pennsylvania. This afternoon,
he’s the official bird counter.

“We’re basically taking a lot of field information. Wind, weather, temperature, cloud
cover, wind direction. And then we’re basically monitoring the birds’ species, age, sex,
and recording it every hour.

“Look! An Osprey! And then fade to scene change.”

Researchers at Hawk Mountain have been keeping records of osprey and other migratory
raptors for more than seventy years, making it the oldest monitoring station in the world.

In the early twentieth century, hunters would shoot thousands of birds from the
mountainside each year. Today, people travel from all over the world to shoot birds with
their cameras.

Matt Wong came all the way from New Zealand to study at the sanctuary.

“Hawk Mountain is internationally renowned as a hawk watch site. And also a place
where big research actually happens. Now, not many of the locals around Pennsylvania
actually realize this, but it’s actually huge on the international scene. It’s world
recognized, and that’s one of the reasons why I came here.”

In Wong’s country, there are only two species of raptors. In America, he’s had a chance
to study dozens of varieties.

But even with so many different species populating North America, many people still
think of them as strangers or sometimes even as monsters.

“I still get, amazingly to me, a lot of people that think that these birds are out to get us.”

Volunteer Bob Owens has spent the last 20 years doing education programs at Hawk
Mountain.

“If you intrude into their territory when they have young in the nest, or something like
that, yeah, they’re probably going to chase you. As far as them killing babies and taking
them from baby carriages, this is all old wives tales. This just does not happen.”

Owens runs a small farm for a living, where he says hawks and barn owls help keep
rodents under control. But in a larger sense, Owens says there’s a lot people can learn
from these birds.

“Any three and a half pound bird that can apply four hundred pounds of pressure with its
talons is built to do what they’re doing. They are at the top of the food chain. And that’s
the other big thing that it shows us. It just opens up a door here as to all the reasons the
birds are either dropping or rising in population. What are we doing?”

Owens says in the seventy years researchers at Hawk Mountain have been counting birds,
they’ve seen populations rise and fall. Hawks and eagles are hardy birds. But even the
most successful predators can fall victim to environmental change.

Keith Bildstein is the sanctuary’s director of conservation programs. He says raptors are
like sensitive tools, telling researchers when something’s wrong with an ecosystem.

“Birds of prey are excellent biological indicators. In the middle of the last century they
told us that we were having a problem with our misuse of organochlorine pesticides,
specifically DDT. Today, they’re leading us in explorations of the spread of West Nile
Virus.”

Bildstein says because raptors are at the top of the food chain, when their numbers fall
it’s a pretty good sign that their food source is dwindling, their habitat could be
disappearing, or air quality might be suffering.

But for most of Hawk Mountain’s visitors, the birds are more than barometers of a
healthy ecosystem. According to birder Judy Higgs, they’re beautiful creatures,
especially when viewed from a great height.

“These birds are just majestic. And the other thing is that they go so far. You know,
some of these birds are going to South America!”

Higgs first climbed the mountain in 1970, when she was a student at nearby Kutztown
University. Before moving out of state, Higgs used to come to Hawk Mountain daily…
she stills visits on weekends whenever she can.

“I used to do work in the morning, come here in the afternoon, go home, and finish my
work at night so I could be here.”

By day’s end, Higgs and her fellow birdwatchers count more than 600 raptors. During
the fall season, as many as 70-thousand predatory birds, from vultures to falcons might
pass by on their way to distant points.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.

Eliminating Sources of Beach Contamination

This bread was dumped at a park along a Great Lakes beach for the gulls, geese, and squirrels that live there. Beach visitors often assume high bacteria levels that close beaches to swimmers are solely due to sewer overflows, but animals that defecate in the area also contribute to the problem.

This past summer beaches around the Great Lakes were closed in record numbers because of high bacteria counts. One government study indicates part of the problem might be animal feces, but the public does not seem to be aware that of the connection. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

This past summer beaches around the Great Lakes were closed in record numbers
because of high bacteria counts. One government study indicates part of the problem
might be animal feces, but the public does not seem to be aware that of the connection.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

High levels of bacteria in the water can make swimmers sick. Cameron Davis is with the
watchdog group, the Lake Michigan Federation. He says more can be done to stop the
contamination if sewer plants are improved and if beach visitors were more aware that
leaving food waste and feeding gulls and geese adds to the problem. That’s because the
birds defecate more, causing higher levels of bacteria along the shore.

“So, we’ve got the sewage treatment agencies saying ‘Oh, no. It’s the geese and the
gulls,’ and we’ve got the people feeding the birds saying ‘Oh, no. It’s sewage treatment
plants.’ So, you can see, it’s a combination of sources and there are things — I don’t care
what anybody says — there are things we can do to help solve the problem with all those
different sources.”

Davis says local governments need to start identifying and eliminating those sources of
beach contamination, starting with improving sewer plants and getting people to clean up
after their visits and to stop feeding wildlife at the beaches.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Low-Impact Trekking With Llamas

"Streak" heads to the trail.

For over 4,000 years, llamas have been used to carry loads through rough mountain terrain. Out West, it’s not uncommon to see llamas carrying tents, sleeping bags, and food for hikers. In the Great Lakes region, llamas are still an unusual sight on the trail, but an increasing number of people are starting to go trekking with them. They’re agile, surefooted, and tread lightly on the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports:

Transcript

For over 4,000 years llamas have been used to carry loads through rough mountain
terrain. Out West it’s not uncommon to see llamas carrying tents, sleeping bags, and food
for hikers. In the Great Lakes region, llamas are still an unusual sight on the trail, but an
increasing number of people are starting to go trekking with them. They’re agile,
surefooted, and tread lightly on the earth. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar
Charney reports:

(leaf noise) (walking)

“This is pretty, the lake out here.”

Cheryl Topliff is leading her llama named Streak through the woods at Seven Lakes State
Park in Michigan. Streak is mostly black except for his feet, his face, and the front of his
neck

“And he’s got curly locks on the top of his head – he’s cute.”

And he’s a bit unusual; he’s a talker.

(llama noises)

“I’m getting a fully narrated tour.”

Cheryl Topliff originally got Streak because of his long wooly hair. She’s a fiber artist
and weaves with llama fur. But recently she and her husband got interested in hiking
with their llamas.

“For me personally, it is just getting outdoors on a nice fall day and getting some exercise and
walking, plus the comradery of the other llama people.”

Streak sets the pace for a group of hikers and their llamas. They wander through
meadows full of flowers. They find their way through deep wooded groves. And
trudge up and down hills.

He does like to walk and he likes to be out in front of the whole group.

But today’s trek isn’t for fun. Streak is working on getting certified as
a pack llama – that’s a llama that has been tested to make sure it’s trained
to carry loads and behave well in the backcountry. That means they go
where they’re led and don’t spit or kick.

Dave Foy is with the Pack Llama Association. It’s his job to make sure Streak and the
rest of the llamas are properly tested.

“Not every llama is a pack llama and people have a tendency to think so because that’s
what they’ve really been bred for but some of them don’t like it so a pack trial will put
through a regime of obstacles and trials.”

Such as jumping logs, crossing bridges, and walking through muddy streams.

“Now try to enter that water as close to the flag as possible. We want to make sure he
gets his feet wet.”

Cheryl Topliff’s husband, Don, goes first with a llama named Standing Ovation.

“It’s very shallow. Step over.”

But Standing Ovation wants nothing to do with the water. He hesitates, (“come on”)
(squish), slowly walks in (splash), and then suddenly lunges and jumps to the bank
(splash).

“That’s enough.”

It cost him. Standing Ovation loses points for bad behavior.

(splash)

Streak goes next. He crosses the water with out a hitch, and continues on down
the trail.

(amb of hiking)

(woof woof)

“Wow, I’ve never seen a llama up close.”

(woof)

“Hey, hey, quiet, nice guys.”

Streak and the rest of the llamas are an unusual site in the woods, so people out trekking
with llamas often have to stop to answer questions about what they’re doing. Margaret
Van Camp organized today’s pack trials. She says llamas seem to have gotten a bad
reputation.

“People who don’t have llamas don’t have a positive impression of llamas. They always
think they spit and they think you can’t ride them. What are they good for? But then they
see you doing this and they realize you can have a lot of fun with them.”

“Wow! Look at the pretty llamas.”

(woof woof)

Margaret Van Camp says the nice thing about llamas is that they find their own food,
don’t need much water since they are related to camels, and they don’t damage trails like
horses, mules, and bicycles.

“So that’s why llamas are so nice – because they’re so enviro-friendly they make it easy
to carry more with no more impact on the environment than you – probably less than you
with your hiking boots.”

That’s because llama’s have padded feet like a dog, not hooves which is why on federal
land, llamas are allowed on trails that are closed to horses. And that’s one reason llama
trekking is growing in popularity.

“All right, if you can come one at a time. This is a kicker hill. Next llama. He’s rearing
to go. He’s revving his engines.”

(llama noises)

“We’re going mountain climbing. You ready for this big boy? (llama noises) Good.”

By the end of the hike, Streak has negotiated all the obstacles and passed all his tests.

(amb: trailer door)

Cheryl Topliff loads him in the trailer and heads for home with damp feet, a muddy
husband, and a couple llamas ready for their next adventure in the woods.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.

GAUGING MANKIND’S ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT

In the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South Africa, there’s been a lot of talk about how to balance human needs with the health of the planet. Ecologists have been trying to measure the impact of humans on the environment for a number of years, with some sobering results. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman went to the New York Botanical Garden recently to gauge mankind’s ecological footprint:

Transcript

In the wake of the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg, South
Africa, there’s been a lot of talk about how to balance human needs with the health of the
planet. Ecologists have been trying to measure the impact of humans on the environment
for a number of years, with some sobering results. The Great Lake Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman went to the New
York Botanical Garden recently to gauge mankind’s ecological footprint.

[Rain forest sounds, misters, tinkling of water, rain falling on leaves]

To get a good sense of the impact humans are having on earth, you could travel for weeks
on intercontinental plane flights, river boats and desert jeeps. Or, as Columbia University
biologist, Stuart Pimm suggested, visit a botanical garden. There, under the glass and
ironwork of a conservatory, Pimm says you can see a resource that humans are
over-using – Earth’s most important resource, its plant-life.

“We’re sitting in the rain forest here at the New York Botanical Society. And it’s a riot of
green.”

Professor Pimm says here beneath the misters in the Tropical Rain Forest Gallery is a
good place to start a whirlwind tour of Earth’s greenery. The air is heavy with moisture
and sweet-smelling.

“Rain forests are some of the most productive parts of the planet. They grow extremely
quickly and they are therefore generating a lot of biological production.”

What Pimm calls biological production most of us know as plant growth. Biologists say
all this green growth in tropical forests and elsewhere on Earth is the foundation upon
which all life rests.

“Everything in our lives is dependent upon biological productivity – everything that we
eat, everything that our domestic animals eat.”

And everything that every other animal eats as well. In a recent book, Pimm painstakingly
tallies up how much biological productivity we use. He starts with the rain forest. In the
last 50 years, loggers and settlers have cut down 3 million square miles of lush tropical
forests. Much was cut down for subsistence agriculture, a purpose Pimm says it serves
poorly.

“Although the tropical forest looks rich and productive, it is a very special place. And
when you chop that forest down the areas that replace it often become very, very much
less productive.”

[Sound of walking around conservatory]

Pimm speaks of the toll on greenery of cities and roads and of land converted to farming
in temperate regions such as the U.S. Midwest. Then, trekking along the botanical
garden’s gravel paths, he leaves behind the tropical mists and steps into the dry heat of a
Southwestern desert. Deserts and other dry lands are not very productive, but they
account for a substantial fraction of Earth’s land surface. Most of it is grazed by flocks of
sheep, goats, camels and cattle, often causing severe damage to vegetation. When these
uses are added to the other impacts of humanity on earth’s bounty, the results are
surprisingly large.

“What silence has shown is that we are taking 2/5ths of the biological production on land,
a third from the oceans. And that of the world’s fresh water supply, we’re taking half.”

[Fade out sound of conservatory. Fade up sound of Texas frogs.]

[Sound of plane engines]

Frogs and toads croak out a spring mating ritual in a concrete drainage ditch. Nearby, a
pilot practices maneuvers in a small plane occasionally drowning out the amphibian
serenade. Living in culverts, sharing the night with droning engines, these wild animals
are never completely free of human influences. From his Stanford University office,
Professor Peter Vitousek says wherever you look, the din of human activities is
interrupting and crowding out other species. Vitousek made one of the first attempts to
tally the impact of people on plant productivity in 1985.

[Frogs fade out in time for Vitousek’s act]

“The message to me was that we are already having a huge impact on all the other species
because of our use of the production of Earth and the land surface of Earth. That’s not
something that our models predict for some time in the future or something that we’re
guessing at on the basis of fairly weak information. It’s something that we’re clearly
doing now. That’s already happening.”

Many ecologists say this conclusion is beyond doubt. What they can’t say is whether
human domination of so much of nature’s output is good or bad. University of Minnesota
Professor David Tilman says as a member of the human race himself, he appreciates the
comforts in clothing, shelter and food our lifestyles buy us. And he acknowledges that the
survival of our own species is probably not imperiled – at least for the moment – by the
destruction of others. Still, he wonders if someday we’ll regret today’s resource intensive
practices.

“I think the more relevant question to me is, ‘Are we doing this wisely?’ ‘Are we wisely
appropriating the resources of the world?’ So, my concern is that we live in a balanced
way – a way that is sustainable through generations – that we leave our children and
grandchildren the same kind of world that we have.”

An expert on the impacts of agriculture, Tilman says we’re using up more resources than
can be replaced. He says if we don’t grapple with these important issues now, by the time
the human population reaches eight to ten billion or so people later this century, it might
be too difficult for us to do enough to save the planet’s life as we know it today.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Daniel Grossman.

Bear Activity in National Park Increases

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore plans to step up its education campaign about the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country. Park officials hope that will end this past summer’s encounters between campers and bears. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

The Apostle Islands National Lakeshore plans to step up its education campaign about
the do’s and don’ts of living in bear country. Park officials hope that will end this past summer’s encounters between campers and bears. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike
Simonson reports.

With about 30 bears on Stockton Island, some of them decided to swim for a less-
crowded scrounging area. So, this summer, campers reported bears rummaging through
their food on neighboring islands – forcing the Park Service to close a couple of
campsites.

Apostle Islands Resource Specialist Julie Van Stappen says the bear population may be a
little crowded. And even though there has been an annual hunt of bears since the mid-1990’s, she doesn’t expect much help thinning out the bear population from hunters.

“Very few people do it. You have to get out to the islands and there’s no motorized equipment allowed, so it would be a very different hunt.”

Next summer, Van Stappen says instead of moving bears or closing campsites, the best
bet is to educate campers about storing food, and not attracting bears in the first place.
She says that would be the simplest way to end the close encounters of the bear kind on
the Apostle Islands.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

Grass-Fed Beef Good for Business?

Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves… but there’s a growing number of organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy alternative. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brad Linder has more:

Transcript

Most of the cattle raised in the Great Lakes region spend their lives in a feedlot, fattening up on
corn and other grains before becoming dinner themselves. But there’s a growing number of
organic farmers looking at putting their cows in the pasture. They say grass-fed beef is a healthy
alternative. Brad Linder has more:

(Sound of cows mooing)

Here on Natural Acres Farm in Millersburg, in Central Pennsylvania, 120 cows have their heads
to the ground. They’re chewing on tender shoots of grass instead of ground corn or some mixture
of grain feed.

Steve Shelley is in charge of marketing beef for Natural Acres. He says cows are designed to eat
grass, but most farmers today find it cheaper and easier to buy commercial feed made from grains
like corn.

“You know farmers nowadays. Well that’s the way their dads did it, so they’re doing the same
thing. It’s much easier to go out and dump a bucket of feed into a pen for that animal to eat than
it is for that animal to be out, to get the best benefit from the soil.”

And Shelley says another reason most farmers use grain feed is that it takes longer to raise cattle
on grass. Grain-fed cows are ready for slaughter within a year, but Natural Acres cows can take
six months to a year longer to reach the same size.

But Shelley says that convenience for the farmer comes at a cost to the cattle. Shelley says cows
raised on corn get sick more often than grass-fed cattle. As preventative measures, cows
traditionally have antibiotics mixed in with their feed and require frequent visits from the
veterinarian.

Cows on organic farms are naturally healthier. And since Shelley’s marketing his product to
consumers interested in “healthier meat,” the animals also don’t receive growth hormones or other
chemicals often found in commercial beef.

Natural Acres runs an organic foods shop on-site. But Shelley says the market for such products
is pretty small in rural Central Pennsylvania. Most of the beef isn’t sold here. Instead, much of it
is shipped to restaurants and stores, where people are willing to pay premium prices.

“In a grocery store, you may pay anywhere from a $1.75/pound to $2.00 for a pound of beef.
Retail, we get $4.09.”

Being able to charge more for beef is only one of the perks to raising cattle on grass. The farmers
who raise grass-fed beef don’t have to pay as much to the veterinarian.

“The animals rarely get sick. And I have talked to hundreds of people who raise animals on
pasture.”

Jo Robinson is author of the book, “Why Grass Fed is Best.” She also runs the website
‘eatwild.com,’ which compiles research on grass-fed cattle.

“The big surprise, I think – and this wasn’t known until about 1998 – is that an animal raised on
pasture has five times the amount of cancer fighting fat called conjugated linoleic acid, or CLA.”

Robinson says CLA helps prevent cows from developing tumors. There is some evidence
suggesting CLA has the same effect on humans, but it’s not yet clear if eating grass-fed beef is a
way for people to fight off cancer.

Robinson does point out that CLA is just one of the reasons there’s a growing demand for grass-
fed beef.

“Some people gravitate towards pasture finished meat because it’s free of hormones and
antibiotics. Some people are aware of the nutritional benefits. They like the fact that it’s lower in
saturated fat, higher in omega 3 fatty acids, higher in vitamin E, and a number of other
substances. It’s simply a healthier product all around.”

Robinson says she first started looking for American grass-farmers in 1997, and only found about
sixty. Now, she says, the market has grown to include at least ten times that number, which still
only represents a small portion of the American Beef Industry.

Paul Slayton is director of the Pennsylvania Beef Council, the non-profit organization charged
with promoting the state’s beef industry. Slayton says less than 1% of the state’s beef production
comes from grass farms. But he says those farms do fill an important role.

“I see it being a very viable part of our production in this part of the country, because we have
such an eclectic consumer group. And there are some consumers that just won’t eat anything else
but organic. And somebody’s going to be providing their food.”

As the beef industry is recovering from public concern over mad cow disease and e. coli bacteria,
Slayton says anything that convinces people meat is safe is fine by him.

And as for the taste of grass-fed beef, Steve Shelley from Natural Acres Farm says it might be
more familiar than many people think.

“Many times when I go and do a taste test at a store or something, a lot of the older people, when
they try it, make the comment: ‘This tastes like beef used to taste.'”

Shelley says the meat is leaner and can be tougher if cows aren’t fed a little grain before slaughter.
But Natural Acres is experimenting with different types of grass that might lend a more
consumer-friendly texture to the beef.

Shelley says it’s a combination of taste and nutrition that gets most people interested, even some
people who had given up on commercial beef altogether. Shelley tells one story about a man
who’s wife had banned meat from their house for five years.

“So he bought a hamburger and finally got her to try it, and at the end of the day, he gave me a high five, and he said, ‘I can eat beef
again! She’s given me permission to bring beef into the house!’ Well, that really makes you feel
good.”

So grass-fed beef is entering households that hadn’t seen any beef in a while for environmental
reasons or because of health concerns. While the beef might be a taste of days gone by, organic
farmers are getting better prices for their meat than even in the best of days past.

(moo moo)

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Brad Linder.

Pitfalls of Spraying for West Nile Virus

The Culex pipiens quinquefasciatus mosquito - one of the mosquitoes responsible for the transmission of West Nile virus. Photo courtesy of the USGS.

The West Nile virus has claimed 28 lives and at least 550 people have been infected in the nation so far this summer. And evidence of the virus has already been found in 41 states. The carriers of the virus, mosquitoes, have been a concern and a nuisance for public health officials. Many citizens are demanding more visible action on the officials’ part to get rid of the bad bugs…like spraying chemicals to kill adult mosquitoes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Annie MacDowell reports:

Transcript

You might not expect to find a breeding ground of controversy in the suburbs, but
then again, you wouldn’t expect to find an exotic disease breeding there, either.
With the West Nile virus threatening any place that has mosquitoes…which is almost
anywhere…people are fighting over whether to spray or not to spray.

Spraying means releasing pesticides into the air to kill adult mosquitoes.
Pro-sprayers say the threat of West Nile virus necessitates this chemical
treatment. But some people who live in spraying districts are worried about the
possible dangers of the pesticides. Dr. Kim Stone is the Executive Director of the
Safer Pest Control Project in Chicago. As we walk around a nature preserve, she
tells me they’ve started spraying in her neighborhood and she’s worried about her
kids. Passing the pond and a grove of trees, she says the pesticides could kill fish
that eat mosquito larvae and birds that eat the adults. But she’s more concerned
about their possible threat to humans.

“I believe that the health impacts of the pesticides are a greater danger than the health impacts of West Nile virus. A local hospital had seen many people who thought that they had West Nile virus, came in with headache, nausea, and the hospital said that they did not have West Nile virus, but suspected that it might be related to the pesticides, because it was the morning after pesticides were sprayed in those neighborhoods.”

Stone recommends a different form of mosquito abatement…larvaecide.
Larvaecide is a preventative form a treatment that kills mosquito larvae before they
hatch. Pellets of larvaecide are dropped into lagoons, or a blower is used to spread
granules over the water. The chemicals are less toxic, she says, and they’re
species-specific. That means they won’t kill other animals. Dr. William Paul is with
the Chicago Department of Public Health. He says the city of Chicago hasn’t started
spraying because larvaecide is much more effective.

“We would really, in terms of mosquito control, want to focus on the long run,
breeding sites, and larval breeding sites, because that’s in the long run what’s going to be more effective. Using sprays for adults to kill the northern house mosquito… it’s challenging, you need tightly spaced applications of the product. And it’s not just a going up and down the streets kind of thing.

But spraying is a more visible treatment than larvaecide. Paul says people like to
see their government doing something to combat the mosquitoes. It makes them
feel better, he says. Other government officials can relate. Dr. Kiahn Liem has
been the head of the South Cook County Mosquito Abatement District in the Chicago area for 28 years. He’s has been working with mosquitoes since he was a little boy. He says watching many of his fathers’ patients die of malaria in his native country led him to his current profession of killing mosquitoes.

“I grew up in Indonesia, and malaria is a big killer of people there. Almost six to ten million people every year get killed by malaria. And there’s probably ten times more mosquitoes there than here.”

Liem uses larvaecide in his district. He hasn’t sprayed since 1977, after the
outbreak of St. Louis encephalitis, another virus carried by mosquitoes. He says
spraying was not effective then, and it still isn’t now, as most mosquitoes hide out in
people’s back yards, in the bushes or under leaves. He says the spray released from
trucks in the street just doesn’t reach them. But many of his citizens demand a
visible fight against the mosquitoes.

“They want to see you working. But if you work and you don’t do anything for them, you’re just fooling them. We have many of them that call us, and say, I want you here, I want you to show me that you’re doing something for my money. And we do that just to appease them.”

If people really want peace of mind, personal protection is what most experts
recommend. They say to wear long sleeves and pants between dusk and dawn
when mosquitoes are out in force. If you’re going outside, use mosquito repellent.
And routinely change standing water on your property, such as kiddie pools and bird
baths, to cut down on available mosquito breeding sites.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium…I’m Annie MacDowell.

Third Graders Help Pass Green Law

A group of third graders has taken a stand on an environmental issue – and won. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, they’ve convinced their county legislature to approve a new law to protect wildlife:

Transcript

A group of third graders has taken a stand on an environmental issue – and won.
As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, they’ve
convinced their county legislature to approve a new law to protect wildlife:

The students in Robyn Siegelman’s third grade class were concerned when they learned about the health problems encountered by animals that accidentally swallow balloons.
So, for Earth Day, they decided to lobby their county legislature to prohibit people from releasing large numbers of balloons into the environment. According to Siegelman, the students showed up at the Suffolk County legislature in Long Island with picket
signs and speeches.

“They spoke in front of the 18 legislators and the legislators were very impressed with their speeches and the research they had done and the thought that went into what they had to say.”

The legislators recently voted to ban the release of 25 or more balloons into the air at one time. The bill still has to be signed by the county executive. But Siegelman says the students have already learned important lessons – about the environment and their
ability to protect it.

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

Stronger Invasive Law on the Horizon?

Congress is considering legislation that would create national standards for fighting invasive species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Transcript

Congress is considering legislation that would create national standards for fighting invasive species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:

Two Republican house members and a Democratic Senator are sponsoring the legislation. If the bill passes, it would create nationwide standards designed to keep foreign species from overrunning native plants and animals.

The legislation would extend the ballast water exchange standards currently in effect in the Great Lakes to the entire country. It would also improve screening protocols for importing plants and animals.

The bill also includes some funding to test new technologies. They include using chlorine, filters, and ultraviolet lights to kill off foreign species at some entry points to U.S. waterways.

A staff member for Michigan Senator Carl Levin says the bill is intended to be a first step toward developing international rules to stop the spread of invasive species. The lawmakers plan to introduce the bill when they return from their August recess.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.