The Corps of Engineers will soon lower water on the Missouri River… a month after it was first ordered by a judge to do so. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tom Weber reports:
Transcript
The Corps of Engineers will soon lower water on the Missouri River… a
month after it was first ordered by a judge to do so. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Tom Weber reports:
The Corps is only going to keep the river levels down for three days. A
federal judge in Washington had ordered the reduction to protect nesting
endangered species… but the Corps said that would conflict with another
ruling from Nebraska that said water must be high enough for barges.
Those lawsuits were all combined and sent to a court in Minnesota… where
judge Paul Magnuson ruled the two orders were not in conflict. He says that
means the order to lower levels still applies.
Barge companies were told to secure vessels because the river will likely be
too shallow for navigation during the three days. The corps had risked
being fined a half-million dollars a day for being in contempt of the
ruling… but Judge Magnuson says he won’t enforce those fines at this time.
Environmental groups say it might be too late for the species… but it’s
better than nothing.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tom Weber.
The haunting call of the Common Loon has become a symbol of wild northern lakes. But as homes, marinas, and resorts are built on these lakes, the loons are losing the places where they like to nest. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some people are hoping artificial nests might help:
Transcript
The haunting call of the Common Loon has become a symbol of wild
northern lakes. But as homes, marinas, and resorts are built on these
lakes, the loons are losing the places where they like to nest. As the
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney reports, some people are
hoping artificial nests might help:
The Common Loon doesn’t move around well on land, so they like to nest as
close to the water as possible. But this makes them vulnerable to being pushed
out by development and washed out by boat wakes and floods.
Dan Truscott of Ducks Unlimited recently helped a group of elementary school kids build
floating nest platforms out of PVC pipes and Styrofoam for loons in northern Michigan. Truscott
got started making artificial nesting platforms after he saw what happened to a pair of loons on a
lake near his home.
“They had nested and we had a large rainfall and the dam couldn’t keep up with the water so the
nests got washed out, and so I went home and built one and put it out and it
worked.”
Loon protection groups in the Northeast and the Great Lakes regions
promote the use of these platforms as one tool to help improve the breeding success
of the birds.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.
Researchers have found that building housing along lakeshores affects the kinds of birds drawn to the area. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
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Researchers have found that building housing along lakeshores affects the kinds
of birds drawn to the area. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Researchers have been looking at the differences between populations of birds along a lakeshore where houses have been built and where they’ve not. Alec Lindsay is a University of Michigan doctoral student who’s been working with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources, studying the birds…
“What we found is that the birds that feed on insects were found less frequently on lakes
that had significant shoreline development than lakes that were undeveloped. And on the other hand, birds that feed on seeds which are not normally associated with these sorts of habitats were found more frequently on developed lakes than undeveloped lakes.”
So, lakeshore housing developments might be discouraging the kinds of birds that eat mosquitoes and keep down other insect pests. Conservation officials suggest homeowners should plant more native shrubs and grasses to encourage the bug-eating birds to stay.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Canada Geese take flight.
Photo by Wyman Meinzer, courtesy of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service
Canada Geese are about as common as the green lawns they like to hang out on. But at one time they’d almost disappeared from the region. Thanks to successful wildlife management efforts, the goose is back, and now the question is how best to manage a success story that some say has been too successful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Gunderson has more:
Transcript
Canada Geese are about as common as the green lawns they like to hang out on. But at one time they’d almost disappeared from the region. Thanks to successful wildlife management efforts, the goose is back, and now the question is how best to manage a success story that some say has been too successful. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Dan Gunderson has more.
In 30 years, the giant Canada goose was on the verge of extinction, but the species has made a comeback that amazes biologists. There were just about enough for a gaggle when humans stepped in to help in the late 1960’s, now numbering in the millions today, the goose is a wildlife management success story that won’t stop.
“We’ve spent millions and millions of dollars to bring the population back.
Now it’s high and it’s eating everything in sight.”
Standing on the edge of a waist high soybean field on his Minnesota farm, Chad Jetvig points to a slough about a quarter mile away. It’s obvious where geese feasted on tender young soybean plants early this summer, leaving large bare spots in the field.
Jetvig says he’s always accepted some crop loss from geese as a part of farming among the prairie potholes of western Minnesota, but he says the amount damage is no longer acceptable.
“I would say in the past two years in particular, but it’s been getting worse each year, we’ve started to see huge areas. Just on this one single farm at two hundred acres that’s over 40 thousand dollars right just out of our pocket. That’s a lot of money.”
And thousands of farmers in the Midwest and Northeast U.S. have similar stories.
This year and last, Chad Jetvig has gotten a permit to shoot geese eating his crops, but he says it’s an exercise in futility.
“We came out here and shot one time and the next time you even drive by they’re gone. They’d even know the color of the pickup. If this one blue pickup we’re using came around, they seen that thing, whoosh, they’re gone.”
Only to return as soon as the coast is clear. Those keen survival instincts are one reason for the goose population explosion. There’s also plentiful food provided by farmers like Chad Jetvig, and lots of wetland nesting sites.
There are an estimated 2 million giant Canada geese in the upper Midwest and Northeast that’s far more than biologists like Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, goose expert, Steve Maxson think is ideal.
“I think a lot of biologists are wondering just how high this population can go. It’s already exceeded their wildest dreams I think and it seems even in the face of intense hunting pressure to be increasing in most areas. I guess the bottom line is we just don’t know how high this population can get.”
Biologists rely on hunting to keep many wildlife populations in check, and the Canada goose harvest has steadily increased along with the population. But Maxson says simply allowing hunters to shoot more birds is not the answer. The birds quickly learn how to avoid hunters. Then there’s the eastern prairie goose that nests in northern Canada and migrates through many states in the region. The eastern prairie goose population is much smaller and less robust than the giant Canada, and biologists fear expanded hunting could destroy the species.
The U-S Fish and Wildlife Service draft environmental impact statement due out this fall will offer several population control alternatives. They range from no action, to targeted hunting in areas where geese are in conflict with humans, to extreme measures such as, destroying nests and eggs. Steve Wilds is the Fish and Wildlife Service regional migratory bird and Chief. He says it’s critical a workable plan come out of this process. If not, he fears future management decisions will be political, not biological.
Wilds says the future of the giant Canada goose is at stake.
“So that they’ll continue to be recognized as a tremendous, beautiful part of our natural landscape and yet not something that’s going to be doing so much damage people start thinking of them as vermin rather than really neat critters.”
The Fish and Wildlife plans to take a public input on its goose management plan early next year. Steve Wild says it will be at least a year before any final decision is made on how the Canada goose populations will be managed in the future. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Dan Gunderson.
Next month, Kirtland’s Warblers will begin their yearly winter trek. They’ll be flying more than eleven hundred miles from their only known nesting ground in Michigan to their wintering grounds in the Caribbean Islands. The bird was one of the first species to be listed as endangered in 1973. But thanks to several decades worth of forest and wildlife management, the bird’s numbers are increasing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush has more:
There’s been a lot of concern about falling water levels on the
Great Lakes. Some of the lake levels have dropped more than a foot.
However… new wildlife habitat is being formed as the water levels
fall.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Wisconsin could become the first state in the eastern U-S to host a
nesting area for migrating whooping cranes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Bald eagles living near Lake Superior aren’t reproducing as frequentlyas those who nest on inland lakes. A new study blames the lack of foodrather than contaminated fish…and one of the study’s authors says policymakers should take note. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s ChuckQuirmbach has more:
For many residents of the Great Lakes region, the loon is synonymous with wilderness – an enduring symbol of the wild outdoors. But, in northern Wisconsin, as development pressures increase, there are fewer and fewer places for the loons to nest. Now, one woman has decided to do something about it. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Nick Van Der Puy reports:
