Searching for Salamanders at Old Nuke Site

  • Salamanders are a good indicator of wetland health. (Photo courtesy of the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife)

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands.
looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government
selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant.
Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has
been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland
state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why
their presence is so important:

Transcript

Government workers are slogging around in man-made wetlands looking for salamanders. Back in the 1950’s, the United States government selected a plot of land to be the home of its newest uranium processing plant. Since the end of the Cold War, the now-closed nuclear processing plant has been undergoing the long and arduous task of returning to its natural wetland state. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tana Weingartner reports on the search for salamanders at the site, and why their presence is so important:


It’s a cold, windy day in late March as specialists from the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency head out to check their traps at the Fernald Nuclear Plant. The 1050-acre facility sits in a rural area just 18 miles north of Cincinnati. Although the EPA is in charge of cleaning up the uranium contamination here, today they’re on a different mission. Today they’re hunting salamanders.


“Salamanders basically are a sign of an established wetland usually, and in this case would show that we put a wetland in a location where salamanders need additional breeding habitat.”


In other words, Schneider says the presence of salamanders indicates the first level of success for these manmade wetlands. The wetland project is one of several ways the EPA is ensuring Fernald is properly restored to its natural state.


“Well, we’re looking forward to the day when we get the site cleaned up, and it can be like a land lab, and people can bring kids out here and do environmental education on the importance of wetlands, and it’s going to make a great contrast with what used to be here and the environmental contamination with the environmental benefit the facility is providing down the road.”


Today, the site is 70 percent certified clean, and officials expect to finish the cleanup by June 2006. Creating healthy wetlands full of insects, amphibians and salamanders is one of the first steps to success.


“So the method here is to set ten traps equidistant, hopefully, around the perimeter of the wetland. And they’re passive traps, whereby animals that are moving over the course of the 24 hours or so that the traps have been in, will bump into the traps and it’s a funnel that directs them into the center part of the trap, and they’re held in there until we release them.”


(splashing sound)


Schneider and his team laugh and joke as they pull the traps up by brightly colored ribbons. Train horns and construction noises mix with bird calls – one a reminder of what has been, the other a sign of what’s to come.


“That’s probably a one-year-old bullfrog there and then these big guys are dragonfly larvae and these other guys are back swimmers. Mayfly larvae and dragonfly larvae are both good indicators of high water quality.”


The third pond, or vernal pool, turns up 46 tadpoles and a tiny peeper frog, but no salamanders.


(truck door slams)


So it’s back in the truck and on down the dirt road to where several more wetland pools sit just across from the on-site waste dump. That dump will be Fernald’s lasting reminder of its former use. These pools are younger and less established, but they do offer hope. Last year, adult salamanders were found in the one closest to a clump of trees.


Each spring, as the snow melts away and temperatures rise, salamanders venture out in the first 50-degree rain to begin their search for a mate. Schneider had hoped warm temperatures in late February and early March prompted “The Big Night,” as it’s known.


“So, no salamanders today?”


“No salamanders today. I think we learned a little bit about the difference between wetlands that are three years old. We saw a lot more diversity in the macroinvertebrates, the insect population, than we have down here.”


Perhaps the salamanders haven’t come yet, or maybe they have already come and gone, leaving behind the still un-hatched eggs. Either way, the team will check back again in April and a third time in late May or June.


“And we have high hopes, high hopes, high apple pie in the sky hopes. That’s the kind.”


(sound of laughter)


For the GLRC, I’m Tana Weingartner.

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States Seek to Ban Internet Hunting

  • Live-shot.com is a website providing a "Real Time, Online, Hunting and Shooting Experience." Many states are proposing legislation to ban web hunting, saying that it's unsportsmanlike.

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say the practice is inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley
reports:

Transcript

A new kind of hunting has already been outlawed in at least one state… and could be in others soon. Hunters, lawmakers, and animal rights activists say it’s inhumane. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:


John Lockwood has created the web site “live shot dot com.” For a fee, users can control a gun from their computer to shoot animals on his Texas ranch. Critics say it doesn’t allow for a fair hunt.


But Lockwood says it closely resembles an “in-person” hunt because someone is on-site. He says that person sits in a blind with the user-operated gun and acts as the user’s guide.


“The animal still has the same chance of detecting you, you know the human scents as he would in any hunting situation. It’s not like all that’s out there is this inanimate object that’s aiming and shooting. It’s just like if somebody was there hunting.”


Lockwood says he created the site to help people who couldn’t get out to hunt, like the disabled. He says the online hunters must have a valid Texas hunting license.


But lawmakers in several states have introduced legislation to ban the practice.


For the GLRC, I’m Christina Shockley.

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Nfl Putting Down Roots for Next Superbowl

  • A surplus of carbon dioxide is created during big events like the Superbowl. To counteract this, the NFL has plans to plant trees in Detroit. (Photo by Sarah Lawrence)

Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted during next year’s Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials from the National Football League plan to plant acres of trees in Detroit. They’re hoping to offset extra greenhouse gases that will be emitted into the local atmosphere during the upcoming Super Bowl. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


The U.S. Department of Energy estimated an extra 260 tons of carbon dioxide were released into the atmosphere during the last Super Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida. A team of scientists from Princeton University determined three and a half to four acres of trees were required to absorb the extra greenhouse gases. Similar computations are now being done to determine how many trees to plant in Detroit.


Deborah Gangloff is the executive director of American Forests, a group that helps companies design what are called carbon neutral programs.


“We can address a great deal of the excess carbon dioxide issue with trees. Trees are going to sequester lots of carbon dioxide. What matters most is not the type of tree you plant, but whether that tree is well suited to the site, whether it s a healthy tree and whether it’s in its growing climate.”


She says these programs can t solve the problem of excess greenhouse gases unless they re paired with conservation and reduced consumption.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Kyoto in Canada Hits a Roadblock

  • Canada's action to reduce greenhouse gases under the Kyoto Agreement is being slowed as groups are threatening to vote against a budget bill that includes an amendment to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)

Canadian environmental groups fear political opposition may kill the Liberal government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

Canadian environmental groups fear political opposition may kill the Liberal government’s plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


Canada’s opposition parties have created an uproar over an amendment to the government’s latest budget bill. The amendment would change Canada’s environmental protection act. It would allow nontoxic gases which heat up the atmosphere, such as carbon dioxide, to be regulated.


It’s the first step in Canada’s plan to comply with the Kyoto Protocol on climate change. But it’s hit a major roadblock. The Conservatives say they’ll vote against the bill unless that proposal is removed. And if they vote against the budget, the Liberal government may fall.


The Sierra Club’s John Bennett says their aggressive tactics may make it difficult for Canada to make any changes to environmental laws.


“I’m very concerned that because of this, we may actually lose the ability to regulate greenhouse gases in Canada for a long time to come. And that’s the real danger here.”


Canada has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 20 percent over the next seven years. But Bennett says it won’t happen without new regulations.


For the GLRC, I’m Karen Kelly.

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States Sue Epa Over New Mercury Rules

  • Some states are worried that the EPA's new mercury regulations won't protect children and pregnant women from mercury emissions from smokestacks. (Photo by Kenn Kiser)

Several states are filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its recently announced rules for reducing mercury pollution. The states allege the EPA’s rules do not adequately protect children and pregnant mothers from mercury contamination. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Several states are filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency for its recently announced rules for reducing mercury
pollution. The states allege the EPA’s rules do not adequately protect
children and pregnant mothers from mercury contamination. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


Nine states joined in the suit, claiming the EPA’s new cap-and-trade program
would lead to mercury hotspots. Instead of making all coal-burning plants
reduce mercury emissions, the plan will allow some plants to continue to
pollute by buying credits from plants that reduce emissions below the EPA’s
targets.


Peter Harvey is the Attorney General for New Jersey. He’s the lead
plaintiff in the suit.


“There are going to be areas of the country that have a lot more air
pollution, which means those residents are at a greater danger of ingesting
mercury, either through the air or through seafood products.”


Harvey says the Bush Administration’s plan does not meet the requirements of
the Clean Air Act. The U.S. EPA has defended the plan in the past, saying
lowers overall mercury emissions by half within 15 years without forcing
companies to add expensive pollution prevention equipment at every plant.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

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Wolf Hunting Shouldn’t Be Taboo

  • As wolf populations are increasing, an old question arises: whether or not to allow wolf hunting. (Photo courtesy of the USGS)

In 2003, federal protections for the gray wolf in many parts of the country were downgraded. But last January, a federal district court in Oregon struck down that decision. In this region, the court ruling meant that wildlife officials lost the legal authority to kill problem wolves. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Butz thinks these courtroom battles are delaying the inevitable… and that hunters should have a hand in managing wolves:

Transcript

In 2003, federal protections for the gray wolf in many parts
of the country were downgraded. But last January, a federal district
court in Oregon struck down that decision. In this region, the court
ruling meant that wildlife officials lost the legal authority to kill
problem wolves. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Butz thinks these courtroom battles are delaying the inevitable… and that hunters should have a hand in managing wolves:


Today over half the entire wolf population of the continental United States can be found right here in the Upper Midwest. Around 3,000 in Minnesota. Roughly 800 more split evenly between Michigan and Wisconsin.


Some biologists think that Michigan’s wolf population might actually double within the next decade.
So why are so many people acting as if wolves in these parts are still teetering on the brink of extinction? Why this push for stronger federal protection when is seems what we really should start thinking about is how we plan to keep wolf populations responsibly in check?


With every new courtroom delay, I’m beginning to understand that for some people no amount of wolves will ever be enough. But very soon some judge is also going to figure that out, and finally wolves will be taken completely off the federal list of endangered animals. Then it will be up to the states to manage them.


Yet right now no one is talking about how we’re going to do that. Or where the money to sustain a healthy management program will come from – all because of a dirty little word – hunting.


Wolves… hunting. Remember in public to duck and cover when you say that.


But for the sake of the wolf, somebody needs to start talking about managing them as a big game species. Up until the latest court ruling, some government trappers had a fulltime job killing an increasingly number of nuisance wolves.


Minnesota officials are killing an average of a hundred and fifty wolves every year. In Wisconsin and Michigan each they kill a couple dozen more. Why are these wolves dying for nothing? If biologists used hunters to control the population, each wolf taken out of the system could result in money,lots of it, necessary for managing the species.


While most state biologists sit on the sidelines apparently without a plan, some people are taking matters into their own hands… killing the wolves illegally. In the Upper Midwest, poaching has reached levels unheard of a decade ago.


The reasons for this are simple: As one biologist told me, when an animal becomes too prolific it becomes devalued. As wolves make more and more trouble for farmers, ranchers, and locals, people are starting to wonder where all this is headed.


If brought into the management loop, hunters could easily outshine courtroom environmentalists as the wolf’s biggest hero and financial benefactor. Think of the giant Canada goose, believed to be extinct in North America until their rediscovery in 1965.


And how about all those shrub-eating, bumper bending whitetail deer? Call it tough love, but if anything when hunters get behind an animal recent history proves that the species will flourish.


But first biologists need to come up with a plan that gives the public a stake in helping with the long-term survival of the wolf. Wolves might be endangered elsewhere in the U.S., but not here. It’s time for leadership, time for a vision. Time for game managers to actually get out there and manage. It’s time for biologists to stop playing wait-and-see and, in the spirit of the wolf—for the sake of the wolf—get out in front of this issue and start leading the pack.


Host tag: Bob Butz is a hunter and author of the book “Beast of Never, Cat
of God: The Search for the Eastern Puma.” He lives in northern Michigan.

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Designing a Green Neighborhood

  • "Green" single family homes built by GreenBuilt in the Cleveland EcoVillage. (Photo courtesy of Cleveland EcoVillage)

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:

Transcript

In recent decades, rust-belt cities have seen neighborhoods deteriorate and surrounding suburbs sprawl with little restraint. Now, formerly industrial cities are looking to redevelop old neighborhoods and attract new people. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lisa Ann Pinkerton looks at how one old neighborhood is using sustainable ideas to attract new residents:


(sound of street)


The morning sun is peaking through an overcast sky along a street lined with simple Victorian style homes. In this Cleveland neighborhood, two of these homes are brand new. Unlike their century old neighbors, they’re green buildings… built with the environment in mind.


One, is the home of David and Jen Hovus. It was built to actively conserve resources and to have a low impact on the environment. For example, all of the lights are on timers.


“I had to go out of my way to find timers that would control compact fluorescent lights, so that I wasn’t wasting too much electricity.”


Even the fan venting moist air from the bathroom… is on a timer. The furnace too, is a high-efficiency unit.


(sound of walking)


Hovus’s environmentally friendly surroundings don’t stop at the backyard gate. He lives in a special neighborhood called the Cleveland EcoVillage. And on his way to work, he sees green building principles and sustainable practices all along the way. Like the community garden, where even the tool shed is made of recycled material.


“There was a 120-year-old maple tree that was cut down. Folks brought a portable saw mill and they sawed it into lumber and that’s what they used for the framing. It’s actually a strawbale construction as well.”


The idea to revive a struggling neighborhood with sustainable solutions, started with the city’s environmental planning organization, EcoCity Cleveland. Back in 1997, they investigated dozens of the cities neighborhoods. And choose the west side neighborhood where Hovus lives, because it was close to transit, had a strong Community Development organization and had support of the local councilman.


David Beach is EcoCity Cleveland’s Executive Director. He says besides environmentally sound buildings, the neighborhood gives the option of a car-free life.


“Where everything you need is with in walking distance. So you’re living space, your work place, and some of your shopping can be right in that one neighborhood. And then you hop on that rapid transit and in five minutes your downtown or you’re at the airport.”


Everything within a half-mile radius of the transit station is in the EcoVillage.
Resident David Hovus stands at the entrance, with fierce wind coming off of Lake Erie.


“This used to be… there was literally a set of stairs leading down to the platform. There was essentially a bus shelter on the platform and that was it. And if you didn’t actually know where the entrances were, you’d never know there was a train station here.”


So EcoCity Cleveland and the neighborhood convinced Cleveland’s Transit Authority to spend nearly $4 and a half million dollars on a new station, based on environmentally sound principles. It’s the only Green Transit Station in Ohio.


“And now we’d got a nice warm building that uses passive solar heating and a lot of green building features.”


Mandy Metcalf is the EcoVillage Project Director. She continues our tour of the neighborhood down a walking path.
Four blocks later, twenty new green-built town homes come into view. In the same simple Victorian style of the neighborhood, they blend right in. They’re also very energy efficient.


“One resident said that his January bill was only forty dollars for gas, which is pretty impressive.”


But, the majority of the homes in the EcoVillage are more than a century old and very energy inefficient. While they’re considered “affordable housing,” a mortgage payment on top of a heating bill of more than $300 dollars makes them difficult to afford. So Metcalf’s organization helped homeowners discover where their energy was being wasted.


“What the best things, the most cost effective things that they could do to retrofit their houses. And now we’re going to match them up with loan programs and encourage them to go through with it.”


While older homes are being updated, the Ecovillage is making plans to improve the green space surrounding the local rec center. And within two years, they hope to entice a green building grocery store to the area.


For the GLRC, this is Lisa Ann Pinkerton.

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Living Out Aldo Leopold’s Legacy

  • Aldo Leopold found fame by writing "A Sand County Almanac"... but even sixty years after his death, scholars say his theories about living in harmony with nature are influencing conservation practices today. (Photo courtesy of the Aldo Leopold Foundation Archives)

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

If you feel you just cannot live without wild things, you have something in
common with a conservationist who’s still influencing conservation practices almost
sixty years after his death. Scholars say the theories of Aldo Leopold continue to help shape wildlife management and land preservation, especially in the Upper Midwest. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Aldo Leopold is probably best known for writing A Sand
County Almanac. That’s a collection of essays about finding harmony
with nature. His ideas about preservation changed while working for the
Forest
Service in the southwestern U.S. Rick Stel of the Aldo Leopold
Foundation
says one day in the early 1900’s Leopold shot a wolf thought to be a threat
to
cattle. The female had pups with her.


“And he says he got there in time to see the
fierce green fire die in her eyes… and it was at this time he realized
we’re going about this in the wrong way… we really need to look at all
creatures and everything as a community.”


Leopold’s epiphany led to writings that won him national attention. he
eventually moved to Madison, Wisconsin – first to work in forest
research and later at the University of Wisconsin. There, he taught the
nation’s
first course in game management.


In 1935, he bought an abandoned farm in the sandy floodplain of the
Wisconsin River. It became the inspiration for many of the essays in A Sand County
Almanac.


(sound of unlocking door)


Most tours of the site start at an old chicken coop that was the only
building left when Leopold bought the place and is the only structure
now. The shack, as Leopold called it, has no electricity or furnace.


(sound of fire)


On chilly days tour guides light a fire in the fireplace and talk about
the ideas Leopold developed while visiting the shack with his family.
The Leopold Foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Leopold worried about
becoming disconnected from nature.


“His February essay talks about the two spiritual dangers of
not owning a farm. One is to assume food comes from a grocery store, and the second is that heat comes from a furnace.”


Outside the shack Leopold and his family worked to return the land to its
pre-agricultural state. They planted thousands of pine trees. The also undertook
one of
the first prairie restorations. The Leopold family spent a lot of time
discussing how
people were damaging the environment.


(sound of brushing)


About one hundred yards from the shack Buddy Huffaker brushes off
a plaque that’s set in the ground. at this spot, Leopold sawed apart a
lightning-damaged oak tree that he called the good oak. He wrote
about the experience in a famous essay that Huffaker says is really
about natural history.


“As he and his family saw through the growth rings of the oak, he
goes back in time to see how people have disregarded other natural
elements in the landscape – the decimation of turkeys and other
species that we hunted into extinction locally or entirely.”


But turkeys, sandhill cranes and a few others species have come
back–in part because of Leopold’s conservation ethic. Now his
followers are trying to protect more things.


To spread Leopold’s message some groups have started sponsoring
readings of Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac. At a library in Lake
Geneva
Wisconsin Jim Celano reads from the essay about the good oak.


“Now our saw bites into the 1920’s the Babbittian
decade when everything grew bigger and better in heedlessness and
arrogance – until 1929 when stock markets crumpled. If the oak heard them
fall, its
wood gives no sign.”


Celano is a former commerical real estate developer who now heads
a land conservancy group. He says he’s trying to convey Leopold’s
ideas to other developers.


“That we’re not here to say no to development… but to ask
they be sensitive to what they’re developing. And when you step on
their parcel, after their development is done, that the first thing you
notice is what they’re preserved and protected.”


(sound of woodpecker and traffic)


But even Aldo Leopold’s famous land around the shack is not immune
from modern threats. As a woodpecker hammers overhead, the noise
from a nearby interstate highway intrudes into the scenery. The
Leopold foundation’s Buddy Huffaker says Aldo Leopold knew the future
would bring new threats to the natural world.


“But I think that’s Leopold’s challenge to us. He
understood progress was going to continue. He just wanted us to
contemplate what we wanted that progress to be. And how far it
should go.”


And with sales of A Sand County Almanac bigger now than when it was
published in 1949, it ‘s a future Aldo Leopold might be helping to
shape.


For the GLRC, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

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