Westward Ho for the Ash Borer

  • Adult emerald ash borer (Photo by David Cappaert, Michigan State University, courtesy of the Michigan Department of Agriculture)

The emerald ash borer has eaten through
millions of trees in the US and is spreading
west. Erin Toner has more:

Transcript

The emerald ash borer has eaten through
millions of trees in the US and is spreading
west. Erin Toner has more:

For six long years, the tiny metallic-green emerald ash borer has been a killing machine,
starting with millions of ash trees in Michigan and Canada, and then munching its way
into 10 states.

It was recently discovered in Missouri, and now, it’s in Wisconsin.

The prognosis is not good.

Darrell Zastrow is with the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.

“Our forests are not typically resilient against non-native species and that is true for
the emerald ash borer. It is generally considered to be a poster child for invasive
species.”

Officials in Wisconsin are doing what everyone else has done – restricting the movement
of firewood and telling people how to protect their trees.

Some promising treatments to fight the emerald ash borer are being tested, but so far,
nothing has worked at keeping the insect from spreading west.

For The Environment Report, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

West Nile Virus Here to Stay

  • USGS Wildlife Veterinarian testing an American crow for previous exposure to the West Nile Virus (Photo courtesy of US Geological Survey)

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

Transcript

We’re heading into West Nile virus season.
Rebecca Williams reports experts say it’s now a
seasonal epidemic:

West Nile virus is at its peak between mid-July and mid-September.

You can get infected from a single mosquito bite.

Most people who get infected won’t get a serious case of it. But people
over 50 have a higher risk of getting really sick. The virus can cause
high fever, paralysis and even death.

Dr. Lyle Petersen is with the Centers for Disease Control. He says West
Nile Virus is here to stay. And he says even if your area hasn’t had an
outbreak recently, that doesn’t mean it won’t happen.

“We really can’t predict exactly when and where these outbreaks are
going to occur so everybody needs to take precautions.”

He says you should use insect repellants, repair window screens, and
drain standing water around your house.

For The Environment Report I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Report: West Warming Fast

  • The Colorado River in the Eastern end of the Grand Canyon National Park, below Desert View Overlook (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)

A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

A report from environmentalists concludes the
American West is getting hotter faster than the rest of
the globe. Lester Graham reports:

Now, this report was not peer reviewed, but The Natural Resources Defense Council and the
Rocky Mountain Climate Organization insist the data show it’s gotten hotter in the West
when you compare the last five years to the global average during the last century.

Theo Spencer is with the NRDC. He says water is always important in the West, and
this climate change is causing problems.

“The Colorado River Basin, which provides water for about 30 million people in the West, the temperature over the past 5 years increased 2.2 degrees. So that’s 120% more than the rest of the globe.”

The report says the Colorado is in a record drought – and that affects Denver,
Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego.

For The Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Bark Beetle Forest Fire Risks

  • The bark beetle (pictured) is native to forests in the Rockies. (Photo courtesy of the Colorado State Forest Service)

In much of the West populations of the bark beetle have exploded. Trees
are dying, and the risk of forest fires is huge. Some ecologists are
saying that global warming is responsible, but forests will survive.
Steve Zelaznik reports the risk of fire is forcing communities to balance fire
prevention, and ecological preservation:

Transcript

In much of the West populations of the bark beetle have exploded. Trees
are dying, and the risk of forest fires is huge. Some ecologists are
saying that global warming is responsible, but forests will survive.
Steve Zelaznik reports the risk of fire is forcing communities to balance fire
prevention, and ecological preservation:


(Sound of trail)


We’re surrounded by forest, mostly lodge pole pines. The bark beetle is native to forests in the Rockies. The landscape is a patchwork of green and red. The red trees have been
killed by the bark beetle. Jan Hackett with the Colorado State Forest
Service says many of the green trees are also infected:


“Well I’m just pointing to the pitch tubes, and those are fresh hits
from this year’s beetles. The beetles are flying right now. This is a
result of this year’s flight, a successful hit. This tree will be red
next year.”


This means the tree will be dead. Dominick Kulakowski is a biology professor at
Clark University. He says climate change has caused warmer temperatures so the beetle can survive the winter and spread, but he says insect outbreaks like these are normal, and
the forest will recover:


“There have been very extensive, very severe outbreaks of bark beetles
in Colorado long before Colorado was even a state. Large disturbances
are a normal function of the ecosystems of the Colorado Rocky
Mountains. So while we may look out on this and be concerned by the
amount of mortality, what we need to remember is this may be
unprecedented based on what we’ve seen over the past hundred years, but
that’s partly a function of our relatively short temporal perspective.”


From an ecological perspective, Kulakowski just isn’t worried about the
beetles. But the dead trees increase the risk of fire. And with homes
nearby, the forest can’t be left to burn.


Driving up a winding road to a nearby subdivision, I’m in the car with Barry
Smith. He’s the emergency manager for the adjacent Eagle County. He says
roads like these make his job difficult:


“This is one of those subdivisions like many of our mountain
subdivisions that, from a fire safety perspective, this is the only road
to get into our out of this subdivision, so if we have a large fire
here, you’re trying to get fire equipment in and get homeowners out at
the same time and that’s going to create a lot of problems.”


So government is forced to protect nearby homes from fire, and also
preserve the health of the forest.


Increasingly, governments are addressing the problem by clearing dead
trees. State and federal governments have thinned eighteen thousand
acres in Colorado. This compares to the seven hundred thousand acres
infected.


Rob Davis is the president of Forest Energy Colorado. His company
takes dead trees, and makes wood pellets to heat homes. He says an
opportunity exists to improve the health of the forest and make a
profit:


“This is an extremely valuable resource,
do we want to use it? You know if this goes into energy and displaces
fossil fuels, it helps global warming. It helps climate change that is
one of the problems that we have with these forests. So are we going
to keep the narrow point of view that says ‘Oh! It’s got to stay
exactly like it was historically,’ or do we want to open our mind and
say ‘We can actually use this to help global warming, we can use this
in cases as long as remember that first thing is the health of the
forest…’ we can use it.”


But removing dead trees may have ecological costs. A 2002 study by the
University of Colorado concluded that harvesting forests leads to soil
erosion, loss of nutrients, and warmer ground temperatures. Professor
Kolikowski says the effects of harvesting might be worse than the initial
disturbance.


“That’s not to say that harvesting or salvaging is inappropriate, we
just need to be clear about what it is we want to do and why.”


And local governments may not have the money to do it all… to curb the
population of bark beetles, protect homes from fires, and preserve the
ecology. Tom Fry with the conservation group the Wilderness Society
remembers work he did on the Front Range. In the ten-county area, it
would have cost fifteen million a year for forty years to do risk
reduction and forest restoration:


“I think one of the messages here is we won’t have that money. We’ll
never have that money. So we as a community, and that community
includes all of us, need to be hyper strategic and surgical in where we
look to apply what resources we have.”


For the time being, governments are choosing to use their resources to
thin the forests to reduce the risk of fire from the beetle.


The U.S. Forest Service (White River National Forest) just auctioned
the right for timber contractors to remove dead trees from another
thirteen hundred acres. The work will begin by the end of the summer.


For the Environment Report, I’m Steve Zelaznik.

Related Links

FIGHT FOR AMERICA’S LONGEST RIVER (Part 2)

  • Barge companies question the science of the Army Corps of Engineers' studies that indicate habitat restoration and changes in river management help threatened species and other wildlife. (Photo by Lester Graham)

The US economy relies heavily on the nation’s rivers to transport goods bound
for foreign markets. Each year river barges carry hundreds of millions of
tons of cargo to busy ports. Traffic is bustling on some rivers, but it’s dying on
others. Commercial shippers say their situation is made worse by attempts to
balance their interests against conservation. In the second of three reports,
Kevin Lavery explains why some barge companies say mismanagement is
squeezing them out of the marketplace:

Transcript

The US economy relies heavily on the nation’s rivers to transport goods bound
for foreign markets. Each year river barges carry hundreds of millions of
tons of cargo to busy ports. Traffic is bustling on some rivers, but it’s dying on
others. Commercial shippers say their situation is made worse by attempts to
balance their interests against conservation. In the second of three reports,
Kevin Lavery explains why some barge companies say mismanagement is
squeezing them out of the marketplace:


In 2004, America celebrated the bicentennial of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of
Discovery mission to the West. At the start of the 19th century, the Missouri River
was center stage in an age of discovery.


By the start of the 21st century, the river was in an age of discontent. Riverboat
companies, environmentalists, Indian tribes and state governments were
deadlocked in legal battles over water releases.


Paul Davis’ shipping terminal in Boonville, Missouri has been around for 36
years. In 2004, he watched two major shippers call it quits. One of them,
Blaskey Marine, was a family venture:


“And Blaskey had been in the towboat business on the Missouri River for as long as I can
recall, and business just got too tough for them, so they just gave it up. And that’s what
really was the beginning of the end in our involvement with barges, at least for the time
being.”


Industry watchers say the riverboats have been clanging their death knell for
a long time. In 1977, barges carried just over 3 million tons of cargo. Since then,
floods, drought and market forces have cut barge shipments by two-thirds. Chad
Smith is with the environmental group American Rivers in Lincoln, Nebraska:


“They don’t move a lot of tons, and agriculture basically dictates that grain moves the
market by truck and rail. Everybody agrees those numbers don’t lie.”


But everyone doesn’t agree. Paul Rhode is with the national shipping advocacy
group Waterways Council, Incorporated:


“People say barge traffic is dying on the Missouri. That’s not true. Barge traffic is being
killed by the way the Missouri river is managed right now.”


Rhode blames the industry’s woes on the Army Corps of Engineers, the federal
agency that regulates the Missouri River.


In May 2006, the Corps released more water than usual from a South Dakota
reservoir. The rise was meant to tell an endangered fish, the pallid sturgeon, to
spawn. Rhode says that artificial rise in the spring later lowered the river’s depth
in the summer. He says unpredictable flows kept shippers from carrying a lot of
freight… and making long-term plans:


“The levels could be managed much better. We don’t need a spring rise. We need water
down here in August and September. Barge traffic has been cut short by leaps and
bounds over the past few years, in part because of the spring rise issue.”


How short? Despite heavy rains earlier this year, the Corps plans to shorten the
navigation season by at least 45 days. That means shippers who normally finish
in December will be lucky to still be hauling by Halloween.


But there’s only so much water that can be released from upstream
reservoirs… and the Corps stands by its decision to raise the river. Spokesman
Paul Johnston says biologists are encouraged by the data they’re seeing on the
pallid sturgeon. And he says the man-made flood pulses are minor:


“They’re certainly not aggressive, at least in our perspective, and I know that there are
people who think that it’s too much too soon. But if we don’t do anything, then we
certainly will not have any data to back up any decisions.”


Historically, the Corps’ decisions tended to favor riverboats, especially in the
1930’s, when the Corps turned 735 miles of the Missouri into a shipping channel.
American Rivers’ Chad Smith says while that was viewed as the best course for
the river then, its time to set a new one:


“It’s now the year 2007 and I think our hopes and dreams have changed. And it’s probably
time for Congress to go back and see what’s happening in this basin with market forces in
agriculture and a lot of these big drivers that put pressure on the way we use and manage
the Missouri now, and see if there are things we need to do differently.”


Smith suggests some of those uses of the Missouri River might be changing
soon. With their balance sheets already razor-thin, barge operators worry those
changes might sink them.


For The Environment Report, I’m Kevin Lavery.


ANCHOR TAG: Tomorrow, Kevin reports on how the recreation and wildlife
preservation search for their place on the Missouri River.

Related Links

Car Sharing Gets Profitable

  • Through car sharing programs, users rent cars on an hourly basis. (Photo courtesy of Zipcar)

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day.
It’s commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans,
renting a car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour
is often called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment
because its users only get the car when they need the car. They usually
take buses and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big
cities on the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair
of private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby
has this report:

Transcript

There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day. It’s
commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans, renting a
car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour is often
called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment because its
users only get the car when they need the car. They usually take buses
and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big cities on
the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair of
private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now, those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd
Melby has this report:


For the past six months, a nonprofit called the Neighborhood Energy
Consortium has had the Minneapolis/St. Paul car sharing market to itself.
The non-profit group has raised about $450,000 to buy 12 cars. Those
energy-efficient hybrids have attracted about 140 people to join the
HourCar program. That’s Hour with an “H.”


(Sound of bus stop and rumble of passing truck)


On this Saturday morning, Mary Solac is shivering at a bus stop, waiting
for a ride to go pick up her HourCar. Despite the obvious inconvenience,
she says it’s worth it.


“You don’t have to worry about insurance. You don’t have to worry
about gas. It’s like okay, I’m paying what I’m paying and I don’t have to
worry about fixing the blasted car either.”


After a short bus ride, Solac does have to worry about more mundane car
concerns… such as scraping the ice and snow off the window.


(Sound of ice/snow scraping on the windshield)


To date, Solac’s only choice for renting a car by the hour has been
HourCar. That’s about to change.


The nation’s largest car sharing company — Zipcar of Boston — is
invading HourCar’s Minneapolis turf. Nearly 50,000 people now take
turns driving about 500 Zipcars, mostly in Boston, New York and
Washington, D.C.


Scott Griffith is the CEO of Zipcar.


“Over the last several years, we’ve really focused on those cities and getting
them past profitability, past the break even point, to prove that at the
metro market level, that we can make money in this business.”


That track record enticed a venture capital firm to invest $10 million in
Zipcar.


Another big new company is also getting an influx of cash. The nation’s
second-largest car sharing company — Flexcar of Seattle — is about half
as big as Zipcar. It too has a new investor: AOL Founder Stephen Case.
He rented a Flexcar, liked it and bought the company.


In Chicago, Flexcar has paired with a local nonprofit to put 47 cars on
the street.


Zipcar, meanwhile, is also trying to get into Chicago. It wants
government agencies in the Windy City to commit to using its cars
before entering the market. The company hopes that happens sometime
this year.


Business professor Alfred Marcus at the University of Minnesota says it’s
not unusual for emerging businesses to seek government help like this.


“To get this sector going, to stimulate it, it makes sense for their to be
some public involvement, but you would hope this could take off on its
own. I think this is transitional – these public and private partnerships,
and that’s very typical when industries start.”


In Minneapolis/St. Paul, the University of Minnesota is guaranteeing
Zipcar a $1,500 per month per vehicle subsidy, but once Zipcar meets the
$1,500 minimum, that subsidy goes away. Zipcar says it expects to do
just that in three months.


At the moment, Zipcar is growing fast. It had revenues of about $15
million in 2005. CEO Griffith says it expects to double that this year, but
Alfred Marcus with the University of Minnesota says over the long-term,
Zipcar faces big hurdles.


Zipcar has only had success in large, densely-populated cities. Its target
market is young people without cars who are highly price sensitive, and
then there’s the question of where to keep the cars. They have to be
conveniently located to the people who might want to use them.


Marcus says that if these start-ups continue to grow, someday they might
be gobbled up by bigger companies.


“The ultimate aim of Flexcars or Zipcars may be to build up a fringe
business, get it going and have a rental car company buy them or have even
have a conventional automobile company by them.”


But the car-sharing company owners say they have other plans. Zipcar
boss Scott Griffith says he’s working on a 10-year plan to make Zipcar an
international company. Flexcar owner Stephen Case says he bought that
firm “to build it” and not to “flip it.”


For the GLRC, I’m Todd Melby.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Southwest After Great Lakes Water?

  • This billboard was displayed along several major highways in Michigan. The sponsors were hoping to raise awareness about water diversion, but do these arid states really pose a threat to the Great Lakes? (Photo courtesy of Central Michigan Life )

We’re continuing our series on the Great Lakes. One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes that experts identified was water withdrawals. Our guide in this series, Lester Graham, says the next report looks at one of the myths of water withdrawals:

Transcript

We’re continuing our series on the Great Lakes. One of the Ten Threats
to the Great Lakes that experts identified was water withdrawals. Our
guide in this series, Lester Graham, says the next report looks at one of
the myths of water withdrawals.

Environmentalists and policy makers say a thirsty world could pose a
major threat to the Great Lakes. Water wars have been predicted in arid
parts of the globe, and some say the laws of supply and demand might
one-day lead to a raid on the region’s fresh water. Reporter Mark Brush takes a
closer look at one claim: that states in the southwest will one day come
after the Great Lakes water… and finds that it might just be H2O hype…


Taking water out of the Great Lakes is a hot button issue, and no one is
more aware of this than politicians looking for votes. In the 2004
campaign, President Bush used the issue to rally a crowd in Traverse
City, Michigan:


“My position is clear. We are never going to allow the diversion of
Great Lakes water.”


(Sound of applause)


The issue taps into people’s emotions. People get outraged when they think
of someone taking water out of the Lakes – especially when they’ve seen lake
levels dropping over the years, and the region’s political leaders have listened
to those concerns. The states and provinces that surround the world’s largest fresh
water system are working on a compact that will prevent water diversions.


But where is the threat to Great Lakes water coming from? We
conducted an informal poll on the streets of Ann Arbor, and we asked
people: “who wants water from the Great Lakes?” Six out of the ten
people we talked to pointed to the west:


(Sound of street)


“Las Vegas, the Southwest.”


“Probably the dry states in the West. Arizona, Nevada.”


“I think the west should keep their damn hands off our water.”


But do the arid states in the West really pose a threat to Great Lakes
water? It turns out – this same question was asked more than twenty
years ago.


In the 1980s, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the possibility of
moving Lake Superior water to the Missouri River. It’s a distance of
about six hundred miles. Farmers in the High Plains states were hoping
to use this water to irrigate their crops.


Jonathan Bulkley is a professor of civil and environmental engineering at
the University of Michigan. Bulkley and his colleagues analyzed this
diversion plan, and he says the whole project would have been too
expensive:


“We found it would take seven 1000 megawatt power plants dedicated to
lifting the water, because water needs to be lifted to reach these distant
locations, and in addition there would have to be conveyance structures
built to transport the water, and our conclusion was the total cost would
far exceed the value of the water.”


In other words, Bulkley found that it would be cheaper for these states to
find other sources of water – or to find ways to conserve the water they
had left, and this was a diversion of only 600 miles. A diversion all the
way to the Southwest would mean piping the water almost twice that
distance.


“We are always looking for extra water – everyone in the Southwest is
looking for extra water.”


Bob Barrett is a spokesperson for the Central Arizona Project. It’s one of
the biggest water suppliers in the Southwest. The Project pulls water
from the Colorado River and delivers it to southern Arizona. Barrett
says he can’t imagine a situation where Great Lakes water is pumped for
more than a thousand miles to the Colorado River:


“Most people don’t realize it, but a gallon of water weighs about eight
pounds, and if you’re going to push that up and over the Rocky
Mountains you’re going to need a lot of power. (Laughs) So, it’s a good
idea, but I don’t see how anybody could pay for it.”


But some observers say even though it might not happen today – it could
happen in the future. They point to a fast-growing population and a fast-
dwindling fresh water supply in the southwest. They say that
combination could drive engineers and policy makers to devise a way to
get Great Lakes water.


But Barrett says for states like Arizona, California, and even Texas – it
would be cheaper for them to build desalinization plants… these plants
convert ocean water into drinking water:


“I mean why should Texas build for a canal and then have to maintain it
from the Great Lakes down to the state of Texas when they can go to the
Gulf Coast and build several desalinization plants, and then just pipe it
wherever they need it?”


So, a large-scale water diversion to the southwest seems unlikely.
Experts say water from the Great Lakes is much more likely to go to
cities and towns right on the edge of the basin, but as legislators move to
tighten restrictions on diversions – even these places will
have a hard time getting access to the water.


For the GLRC, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

Birders Keep an Eye Out for Vagrants

  • Some hummingbirds have been showing up in places where they're not normally found. Cornell University is trying to recruit birders to help them collect sightings of birds outside their range. (Photo courtesy of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service)

Bird lovers nationwide are being asked to report “vagrants” in their neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:

Transcript

Bird lovers nationwide are being asked to report “vagrants” in their neighborhoods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner explains:


Bird researchers at Cornell University have a special request this winter: they’re asking their nationwide network of bird watchers to report vagrants – birds that show up in places they’re not normally found. David Bonter is head of Project FeederWatch at Cornell.


He says birds that drift outside their normal range can indicate a natural shift in bird distribution or it could be a sign there’s a problem with the species. Bonter says in recent years, there have been a lot of reports of hummingbirds that breed west of the Rocky Mountains showing up at feeders in the Southeast and Midwest.


“These are birds that, historically, have never been in Eastern North America and they’re showing up here at feeders in the winter time, when historically, they’d be wintering in Mexico or points south.”


Bonter says calls bird vagrancy a biological dead end, because most don’t find mates in their new environment.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

Cleaning House for Lewis and Clark

Two-hundred years ago this May, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark started up the Missouri River on a two-year journey into the American West. As America commemorates the bicentennial of the expedition, hundreds of volunteers are cleaning up the Missouri. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Lavery reports:

Transcript

Two-hundred years ago this May, Meriwether Lewis and William Clark started up the
Missouri River on a two-year journey into the American West. As America
commemorates the bicentennial of the expedition, hundreds of volunteers are cleaning up
the Missouri. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Kevin Lavery reports:


A troupe portraying Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery is retracing the explorers’
path. The real journey starts when they leave Illinois and take their keelboat up the
Missouri River as it meanders through the state of Missouri.


But…the Missouri is not as clean as the day Lewis and Clark first saw it. With the re-
enactors and their flotilla coming, some local volunteers want to do some cleaning up
ahead of time. They’re launching what could be the biggest clean-up ever on the Big
Muddy.


(sound of lapping water)


John Brady and Jeff Barrow are with Missouri River Relief, a grassroots nonprofit that
began cleaning the banks of the Missouri three years ago. Now, they’re embarking on
their most ambitious project yet: eight massive daylong cleanups that will stretch into
June. The idea is to stay two weeks ahead of the flotilla, clearing away any eyesores
along its cruise upriver.


Barrow says they’ve seen their share of garbage clogging the Missouri:


“Everything from cars and truck bodies, you find a lot of freezers and refrigerators, you
find tons of Styrofoam, plastic…we found a piano once.”


(sound of boat motor starting)


Barrow and Brady are scouting the river in search of places where debris piles up. As the
advance team, their job is to place markers in heavy trash areas so the coming clean-up
crews know where to start. Just a few hundred yards out, Brady spots a small pocket of
trash. But he knows that what he sees on the shore is only a fraction of what’s hidden in
the trees:


“So, when you go out scouting you spot the obvious stuff that you can see from the
riverbank, and then you go to the spots where you know that it’s more likely that stuff
accumulates. For example, brushy spots on the outside of bends. And you get out and
look, and if it’s a good heavy spot, you schedule a crew to come in there and work it.”


Barrow guns the motor and heads for the spot where the Missouri flows into the
Mississippi. The two currents blend into a broad waterway. On the far bank of the
Mississippi, green trees give way to rusty machinery and industry on the Illinois bank:


Barrow: “Do we have our passport for Illinois here?” (laughs)


Barrow says this area will get special attention:


“Right here is where they’re going to kick off the Lewis and Clark flotilla. See this gravel
beach? So they’re expecting 2,000 people to be here, and we’re going to be cleaning up
this area, get all this driftwood out of there…you see the trash that’s up there.”


Preparing the site for that many people will take a small army of volunteers. But the
excitement of the Lewis and Clark bicentennial should make that an easier job than usual.


Evan McFarland belongs to the River Kids…a non-profit group made up of some 40 St.
Louis fourth-graders that began cleaning local creeks last fall. He’s enthusiastic about the
environmental benefits of a cleaner river. But Evan also sees a public relations benefit.
With potentially thousands of foreign tourists coming to the U.S. for the bicentennial
events, Evan thinks the time is right to showcase the Missouri:


“Well, I hope that they would be very excited and maybe compare where they came from,
maybe a river or a lake to the Missouri River…and maybe if they’ve already been here
before, see how it’s improved, and say hey…this is a pretty clean river.”


The band of volunteers will start at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi before
the flotilla sets sail May 14th. They’ll steadily move upstream, capping their efforts with
a grand finale cleanup in Kansas City in June.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Kevin Lavery.

Related Links

Fighting West Nile Virus With Native Fish

Much of the debate over preventing the West Nile virus has focused on when and how to use pesticides to get rid of the mosquitoes that transmit the disease. But one community is trying another approach: increasing stocks of mosquito-eating fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Phillips reports:

Transcript

Much of the debate over preventing the West Nile virus has focused on when and how to use
pesticides to get rid of the mosquitoes that transmit the disease. But one community is trying
another approach – increasing stocks of mosquito-eating fish. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lisa Phillips reports:


When Greg Wier was a kid, he spent hours playing in the woods next to his family’s vegetable
farm in Guilderland, New York. He was too busy having fun to pay much attention to
mosquitoes.


“You got woods, you’re a kid. We had trails and forts and everything back here.”


Wier, who now has kids of his own, still lives on the family farm. But a lot has changed. The
woods have been replaced by a subdivision. The mosquitoes he once thought fairly harmless are
now potential carriers of the sometimes-deadly West Nile virus. Wier, the town highway
foreman, is the man in charge of Guilderland’s latest effort to combat the disease. He’s taking a
different approach: stocking ponds with fish that eat mosquito larvae. The effort started in the
subdivision’s drainage pond. On this hot afternoon, Wier watches a few sunfish and tadpoles dart
around the pond’s edge:


“I grew up here. I know this area quite well, and to see something like this happening naturally
instead of chemically is good for me.”


For the past four years, Wier has stocked the pond with several native fish species, including
pumpkin seed sunfish and golden shiner, a type of minnow. Both have a healthy appetite for
mosquito larvae. The town also puts bacterial larvicides, known as “dunks,” in smaller pools of
water, but there has been no pesticide spraying since the 1980’s. Ward Stone heads the Wildlife
Pathology Unit of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. He is a big
fan of the Guilderland approach, especially as evidence of West Nile mounts:


“We’re in high danger right now. We’ve had mosquitoes, we’ve had a wet summer. Predictions
are that the United States will have the most severe year for West Nile virus. We need to have a
vaccine and control. This is a little bit of that overall war that the town of Guilderland is waging
and doing it very soundly and ecologically.”


Using fish to fight mosquitoes is not a new idea. But using native fish is different from what’s
been done in the past. Michael Kaufman is an entomologist at Michigan State University. He
says gambusia, a non-native species known as “mosquito fish,” has been used in the American
West and parts of Asia.


“Lots of people, myself included, think it is an unwise idea to use them indiscriminately. There is
an issue with mosquito fish eating the eggs of native species or amphibians. They’ll eat frogs or
salamander eggs. That’s obviously a sensitive issue there, too.”


Guilderland has taken no official steps to research how well the program is working, though there
have been fewer complaints about mosquitoes in the neighborhood near the drainage pond. The
question is whether other communities should follow the town’s lead. Entomologist Michael
Kaufman says there are benefits to doing so – but there are also limits.


“Anything a community can do to reduce mosquitoes coming off any breeding site is a good
thing. The problem is, many mosquitoes don’t breed in ponds that are permanent. There are a
large number of mosquitoes that breed in smaller bodies of water, temporary ponds, very polluted
areas. Things like sewage lagoons.”


In other words, places mosquito-eating native fish are unlikely to thrive. Guilderland Highway
Foreman Greg Wier is well aware that his strategy is no magic bullet against West Nile virus. He
just sees it as one part of an effort everyone has to make.


“By a town taking care of a pond like this, we’re taking care of our own backyard. If everyone else
takes care of their own backyard, cleans the gutters, birdbaths, or empties a tire, that alone will
help control the mosquito population. If every house in the area does it that will be more of an
answer to West Nile virus, I believe.”


Because the fish program is so cheap to implement, Wier has already expanded it to a pond in a
new town park. If all goes well, in a few years there could be another benefit to Guilderland’s
mosquito prevention scheme: a place for anglers to go fishing – perhaps without having to cover
themselves with quite so much bug repellant.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lisa Phillips.

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