Seed Bank Hopes to Save Trees in Peril

  • Examples of ash tree seeds that are part of the collection effort. (Photo by Lester Graham)

People have been saving seeds for thousands of years. Gardeners save
seeds of their favorite plants. Governments save seeds to protect
their food crops. Now, some people are freezing the seeds from trees.
That’s because the trees are being destroyed by an insect pest.
Rebecca Williams reports they’re hoping a gene bank will protect the
trees’ DNA and some day help bring the trees back:

Transcript

People have been saving seeds for thousands of years. Gardeners save
seeds of their favorite plants. Governments save seeds to protect
their food crops. Now, some people are freezing the seeds from trees.
That’s because the trees are being destroyed by an insect pest.
Rebecca Williams reports they’re hoping a gene bank will protect the
trees’ DNA and some day help bring the trees back:


Seeds are a pretty amazing little package. They might be small, but
they’re tough. They can live through very dry and very cold
conditions.


(Sound of seed being shaken out of a paper bag)


These seeds are from ash trees. In some parts of the Upper Midwest and
Ontario, ash trees have been wiped out. The seeds are all that’s left.
That’s because of the emerald ash borer. It’s a tiny green beetle that
got into the US in cargo shipped from China. So far, the beetles have
killed 20 million ash trees. No one’s been able to stop the beetles
from spreading.


David Burgdorf works for a lab with the US Department of Agriculture.
He says people might not even know they had ash trees until the trees
got attacked:


“If your lawn was filled with the ash tree and you had all this great
shade and your energy bills were low, but now the ash tree’s gone, you
only miss it when it’s gone.”


Burgdorf says a lot of people love ash trees for their gold and purple
fall colors. They grow fast and hold up well under ice storms. Native
American tribes depend on black ash for making baskets and medicine.


David Burgdorf is trying to make sure ash trees won’t disappear completely
if the beetle spreads across the country. He’s gathering ash seeds
sent in by volunteers. He’s hoping to build a collection that
represents the entire ash tree gene pool:


“We want to try not to have to bring something back. We don’t want it
to be extinct. It’s important we at least save the seed so we can maybe cross
it, or do something, breed in resistance to the tree and have it
available to come back.”


Burgdorf says he thinks of the seeds as an investment for the future.
The seeds are definitely being treated like a precious commodity.
They’re sorted and they’re X-rayed to make sure the living embryos in
the seeds haven’t been damaged.


Then, the very best seeds in the bunch are off to a high security
government vault:


“We kind of joke that it’s the Fort Knox for seeds.”


Dave Ellis is the seed curator at the National Center for Genetic
Resources Preservation. It’s a giant seed bank. Ellis says the ash
seeds are dehydrated and frozen at 0 degrees Fahrenheit. These steps
put the seeds into a deep sleep:


“In a dehydrated state, degradation of DNA happens much more slowly,
over a course of tens of years or hundreds of years.”


Ellis says the ash seeds should be viable for at least 25 years, if not
longer. He says researchers might be able to use the stored genetic
material to breed new pest-resistant ash trees in the future. Ellis
sees gene banks as a safeguard against a world that’s changing fast.


Scientists say wild plants and crops we depend on will face many new
threats. Climate change might bring more drought.
Escalating global trade could mean importing more pests.


Deb McCullough studies insect pests at Michigan State University. She
says any time you import cargo, you’re running the risk of also
importing pests that can run up huge bills. She says in North America,
one of the big concerns is imports from China:


“If you look at the latitude where China occurs, if you look at the
northern and southern latitude and you overlay that on top of the US and
Canada, it matches up almost perfectly. So you can figure that pretty
much any kind of climate or habitat you find in China, there’s going to
be something similar in the US.”


McCullough says not everything that gets in will turn out to be a pest,
but she says as China’s huge trade surplus with the US grows, there’s a
greater risk more pests will come in.


She says there are some new regulations in place, but restricting
international shipping is a tricky proposition. McCullough says seed
collecting might be one way to preserve plants we rely on:


“People who are molecular biologists, the gene jockeys, have gotten
very good at enhancing or producing resistant varieties of different
kinds of plants. So, that may be something that becomes an option in the
future, maybe not the too distant future.”


McCullough points out there will be serious debate about introducing a
genetically modified tree into the wild. Some people don’t like the
idea of manipulating the genetic makeup of plants or animals.


There are a lot of questions about what might be done with the frozen
seeds, but the seed collectors say regardless, they need to bank up the
DNA of plants that we’re in danger of losing.


For the Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Cougars Creep Into Suburbia

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:

Transcript

Wildlife biologists say cougars are gradually moving from the Mountain
West into Midwestern states. Usually the large cats avoid people, but in
one suburban neighborhood residents are worried. They say they’ve
spotted a cougar in their backyards six times in the last two years. They’re
worried about their pets. They’re worried about their kids. Bob Allen
reports:


On a June morning two years ago, David Hanawalt was hunched over a
flower bed in his back yard loosening the soil with a hand rake. He says
he caught something out of the corner of his eye moving toward him:


“I started to prepare myself because it seemed like a large dog that was
making a beeline for me.”


(Allen:)”As if it was going to jump on you?”


“Yeah. And as soon as I stood up and turned it veered off. And the way it
ran, the way it moved, and its ears, I swear it was a cat.”


The cat disappeared into a patch of brushy woods behind his
house. Hanawalt says he became more convinced it was a cougar when his wife, T, saw
a big cat with a long tail sauntering across a neighbor’s blacktop driveway.


“…And it was just walking up like this. Just walking up. And then it went
just right off into those woods. Casually. It wasn’t in any hurry.”


The creature’s nonchalance is what has people in this northern Michigan
neighborhood worried. Some of them have read David Baron’s book
Beast in the Garden. It recounts how people have built their houses in
foothills surrounding Boulder, Colorado, right into prime mountain lion
country, then they saw cougars coming into their yards, taking their dogs and cats.
Eventually, a cougar killed a high school boy when he was jogging on a
wooded trail outside Boulder.


There are significant differences between the situations in Colorado and
Michigan, but author David Baron says if people are seeing a cougar and
it’s not running away from them, and in fact begins to approach them, then
that can be a warning sign:


“That’s what was seen in Boulder in the years before there was a fatal
attack not too far from Boulder. That’s what was seen in Missoula,
Montana back in the late ’90s before a little boy was attacked who did
survive. But again, if there are multiple reports of what is clearly a cougar
in one neighborhood, it’s probably worth looking into.”


Back in the northern Michigan subdivision Patty Barrons lives in the
house at the end of the cul-de-sac. It backs right up to a stretch of woods.
She was walking up the street one early morning last August when she
spied a big cat heading into her back yard. She took off running for her
front door because she remembered she’d left her housecat on the back
deck:


“…And I ran through the house, and onto my deck and down the two steps.
And went, I can’t believe I did this, it’s so embarrassing but I went, shoo,
shoo.”


It didn’t shoo.


Instead, Barrons says, it turned and took two steps toward her. She took
two steps back onto the porch. Barrons describes the animal as
enormous. She says she and the big cat watched each other from a
distance of fifteen feet for about half a minute:


“The face when we looked at each other eye to eye I felt that I was looking
at, I mean I knew I was looking at a lion. I knew I was looking at a lion,
there was no doubt. It was very muscular. It never crouched down or
anything so I didn’t feel threatened. But it stared at me and then, um, it
turned and walked around my flower garden, behind the tennis courts
and kept going.”


Patty Barrons keeps a careful eye out when she takes her early morning
walks, and she won’t work in her garden in the early morning or
late evening hours anymore.


(Sound of model airplanes buzzing)


Next to her house is an open field where kids play soccer and neighbors
walk their dogs, and its where T Hanawalt’s sons fly the remote controlled
model airplanes they love to build, but she won’t let them go out by
themselves anymore:


“Day or night. I mean they used to run around this neighborhood and play
with all the children at night and we’re not doing that anymore. I just, I
can’t have that it’s too scary. In fact, I’m looking to move.”


State wildlife officials won’t come out to investigate unless there’s clear
evidence of what could be a cougar. That means a photo, a paw print,
maybe some scat or droppings from the animal.


The people in this neighborhood didn’t get any of that, but now they have
their cell phone cameras handy.


For the Environment Report, I’m Bob Allen.

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Deer Poachers Getting Trigger Happy?

  • Wildlife officials encourage hunters to help thin the population of CWD, but some hunters may be taking it beyond what is legal according to regulations. (Photo by Dr. Beth Williams, University of Wyoming, courtesy of CWD Alliance)

In states with deer herds affected by Chronic Wasting Disease, wildlife officials have
encouraged hunters to help them thin the population. But some wardens worry that
poachers are taking this as an invitation to bag game any way they can. Brian Bull
reports:

Transcript

In states with deer herds affected by Chronic Wasting Disease, wildlife officials have
encouraged hunters to help them thin the population. But some wardens worry that
poachers are taking this as an invitation to bag game any way they can. Brian Bull
reports:


It’s illegal to shoot deer at night, from vehicles, or while trespassing. But that’s something
Wisconsin game warden David Youngquist has seen recently. He monitors that state’s
Chronic Wasting Disease eradication zone. Youngquist says in that area, there are nearly
six times as many deer as is healthy for the herd:


“Our agency feels that if we can get deer numbers down, we can halt the disease. But we
still enforce the road hunting the same as we ever
have. We want hunting to be safe.”


Youngquist says poaching activities are on the rise, because some people think bagging a
deer is the main thing, whether it’s done legally or not. In some of these eradication
zones, a record number of citations have been handed out.


For the Environment Report, I’m Brian Bull.

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New Challenges in Methyl Bromide Ban

Environmental advocates are calling for tighter controls on the farm pesticide methyl bromide, after finding out there’s more of the chemical sitting around in places such as railroad tank cars. Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Environmental advocates are calling for tighter controls on the farm pesticide methyl bromide, after finding out there’s more of the chemical sitting around in places such as railroad tank cars. Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Under an international agreement made during the 1980’s, the US is supposed to be phasing out use of methyl bromide. The chemical is linked to potential health risks and destruction of the ozone layer.


But it was recently learned that the size of the US stockpile of methyl bromide is larger than previously revealed. Now the Bush Administration has promised the US would try to cut production of methyl bromide while reducing the stockpile.


David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council says it’s now up to the EPA to live up to that promise in upcoming regulations.


“The EPA needs to cut that production allowance, because the stockpiles are there to meet the needs.”


The EPA says it’s trying to keep a “strategic reserve” of methyl bromide, while a lot of money is being spent on developing alternative pesticides.


For the Environment Report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Study Questions Nuclear Plant Safety

An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:

Transcript

An environmental group is calling on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to monitor nuclear power plants more closely before there’s a severe accident. Lester Graham reports the group issued a report on nuke plants that have had problems:


The report from the Union of Concerned Scientists looked at problems that caused nuclear reactors to shut down for a year or more. It’s happened 51 times. The report found 36 of those year-plus outages were caused by “excessive” tolerance by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.


The nuclear industry notes there has not been a serious accident since Three Mile Island in 1979. The industry says if it can replace its aging plants, things will be even safer.


David Lochbaum is the author of the report. He says hold on, not until you fix the problem.


“Nuclear power plants are aging. But the conditions that led up to these year-plus outages need to be addressed to provide a proper foundation for any new nuclear power plants that are built. Otherwise we’ll just be replicating yesterday’s mistakes.”


The report includes six recommendations to identify and fix problems at nuclear power plants faster.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Warming Trends to Increase Energy Demands

Researchers say as average temperatures rise in the US, the demand for energy will go up as well. The GLRC’s Matt Shafer Powell explains:

Transcript

Researchers say as average temperatures rise in the US, the demand for energy will go up
as well. The GLRC’s Matt Shafer Powell explains:


Researchers at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee say they loaded all kinds
of climate, pollution and population data into one of the lab’s supercomputers. As
expected, they found that demand for heating in the winter will drop as the earth warms,
but not enough to compensate for the higher demand for air conditioning in the summer.


David Erickson led the project. He says that could make the problem of global warming
even worse:


“You’re going to end up having to create electricity by burning of coal, which feeds back
and adds more CO2 into the atmosphere that causes warming.”


Erickson says the computer models they’ve created can be adjusted to adapt to any
changes in energy technology or policy.


For the GLRC, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.

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Protecting a Rare Songbird

Researchers have studied where a very rare bird spends the summer, but now they’re learning they might need to pay more attention to where it spends the winter. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Researchers have studied where a very rare bird spends the summer, but
now they’re learning they might need to pay more attention to where it
spends the winter. The GLRC’s Rebecca Williams reports:


The Kirtland’s warbler is one of the rarest songbirds in North America.
It spends the summer near the Great Lakes, mostly in Michigan, and the
winter in the Bahamas. The bird’s been on the endangered species list
since 1966. Efforts to control predators and manage habitat in
Michigan have helped the warbler recover, but scientists haven’t known
much about what the warbler needs in winter.


Dave Ewert is the director of conservation science for the Nature
Conservancy’s Great Lakes program. He says his team’s research
indicates that warblers are fattening up on fruit right before they
leave the Bahamas in the spring.


“So if we can identify these sites that produce a lot of food just
before migration, we think that may be a really important key for
conservation implementation in the Bahamas in the future.”


Ewert says the team will need a few more years of research before
recommending specific sites to preserve in the Bahamas.

For the GLRC, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Invasive Species at the Aquarium

  • Asian carp are one of the invasive species featured in the exhibits in your local museums. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)

Big, public aquariums spend a lot of money to make fish look like they’re at home in the wild. But lately some aquariums are showing fish that are out of place. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee looks at one aquarium’s effort to give them the spotlight, too:

Transcript

Big, public aquariums spend a lot of money to make fish look like
they’re at home in the wild, but lately some aquariums are showing fish
that are out of place. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee looks at one aquarium’s
effort to give them the spotlight, too:


The federal government’s spending millions to keep Asian Carp out of
the Great Lakes. Biologists worry Asian Carp could devastate the lakes’
ecosystem. Recently, though, several carp were brought within sight of
the Great Lakes, and biologists are happy about it.


Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium is on the shore of Lake Michigan. It’s
holding an exhibit of Asian Carp and other alien invasive species.


Curator Kurt Hettinger captured the aquarium’s carp during a trip on an
Illinois river.


“They’re literally jumping, sometimes over the bow of the boat,
sometimes smacking into the side of the boat. I just looked behind me
and was amazed to see all these fish jumping in the wake of the boat, and
to this day, I’m still stunned by this.”


And Hettinger’s more than just stunned. He’s worried.


Asian Carp are an invasive species, basically … pests that crowd out
native fish, and that river where he caught them hooks up to Lake
Michigan.


Again, Asian carp haven’t made it to the Great Lakes, but more than one
hundred and sixty other invasive species have arrived and are breeding
quickly.


One example’s the zebra mussel. At first, scientists worried about how
much money it could cost us. Zebra mussels multiply so fast they can
block pipes that carry cooling water to power plants. But now, we know
the zebra mussel’s disrupting the lakes’ natural food chain.


In other words, invasive species are a huge economic and ecological
nuisance. That’s why the Shedd Aquarium started the exhibit.


“The public I think has seen enough stories about the damages and the
spread and the harmfulness, but those stories are not very often coupled
with solutions.”


That’s ecologist David Lodge. He says the exhibit tries to show how
people spread these species around. Lodge points to one exhibit tank. It
looks like a typical backyard water garden. It’s decked out with a small
fishpond, water lilies, even a little fountain shaped like an angel. It looks
pretty innocent, but Lodge says plants and fish you buy for your own
water garden could be invasive species.


“All those plants and animals that are put outside, then have an
opportunity to spread. Now, it doesn’t happen very often, but with the
number of water gardens, it happens enough so that they are a serious
threat to the spread of species.”


Birds or even a quick flood could move seeds or minnows from your
garden to a nearby lake or river.


The Shedd Aquarium’s not alone in spotlighting invasive species.
Several aquariums and science museums are also getting on board. For example one in
Florida shows how invasive species have infested the Everglades.


Shedd curator George Parsons went far and wide for inspiration.


“I was in Japan last year when we were planning this, and I just
happened to stumble across one of their aquariums and they had an
invasive species exhibit, except that they were talking about large mouth
bass and blue gill. You know, something that is our natives. So, it was
kind of ironic to see that out there. It was kind of neat.”


Like us, the Japanese take invasive species seriously. Back in 1999 the
humble Midwestern Blue Gill created a national uproar. Turns out, they
had taken over ponds throughout the Emperor’s palace, and how did the
bluegill get to Japan?


Probably as a gift from a former Chicago mayor. Apparently, the mayor
thought blue gill might make nice sport fishing in Japan. It was an
innocent mistake, but it’s just the kind of mishap biologists want all of us
to avoid from now on.


For the GLRC, I’m Shawn Allee.

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Teachers Rap for Energy Conservation

  • Compact fluorescent light bulbs can save energy and money. (Photo courtesy of National Renewable Energy Laboratory)

They say that charity begins at home. So does energy conservation. At least, that’s the idea behind a new program designed to get children interested in saving energy, one light bulb at a time. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman reports:

Transcript

They say that charity begins at home. So does energy conservation. At least,
that’s the idea behind a new program designed to get children interested in
saving energy, one light bulb at a time. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chris Lehman reports:


All of German Valley Elementary School’s 100 students are gathered in the
gymnasium to learn about saving the world…


“You guys are the ones who are going to have to worry about this stuff down
the road as you become adults and go out into the world. We always want to
plan, don’t we fifth grade.”


“Yes.”


These kids are about to get a lesson in saving the planet. Although German
Valley Elementary is surrounded by farmland, the students are going to be
treated to a rap concert as part of that lesson. Their teachers are the rap stars,
trying to drive the message home…


(Sound of teacher rap skit)


The unusual school assembly is the kick-off event in a program called PEAK,
which stands for Preserving Energy for All Kids. It’s funded by a legal
settlement against one of the biggest power companies in Illinois: ComEd.
An audit found ComEd under funded its infrastructure. As part of a court
settlement, money was set aside to encourage energy conservation.


David Kolata is Executive Director of the Citizen’s Utility Board. The
consumer advocacy group is one of the agencies charged by the courts with
dispersing the 16 million dollar ComEd settlement.


“The mandate is simply to use that money to reduce our energy usage as
much as we can. We’ve taken the approach that there are multiple programs
out there that makes sense and we’re trying to see…basically pilot programs
to see what works and what doesn’t.”


So, German Valley Elementary is a testing ground. The school was
recommended by State Representative Jim Sacia. Sacia says educational
programs such as PEAK are crucial as younger generations face growing
questions about energy shortages in the future.


“I think it’s just so important that they learn at a young age the importance of
conserving energy and to consider alternative energy sources so that they can
make the world a far more energy-efficient place in years to come.”


The PEAK program includes more than school assemblies and teachers
mimicking rappers. The bulk of the lessons take place in the classroom…


(Sound of classroom presentation)


Teachers at schools participating in the PEAK program use teaching
materials generated by a California-based organization. One of the first
lessons is about the difference between standard light bulbs and compact
fluorescent light bulbs. Those bulbs use about one-third of the energy of a
standard incandescent light bulb, and can last up to ten years.


Students are given an assignment: to go home and count all of the light bulbs
in their house. Then they’ll figure out how much money their parents could
save by switching to compact fluorescents.


The PEAK program is in its beginning stages at German Valley Elementary,
but the message of energy conservation seemed to be hitting home with fifth
grader Brian Kraft:


“Because if we’re older and we don’t have any energy there will be nothing
to do and see.”


“How do you want to save energy yourself?”


“Turn lights off, play outside more than play inside.”


Playing outside means less TV watching and video game playing… and that
saves energy too.


Fifth grade science teacher Robert Nelson says the initial phase of the PEAK
program has generated positive feedback from children and their parents.


The school intends to sell compact fluorescent bulbs as a fundraiser later in
the school year.


For the GLRC, I’m Chris Lehman.

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Supreme Court to Hear Beach Walking Case?

Shoreline property owners are asking the nation’s highest court to reverse a ruling that says the public has the right to walk along the beaches of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick Pluta reports:

Transcript

Shoreline property owners are asking the nation’s highest court to
reverse a ruling that says the public has the right to walk along the
beaches of the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rick
Pluta reports:


The property owners are challenging a Michigan Supreme Court
decision. The state court held that the public owns the Great Lakes
beaches from the water to the high water mark. The case was filed by a
woman who was seeking the right to walk along the shoreline of Lake
Huron.


David Powers is an attorney with the property owners group Save Our
Shoreline. He says the Michigan decision rolled back property owners’
rights…


“And so, if the state has taken private property in violation of the
Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court should be very concerned about
that.”


The other side in the case says the Great Lakes shoreline is such a unique
resource that no one person should be allowed to claim exclusive rights
to it.


There’s no word on when the Supreme Court might make a decision on
taking the case. Lakeshore property rights are being litigated in other
Great Lakes states and whatever the Supreme Court decides to do could
have an effect on those cases.


For the GLRC, this is Rick Pluta.

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