A commission that advises the US and
Canadian governments on the Great Lakes wants to
see more accountability from Washington and
Ottawa. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
A commission that advises the US and
Canadian governments on the Great Lakes wants to
see more accountability from Washington and
Ottawa. Chuck Quirmbach reports:
The International Joint Commission is focusing its latest report on
getting the US and Canada to set up an accountability plan for
restoring and protecting the Great Lakes.
US Commissioner Allen Olson says one example of accountability is
getting Congress to approve money for an Asian Carp barrier near
Chicago to keep the foreign fish out of the lakes.
“There are a number of members of the United States Congress of both
parties that are immediately accountable to address that issue.”
Canadian Commissioner Jack Blaney says the governments also have to be
accountable to what citizens said at recent IJC hearings:
“They want to swim at their beaches, they want to be able to eat the
fish. They want to be able to take water out of the lakes that they
don’t have to spend enormous sums treating.”
The IJC wants a preliminary plan to be ready by the summer of next
year.
Most migrant labor camps provide housing only for single men, but the Zellers farm in Hartville, OH allows entire families to migrate and, for those of age, to work together in the fields. (Photo by Gary Harwood )
Often, two or more generations of families work together on the Zellers farm. (Photo by Gary Harwood )
In Ohio, and nationally, migrant workers have an annual net income of $11,000-14,000, but despite this statistic, seasonal work in the US provides better opportunities for these workers than in Mexico or other Latin American countries. (Photo by Gary Harwood )
It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:
Transcript
It might sound obvious, but America needs to grow and harvest food. The problem is
that many Americans don’t want to work on farms anymore. That’s why some farm
owners recruit workers from Mexico and other places. During the growing season,
nearly 300 workers and their children live in migrant camps around the K. W. Zellers
family farm in rural northeast Ohio. Julie Grant spent some time at the Zellers’ farm this
fall and has this story:
For many Americans, just tending a small garden can be too much labor. But the
Mexican workers on the Zellers Farm in Hartville, Ohio are moving quickly down rows
of lettuce hundreds of yards long.
One man crouches down and cuts four heads of romaine. He’s leaning over the plants all
day long. It’s backbreaking work, but he moves spryly to the next row, and the next, and
the next. He’ll only make about 3 cents per head, so he wants to cut as many heads as
quickly as possible. Another worker follows him, loading the lettuce into boxes, then
lifting the 30 to 40 pound boxes and throwing them on to a flatbed truck, one after
another.
Farm owner Jeff Zellers says most people who live around here don’t want to do this:
“No. We can probably hire ten people and one of them will last more than a week, who
will stay here work, and work through it.”
Out in another field, a different crew is working in the harshest heat of the day. They get
a little protection from straw hats and some are wearing rubber pants. They need to protect
their legs from the hot, black, mucky soil. The temperature of the dirt can get up to 110
degrees.
Two generations of the Soto family of Mexico work together thinning lettuce. They
work down the long rows using a hoe, or crouching down and pulling out weeds by hand.
25-year-old Ivan Soto has become an expert, after thinning lettuce at the Zellers farm for
the past nine years:
“We don’t do other jobs, only one job.”
Ivan Soto pretty much taught himself English. He’s gone through the process to become
a US citizen. Now his wife has joined him and his family on the lettuce-thinning crew.
Other crews specialize in growing cilantro, parsley, and radishes. Zellers says the farm
depends on this expertise:
“We have to deliver
product on a daily basis that is as good or better then our competitors. And if we do not
have a trained labor force to do that, we’re not going to long term be in business.”
The Zellers farm pays less then some others because it has set up temporary homes
around the perimeter of the farm. Most of the homes look like small trailers. But they
come furnished and the farm pays most of the workers’ living expenses. Most migrant
farm workers make 11 to 14 thousand dollars a year. Ivan Soto says it’s hard, boring
work, but they make a good enough living that when they return to Mexico they can
afford to rest for awhile.
That’s a big reason their family, including his wife and young son, his parents, four
siblings, an aunt and uncle, have traveled from their home outside Mexico City to this
small northeast Ohio town for going on a decade now:
“When we are here, we say, well, we are now in our second home, because over there is our first home this is our home because here in Ohio is our second home for us.”
While most farms provide migrant housing only for single men,
Jeff Zellers allows entire families to migrate and work together in the fields. He hopes
his own children understand all the labor it takes to provide a meal:
“When we return thanks before we eat dinner, we pray for the people that prepared and produced the food. If my childen do nothing else but understand that their food did not show up in the grocery store because that’s where it was, it just came off an assembly line, I would want them to do that.”
The costs of hiring biologists to do a bird count across the U.S. would be astronomical. (photo by Deo Koe)
Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:
Transcript
Every year, tens of thousands of avid birdwatchers wander through
frozen fields and marshy swamps. Their job is to record as many birds
as they can find in a given area. For birders, it’s a day to enjoy the outdoors
while doing what they love most. But as the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports, that passion serves another purpose – it helps scientists:
(sound of footsteps)
Georgina Doe: “There’s five robins right there and there’s three common mergansers,
males…”
Georgina Doe scans the shoreline with her binoculars. Within seconds,
she spots a tiny glimpse of a bird and names it.
She knows them by the way they dive in the air, and the way they thrust
their chests out.
Doe has been scanning the treetops of Carleton Place, Ontario for
more than 30 years. She says she loves the chase and the element of surprise.
And over the years, birding has also been her escape.
She remembers watching a robin build its nest when her grandson
was seriously ill.
“So I used to count the birds every morning before I went off to
the hospital. And then after that, you come back to reality. Somehow a
little bird can just make you feel better.”
Birds have been a part of all of our lives. We might not know their names.
But we can remember holding a baby chick. Or hearing a cardinal on a crisp cold day. But now, many bird species are dwindling. And scientists are
counting on birders like Georgina Doe to help them find out why.
Doe is one of many birders in North America who collects
information for scientists. Jeff Wells works with that information
at Cornell University’s Lab of Ornithology.
“There’s no way that we could ever pay the tens of thousands of
trained biologists that would be necessary to gather this kind of
information. It’s only possible when we can engage volunteers like
we do in citizen science projects.”
Cornell runs at least a dozen programs that rely on information
from average birders.
There’s the Christmas Bird Count. About 50 thousand people participate.
Another 50 thousand track species during the Great Backyard Bird
Count in February.
The volunteers reported that wood thrushes are disappearing in
many areas. And they’re tracking the effect of the West Nile Virus
on bird populations.
“If a little bird dies, usually it just disappears quickly
and no one ever sees it. So we don’t really know the impact.
And so looking at the differences in the numbers and distribution
might give us some sense of when the disease was rampant in the summer,
whether it killed off enough birds to make a noticeable
difference in our count.”
(sound of quiet footsteps)
Robert Cermak: “You can see it’s about 10 inches high. It’s all fluffed
up right now…”
Birder Robert Cermak tiptoes closer to a barred owl sitting in the
crook of a tree. We’re in Ottawa, Canada’s capital and a city of about a million
people. When it comes to bird counts, this is Cermak’s territory.
“It’s not often that you see a barred owl, any owl, during
the day. They’re usually more secretive. This one is not too
afraid to be out so it’s probably more accustomed to having people
around it, since this is the center of the city.”
Like Georgina Doe, Cermak has been birding for years. But even with
veterans, there’s always concern about their accuracy. Cermak
discovered this firsthand when he reported seeing a rare
harlequin duck last year.
“I sent it in and a few hours later, someone from Cornell –
very politely because it’s a delicate subject to question
someone’s sighting of a rare bird – but they very delicately
indicated that a harlequin duck is extremely unusual in Ontario and
could I please provide a few extra details.”
Cermak sent them a published account of the sighting. He also
gave them the number of a local expert.
Jeff Wells says researchers check their facts carefully. They look
for reports that don’t match others in the surrounding area. Sometimes
an investigation turns up a trained ornithologist… and sometimes not.
But overall, Wells says the information has formed the basis for
hundreds of published studies.
That’s something that makes birders like Robert Cermak and
Georgina Doe feel proud.
“It’s nice because you’re contributing. You’re doing a
lot of hours, it uses a lot of gas, you go around a lot of blocks
but we just think it’s important.”
(sound of Georgina Doe walking)
Georgina Doe says she doesn’t really think of herself as a
scientist. But she’s out there every day, with her ear to the wind. And that’s
what the scientists are counting on.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.
A recent report indicates many of the problems troubling the Great Lakes are due to poor governance of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham talked with the chief author of the report, Restoring Greatness to Government: Protecting the Great Lakes in the 21st Century. Dave Dempsey is a policy advisor with the Michigan Environmental Council, which published the report:
Transcript
A recent report indicates many of the problems troubling the Great Lakes are due to poor
governance of the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham talked with the
chief author of the report Restoring Greatness to Government: Protecting the Great Lakes in
the 21st Century. Dave Dempsey is a policy advisor with the Michigan Environmental
Council, which published the report:
Dave Dempsey: “Well, we have sick Great Lakes in part because we have a sick governance
system. We have an array of 21st century problems facing the lakes from climate change to
continued degradation of some of our waters with toxic chemicals, but we have a 19th century
system of government that’s trying to protect them and failing.”
Lester Graham: “Now, the International Joint Commission, which is a body made up of
appointees by the Canadian government and the U.S. government, is to watch over the water
quality agreement and the treaty between the U.S. and Canada as to how we treat the Great Lakes.
And the Great Lakes Commission is another group that’s made up of representatives from the
eight Great Lakes states and the two provinces in Canada that surround the Great Lakes. And
these are all 21st century people, I know some of them, and they’re bright folks, they’re doing an
earnest and fairly decent job. What’s holding them back? They’re not 19th century people.”
DD: “No, but the structures and the systems they use are 19th century. There’s two problems: with
several of the commissions, they’ve become very politicized. The International Joint Commission
used to have a tradition of independence from political pressures and looking at the long-term
health of the Great Lakes. That’s been compromised since the ’90’s. But maybe more
importantly, with all these institutions, they’re relying on the old fashioned way of dealing with
public input. We think, in the environmental community, that the way to restore healthy Great
Lakes is to make sure the citizen voice is heard. These institutions cover a Great Lakes basin
that’s hundreds of thousands of square miles, and they’re expecting people to show up at public
hearings, perhaps traveling hundreds of miles to get there. Today, what we need to do is take
advantage in governance of the Internet, and other ways of involving people that don’t require
that kind of commitment or sacrifice because people frankly don’t have the time.”
LG: “How would increased participation of the public help the health of the Great Lakes?”
DD: “Well, looking at the history of the Great Lakes, every time the public voice is heard
strongly in the halls of government, the Great Lakes recover. Every time the voices of special
interests are drowning out the public voice, the lakes begin to deteriorate and that’s what we see
happening now.”
LG: “The Great Lakes Commission has had some success recently in getting more money from
the government for the Great Lakes recovery, the IJC has done a good job recently of working
with the media to bring public awareness to invasive species because of the Asian black carp. So,
are those moves the kind of thing you’d like to see to solve this problem?”
DD: “I think it’s helpful. Both of these commissions can use their bully pulpit to publicize
problems and call attention. But if you took a poll of the average Great Lakes residents, very few
of them would ever have heard of these commissions. We need bodies that look out for the Great
Lakes that are really plugged into individual communities, and that doesn’t exist right now. The
Great Lakes Commission specifically was set up to promote commercial navigation in the Great
Lakes, and while it has broadened its agenda to look at ecosystem issues, it has been an advocate,
for example, for the Great Lakes review of navigation that could result in more invasive species
coming into the Great Lakes by allowing more ocean-going vessels. We need an institution that’s
looking at the health of the Lakes first, not at the health of the industries that sometimes exploit
them.”
LG: “Bottom line, what would you like to see done?”
DD: “I’d like to see a Great Lakes citizens’ commission building on the existing institutions that
plugs into the individual states and provinces around the Great Lakes and brings people and their
voices together so that their vision of healthy Great Lakes can be carried out by government.”
Host Tag: Dave Dempsey is chief author of a report on governance of the Great Lakes issued by
the Michigan Environmental Council. He spoke with the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester
Graham.
