A windmill blade nearly 150 long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
The three blades will be bolted into the three openings in the rotor assembly. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
A cone projects from the front of each windmill when it's assembled. It protects the rotor assembly. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
Windmill propellers are stacked in a holding area in the Duluth port until they're needed at the windmill farm. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
Each tower consists of three sections which will be bolted together. When assembled, the towers will be either 60 or 80 meters high (about 200 feet or 260 feet). (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
A nacelle, or generator assembly, heads out for Mower County, Minnesota. The arms extending over the truck bed distribute the eighty-six tons of the nacelle. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:
Transcript
US demand for clean energy is growing so fast, supplies of generating systems are getting tight. Stephanie Hemphill reports on a challenge that could lead to more jobs in the US:
Overseas manufacturers of wind generating systems are shipping them here as fast as they can. Now, several companies are building wind generator factories in the US.
Siemens is building a plant in Iowa. Suzlon is about to start production in Minnesota. Plants in Texas produce blades and towers.
It’s all happening in spite of inconsistent federal support. A production tax credit is in place, but it expires every two years.
Ron Johnson is with the port of Duluth, which handles windmill imports. He says the on-again, off-again support makes it hard for companies to plan and grow.
“Well, the deadline’s coming at the end of next year, and people are planning their projects, so we’re all anxious to see what Congress does.”
The American Wind Energy Association says producers are installing enough wind power this year to power the entire state of Rhode Island.
For the Environment Report, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Biologists plant cloned Monkshood starts. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Some are planted in the crevices of rock formations.
The dripping water and dappled sunlight are expected to help the Monkshood survive. (Photo by Julie Grant)
Lots of people worry about the extinction of animal species, but plant conservationists say plants are even more threatened than animals. People are starting to go to great lengths to protect them.
There are banks set up to save seeds and large-scale efforts to educate people about threats to plants. Researchers, park biologists, and others have teamed up in one state to save a type of wildflower. Julie Grant
reports:
Transcript
Lots of people worry about the extinction of animal species. But plant conservationists
say plants are even more threatened than animals. People are starting to go to great
lengths to protect them. There are banks set up to save seeds and large-scale efforts to
educate people about threats to plants. Researchers, park biologists, and others have
teamed up in one state to save a type of wildflower. Julie Grant reports:
Biologist Mike Johnson is trying to walk carefully. He’s balancing a tray of plastic
containers while hiking down damp, sun-dappled cliffs. Each container holds a few starts
of northern monkshood. These wildflowers have only been found in four states.
Johnson is in Gorge Park, one of only three places in Ohio where monkshood have been
found:
“And, in Gorge Metropark they only exist in one area, and that makes them very
vulnerable to both natural and human induced impacts.”
People who walked the Gorge in the 1980s remember seeing thousands of the blue-
hooded wildflowers. But by 2000, there were only 13 of the plants left here. Johnson
says they were being killed by the salt used to melt ice and snow on a recently built
highway. People dug a ditch to divert melted salt that washed off the road. The monkshood have
done a little better since then. There’s now a stand with 190 of them, but
conservationists want to make sure this wildflower survives long term. Today Johnson is
planting new monkshood starts on the opposite side of the River, away from the
highway:
“So the goal is to establish satellite populations throughout the Gorge Metropark, so if
for some reason they were to die out in one area, they wouldn’t die out in the park
altogether.”
You might think that Johnson and other plant people could just collect seeds from the
surviving monkshood in order to grow new plants, but the director of conservation at
the Holden Arboretum says seeds aren’t reliable enough. They often don’t grow into
plants. Brian Parsons says that when the monkshood population started to decline, the
Arboretum started looking for new ways to preserve the plant’s genetic diversity:
“The only true way to capture that is to clone the plants, so we made the recommendation
to investigate cloning because scientific literature indicated that plant potentially had the
capacity to respond to that type of propogation.”
The Cincinnati Zoo plant research program specializes in plant cloning. So it cloned the
monkshood that Mike Johnson and another biologist are planting today.
Down in the gorge, they use a trowel to dig around in the rocky soil. They’re looking for
planting conditions that will give the monkshood the best chance to survive:
“Literally, that, over there is perfect. There’s not full sunlight. The trees above are
filtering out a lot of it. Just a little sunlight is getting down to the bottom and you’ve got
cool, clear springs. And even though we have all the surrounding development, there are
still springs in the gorge that are fairly uncontaminated from urban runoff and pollution.”
Water drips onto the biologists from the overhanging rock formations. They plant a
couple of monkshoods right in the crevices of the rocks. The leaves are reminiscent of a
buttercup. They are in the same family of plants. They’re not in bloom now. In the
spring, the delicate blue flowers remind some people of a religious hood. That’s how the
plant got its name.
Once Johnson puts these small monkshood starts in the soil, it’s hard to distinguish them
from the other ground-cover. That’s not a bad thing. Johnson says it’s best if people don’t
know exactly where to find the rare northern monkshood:
Grant: “You think people would poach them or something?”
Johnson: “Yeah. Yeah. It’s possible. We don’t generally try to advertise their location.
Anytime something’s rare, it’s valuable and somebody might want to take it.”
Plant specialists believe each plant species provides a purpose in nature, and might hold
some promise for pharmaceuticals or some other use. They’re just not sure yet what
people can learn from the northern monkshood. That’s why they want to make sure it
survives.
Environmental and health groups from around the country are criticizing the Environmental Protection Agency for its new air quality rules. Dustin Dwyer has more:
Transcript
Environmental and health groups from around the country are criticizing the
Environmental Protection Agency for its new air quality rules. Dustin Dwyer has more:
The new standard for short-term exposure to particulate matter, or soot, has been cut in
half. The standard on long-term exposure was left unchanged. EPA administrator
Stephen Johnson says it’s the most health-protective standard in the nation’s history:
“These are significant, significant steps to improve the quality of our air.”
Environmental groups, including the Sierra Club have criticized the new rules, and Paul
Billings of the American Lung Association also says the new soot standards do not go far
enough:
“They quite simply fail to protect public health.”
Huge areas of the country already failed to meet the previous standards on soot. Now,
another 32 counties are out of compliance. It’s up to the states to force smokestack
industries to reduce soot pollution within the next 10 years.
Milking Devon cattle are rare domestic breeds from an earlier day, some dating back to the 18th century. The animals hold genetic information that some people think is too valuable to lose. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The Garfield Farm Museum is preserving antiquated domestic breeds of farm animals, such as these Black Java chickens. (Photo by Lester Graham)
The Garfield Farm Museum, between Geneva and Elburn, Illinois, brings together farming experiences of the past 150 years with an appreciation of the natural environment, according to its website. (Photo by Lester Graham)
When you think of endangered species, farm animals might not top the list. But some types of farm animals are in danger of going extinct.
Certain breeds of common barnyard creatures are no longer considered commercially viable, and are being allowed to die off. But as the GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports, there’s an effort to preserve some rare varieties of
livestock:
Transcript
When you think of endangered species, farm animals might not top the list. But some
types of farm animals are in danger of going extinct. Certain breeds of common barnyard
creatures are no longer considered commercially viable, and are being allowed to die off.
But as the GLRC’s Chris Lehman reports, there’s an effort to preserve some rare varieties
of livestock:
When you buy a pound of ground beef or a pack of chicken legs, you probably don’t
think about what kind of cow or chicken the meat came from. And in most stores,
you don’t have a choice. Beef is beef and chicken is chicken.
Of course, there’s many different kinds of cows and chickens, but most farmers stick with
just a handful of types. They prefer animals that are specially bred to produce more meat
in less time.
That’s all well and good if your motive is profit.
But some people think the move towards designer farm animals is risky.
Jerome Johnson is executive director of Garfield Farm Museum.
(Sound of turkeys gobbling)
Johnson says breeds like these Narragansett turkeys carry genetic traits that could be
desirable in the future. They don’t require as much food, for instance. That could be an
attractive feature as costs continue to rise:
“Some of the high-producing, high-yielding animals today, they may require a lot of
input. In other words, a lot of feed, more expense since so many things are derived from
petroleum, from the diesel fuel that powers the tractors to the production of fertilizer
and the like, and chemicals for herbicides and all… that as the cost of that goes up, it may
actually be cheaper to raise a different type of animal, that doesn’t require that much.”
Johnson also says some common poultry breeds get sick more easily. That’s part of the
risk farmers take when they choose meatier birds. Normally that might not be a problem,
but if Avian flu spreads to the US, some of the older breeds might carry genes that could
resist the disease. If those breeds disappear, that genetic information would be lost.
But some farmers choose rare livestock breeds for completely different reasons.
(Sound of baby chicks)
Scott Lehr and his family raise several varieties of pure-bred poultry, sheep, and goats on
their northern Illinois farm. These chicks are just a few weeks old…
(Sound of baby chicks)
“These are all pure-bred birds. These are birds that have been around a long time. Some
of the breeds that are in there, there’s Bantam Brown Leghorns, Bantam White Leghorns.”
Some of the poultry breeds are so rare and exotic they’re practically collector’s items.
Lehr’s son enters them in competitions. But the animals on their farm aren’t just for
showing off. Scott says they use the wool from their herd of Border Cheviot sheep for a
craft studio they opened in a nearby town:
“There’s quite a bit of demand growing for handspun wool and the rising interest in the
hand arts, if you will… knitting and spinning and weaving and those kinds of things… are
really beginning to come into, I guess, the consciousness of the American public in many
ways. It’s evolving beyond a cottage industry.”
And the wool of rare breeds like the Border Cheviot sheep is popular among people who want handspun wool.
(Sound of Johnson calling to giant pig, “Hey, buddy, how ya doin’?”)
Back at the Garfield Farm Museum, Jerome Johnson offers a handful of grass to a 700
pound Berkshire hog. This Berkshire is different from the variety of pig with the same
name that’s relatively common today. Johnson says these old-style Berkshires have a
different nose and more white hair than the modern Berkshire. They also tend to be fatter,
which used to be a more desirable trait.
The museum’s pair of old-style Berkshires are literally a dying breed. Johnson says the
boar isn’t fertile anymore:
“They were the last breeding pair that we knew of. These were once quite common but
now are quite rare. And we maybe have found a boar that is fertile that is up in
Wisconsin that was brought in from England here a couple years ago that we could try
crossing with our sow to see if we can preserve some of these genetics.”
(Sound of pigs)
Advocates of rare livestock breeds say the animals can be healthier and sometimes tastier
than the kinds raised on large commercial farms. And although you won’t find many
farm animals on the endangered species list, they could have important benefits for future
farmers.
A male prairie chicken showing off for the hens. (Photo by Dan Gunderson)
Two prairie chicken cocks making a drumming sound as part of the dance to challenge each other and attract hens. (Photo by Dan Gunderson)
A male prairie chicken inflates the orange sacks on its neck and makes a echoing sound called booming. (Photo by Dan Gunderson)
Most of the native prairie east of the Mississippi is now farmland, but there are still a few isolated spots where remnants of prairie survive… and with them a prairie icon… the greater prairie chicken, but prairie chickens need a lot of habitat… and in places such as Illinois, Wisconsin and other states, only a few hundred birds survive. One state is having better luck, and some of its birds are being moved to help revive other prairie chicken populations. The GLRC’s Dan Gunderson reports:
Transcript
Most of the native prairie east of the Mississippi is
now farmland, but there are still a few isolated spots
where remnants of prairie survive; and with them a
prairie icon: the greater prairie chicken. But prairie
chickens need a lot of habitat, and in places such as
Illinois, Wisconsin and other states, only a few
hundred birds survive. One state is having better
luck, and some of its birds are being moved to help
revive other prairie chicken populations. The GLRC’s
Dan Gunderson reports:
The prairie chickens are ghostly shapes in the grey
predawn light of this spring morning.
(sound of prairie chickens in)
The cocks cackle as they fight off other males. They
inflate the orange sacks on their necks and make a
mournful echoing sound. Tail feathers erect they strut
about trying to impress the hens, who sit quietly
watching.
This 5,000 acre chunk of native prairie in Minnesota
has never been plowed. The prairie chickens have
always lived here. Today it’s owned by the Nature
Conservancy and known as the Bluestem Prairie.
Brian Winter manages the land. This morning he’s in a
small plywood blind counting prairie chickens on their
booming ground. About 40 males are strutting their
stuff.
“In Minnesota it’s a success story and we hope it gets
to be an even more successful success story than what it is
right now.”
Genetic diversity is one of the keys to a species
survival. In many states, prairie chickens are so
isolated the gene pool becomes weak. In Minnesota
there are flocks of prairie chickens along the western
edge of the state. Brian Winter says those flocks are
close enough to keep the gene pool from getting
stagnant.
“So there’s interbreeding as birds disperse in the fall.”
(sound of chickens tussling)
“Nice fight just took place right there. The research that’s been done looking at the genetics shows the
Minnesota population is one of the best in terms of
genetic diversity.”
Brian Winter says 20 years ago there were an
estimated 2,000 prairie chickens in Minnesota.
Today the population is approaching 10,000. The
prairie chicken is stable enough in Minnesota that
there’s been a limited hunting season the past two
years. In the past few years, several hundred
Minnesota chickens have helped rebuild populations
in North Dakota, Illinois and Wisconsin. Later this
summer, Minnesota prairie chickens will be captured
and moved by the Wisconsin Prairie Chicken Society,
in an effort to save a population declining in size and
genetic diversity.
Dave Sample with the Wisconsin DNR says the state
hopes to set aside 15,000 acres of grassland for
prairie chicken habitat in the next ten years. But he
says the birds won’t survive without a genetic infusion.
“In order to increase genetics in a compromised
population you do need to bring an infusion in from
outside. You pretty much have to go where genetics
are good and bring those birds in to mix with ours.”
Sample says there’s no guarantee the Wisconsin
prairie chicken population will survive, but he thinks
expanding the genetic pool will be a big step in the
right direction.
Earl Johnson is Regional Wildlife Manager for the
Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He
says the prairie chicken success reflects a
conservation success. Johnson says the federal
Conservation Reserve Program has turned thousands
of acres of marginal farmland back into grassland.
That makes good prairie chicken habitat. Johnson
says Minnesota is very fortunate to have a healthy
prairie chicken population.
“What’s the long term future for the prairie chicken? I’d hate to guess, but we are happy to help any states
that want our assistance by transplanting birds.”
Johnson calls the prairie chicken the prairie poster
child. Hundreds of people come from across the
country every spring to sit in blinds and watch the
mating dance. Johnson says interest is growing every
year. At the Bluestem Prairie, the Nature
Conservancy blinds are full almost every day during
the spring. Brian Winter says people from every state
have traveled here to see the spring spectacle unique
to the prairie grassland.
Despite its success, the prairie chicken population is
only as stable as its habitat. Winter says the prairie
chicken may be the most visible prairie resident, but
what’s good for the prairie chicken is good for many
other species as well.
“It’s going to be meadowlarks and bobolinks and
mallard ducks and a whole variety of grassland birds
that just require grassland habitat to survive, and
without it they’re just not going to be there.”
And that’s going to require larger grassland areas.
Too much of the prairie has disappeared in many
states to support healthy numbers of prairie chickens.
That means if the prairie chicken is to survive more of
the marginal farmland, the poorer quality farmland,
needs to be returned to prairie.
The United States Coast Guard is trying to find something missing on the Great Lakes this winter. They’re looking for ice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
Transcript
The United States Coast Guard is trying to find something missing on the Great Lakes this
winter. They’re looking for ice. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:
There’s no significant ice on the Great Lakes. Coast Guard Petty Officer Michael Damren at
Sault Saint Marie, Michigan says the little ice that’s out there is thin.
“But other than that, sir, It’s been really, really warm here this winter. The whole place should be
covered in ice right now, but there’s hardly any out here at all.”
Perhaps even more unusual is that fishing boats have been operating on Lake Superior’s south
shore. Eric Johnson has been fishing for 50 years, but he says casting out nets in mid-January
doesn’t happen very often.
“Well, just occasionally. I think we fished up to about this time in about ’83. Normally we quit about
the middle of December.”
The weather is turning a little colder. The Coast Guard is concerned about people going out on
thin ice. An old Coast Guard saying is that ‘the only safe ice is in a glass of scotch.’
President Bush recently nominated Steve Johnson to be the EPA's Administrator. (Photo courtesy of the EPA)
Midwest officials say they hope the new administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will continue to push for better coordination of Great Lakes clean up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Midwest officials say they hope the new administrator of
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will continue to push for better coordination of Great
Lakes clean up.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
President Bush has nominated longtime EPA scientist Steve
Johnson to take over the Environmental Protection Agency. Todd Ambs
is a natural resources official in Wisconsin, who’s active with
the Great Lakes Commission and Council of Great Lakes Governors.
Ambs says despite the change in EPA leadership he expects an
interagency task force to keep working on prioritizing Great Lakes
protection and clean up. Ambs says committees are drafting a list
that will eventually be sent to Congress.
“Identifying what are the top two or three most important things that
we really need to have happen right now and be able and go as a
unified voice.”
Ambs says
some of the topics that could move to the top of the list are cleaning
up toxic hot spots around the Lakes, controlling invasive species and
dealing with chemicals that build up in fish and wildlife. A draft plan is
due to be released this summer.
Despite a 1970’s ban, PCBs have remained a problem throughoutthe Great Lakes Region. Now residents in one Detroit neighborhood aresuing the city over PCB exposure. Families on one street say theirhouses have been contaminated with PCB’s from city sewer lines. TheGreat Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn reports:
If some Michigan fruit boosters get their way, people around the country will soon be toasting a new Michigan-made spirit. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michelle Corum reports:
A windmill blade nearly 150 long is slung gently onto a flatbed at the Duluth port. A modified trailer is needed to transport the blade. (Photo courtesy of Stephanie Hemphill)
