A new study states that it may take longer than previously thought for a lake to recover from phosphorus buildup. (Photo by Jere Kibler)
A new study suggests the build-up of phosphorus in lakes may cause problems for hundreds of years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Transcript
A new study suggests the build-up of phosphorus in lakes may cause problems
for hundreds of years. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach
reports:
Many farmers and other landowners use phosphorus-rich fertilizers on their property, but when the chemical runs off into lakes and streams, it can lead to algae blooms, depletion of oxygen, and fish
kills.
New research says it can take decades or hundreds of years for phosphorus to cycle out of a watershed. University of Wisconsin – Madison Professor Stephen Carpenter did the study. He says the effects won’t be as long-lasting if more phosphorus controls are put in place.
“For example we could develop more buffer strips, restore more wetlands, move point sources away from streams and lakes and maybe even innovate new technologies for keeping phosphorus on the
land.”
Farm groups say many of their members are trying to reduce soil erosion and chemical runoff. Carpenter says that’s true, but he says in some watersheds, much stronger action is needed.
Veterinarian Dr. Tara Harrison operates on an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake to implant a radio transmitter for tracking in the wild.
(Photo by Chris McCarus)
Indiana-Purdue University graduate biology student Joe Sage, a few feet from the wetlands in which Eastern Massasaugas hibernate, showing a team of state and municipal workers how to identify the snakes and where they live. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
Michigan State University Fish and Wildlife graduate student Kristin Wildman with one of the snakes she caught and placed in a tank before its operation at Potter Park Zoo. (Photo by Chris McCarus)
The Eastern Massassauga Rattlesnake used to be found all over the Midwest. Now there’s only one state where the population is fairly healthy, but even there it’s threatened by rapid development. A group of scientists is trying to protect the snake before all of its habitat is gone.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
The Eastern Eastern Massassauga Rattlesnake used to be found all over the Midwest. Now there’s only one state where the population is fairly healthy. But even there, it’s threatened by rapid development. A group of scientists is trying to protect the snake before all of its habitat is gone. The GLRC’s Chris McCarus reports:
(Sound of snake rattling)
A team of veterinarians and researchers is pulling an Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake from a bag. They put the snake on an operating table. Then the doctor snips open the skin.
“Okay, so I’m into the abdominal cavity.”
She’s putting a radio transmitter the size of a AA battery into the snake’s belly. This will allow them to track the snake’s movement in the wild for the next two years.
Kristin Wildman is a graduate student at Michigan State University. She catches and tracks the snakes. She’s involved in a project with federal, state and university biologists. They’re trying to protect the Massasauga.
She thinks of the snakes as being much like herself. She identifies with their personalities. Wildman says these snakes are just modest. They don’t like to attract attention and don’t like to hurt anybody.
“Like with this snake, she’s one of the bitier snakes I have in this study. And she only strikes the tongs – the snake tongs – because I’m grabbing her with the snake tongs. It just kind of gives you an idea. They don’t really strike unless you’re messing with them, unless they have a really good reason to, or unless they’re harassed enough that they feel they need to.”
Although it would rather avoid you, if you’re bitten by a Massasauga Rattler, its venom can kill you.
But it can’t fight people destroying its habitat.
Mike DeCapita is with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. He and other experts say rapid development is the snake’s biggest enemy. It’s not only destroying the snake’s habitat, it’s also destroying other wildlife habitat.
“The Massasauga is sort of an indicator species or a keystone species; perhaps that if we adjust so that we protect the needs of the Massasauga then all those species that use that same type of habitat also are protected.”
The onslaught of development has made the Eastern Massasauga Rattlesnake a candidate for the endangered species list, though it’s not on the list yet.
(Sound of hammering and cement mixing)
A new subdivision is being built in suburban Detroit. It’s just beyond the gate of a park where the research team came to study Massasauga habitat.
(Sound of people walking on a trail and talking)
Andy Hertz works for the State Department of Environmental Quality. He has the authority to refuse a building permit to anyone who could hurt Massasaugas.
“This is part of an effort of making us more aware of the habitat the Massasauga’s found in, so hopefully, we can direct developers and landowners to stay away from these more sensitive areas.”
In the winter, the Massasauga joins the frogs and turtles. They hibernate in marshes about two feet underground. Then, in spring and summer, they’ll seek higher ground for feeding. They can’t survive if they can’t move back and forth between their summer and wintering grounds. The research team has figured out this rule for minimizing damage to the snake’s habitat: don’t tamper with wetlands in winter nor the uplands in summer.
The team is focusing on Michigan to see why the population is the healthiest there. Then perhaps they can understand how to protect the rattlers in the rest of the Midwest where they’re nearly wiped out.
While she’s looking for more snakes, graduate student Kristin Wildman laughs about how a woman once called her to take a Massasauga away from the side of her house.
“We said, ‘Well, we’ll come out and we’ll move it for you.’ And we usually just move it down into the nearest wetland, down the hill. We pull in and she lives on Rattlesnake Drive. I didn’t expect to move out here and have all these rattlesnakes and stuff. It’s like, you live on Rattlesnake Drive. It’s called that for a reason.”
Wildman says when people come into conflict with wildlife, the wildlife almost always loses. If the Massasauga Rattler is going to survive it will take constant attention from all kinds of experts. They’ll have to stop developers from building over the snake’s habitat and threatening its existence.
Don Mikulic with the Illinois Geological survey hunts for the fossilized brachiopods and snails available in the quarry. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The quarry and the entire Chicago area were under a vast coral reef more than 430 million years ago. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
The flat, terrace-like structures are called "wetland cells." They'll be planted with native wetland species. (Photo by Shawn Allee)
Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park … from below ground
level:
Transcript
Some of America’s grandest city parks were built when urban areas still had room to grow. But today, older cities wanting new parks face shortages of space, money, or both. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee looks at one major city’s development of a park from below ground level:
At first blush, an old quarry site doesn’t seem to be a good candidate for a new city park, especially this one.
For the past fifteen years, the city of Chicago has used this quarry as a landfill. The site, called Stearns Quarry, lies off the beaten track, in Chicago’s Bridgeport neighborhood, more than two miles southwest of downtown.
Right now it’s kind of ugly. Tractors are patting down a mound of debris and dirt that’s piled up thirty-feet above the nearby street.
(Sound of trucks)
I find the project manager, Claudine Malik inside the site’s construction trailer. She’s hovering over a map of what the park might look like by next year.
“It’s a twenty-seven acre site. It’s roughly a square and if you think of it as broken up into about four separate areas, that helps you map it out mentally. As you come in, there’s an athletic field, It goes down to a pond, which will be stocked for fishing. The majority of the section is a sledding mound. And along the back wall, which is a long preserved quarry wall, is a series of wetland cells that lead down into the pond.”
That’s a lot of different uses to cram into the site’s 27 acres. It’s hard to imagine a stone quarry turned into a landfill and then turned into a city park. To get a better idea of how it will be transformed, Malik and her team take me on a ride around the site.
(Sound of truck starting)
The plan puts every inch of ground to use because there aren’t many chances to put new parks in the city. Malik says rising land values in Chicago make even small land purchases pricey. And everybody seems to have ideas for the park.
Local residents, the state of Illinois and the city gave designers a tall order to fill. Since they’re all putting money into the five million-dollar project, everybody gets something they want.
Soon we spot Don Mikolic, a scientist with Illinois’ Geological Survey. He’s checking the quarry walls before the park’s complete.
(Sound of tapping)
“There’s part of a snail right there.”
Turns out, the quarry’s produced some of the best aquatic fossils in the Midwest.
“In fact you can probably find specimens from this specific quarry sitting in some of the biggest museums around the world.”
And some of the limestone exposed by quarrying will be left for park visitors to view. These walls offer more than just natural history though. Stearns Quarry is part of the region’s architectural history too. The quarry opened in 1833, a few years before Chicago became a city. Its limestone strengthened Chicago harbor and can be found in historic Midwestern churches.
Malik says the site’s history will find its way into the design as well. Just another thing for the planners to work into the park. Which makes you wonder, what’s driving a park to be all these things at once? To get some perspective, I head to the offices of the American Planning Association.
The APA is a professional organization for urban planners. Megan Lewis researches parks for the APA. Lewis says parks like Stearns Quarry face bigger challenges than the grand old parks designed in the 19th century.
“Now, you can’t really approach park planning especially in a city in the same way, because you don’t have the luxury of having all of that land available to you. So you sort of have to see what is there that can become a park and what do we do with it?”
Lewis says the mix of recreation, open space, even history, has a lot to do with the demands from so many competing interests. To see how thing have changed, she gives the example of Frederick Law Olmsted. He’s most famous for developing New York’s Central Park, a hundred and fifty years ago.
“The planning was sort of done in isolation. He would come up with his grand idea and he maybe only had a few people involved. But I think that now, so many people are empowered to say, This is what I want this place to be like, that planning doesn’t really happen in isolation anymore. Which is good, because you want it to be a democratic process.”
(Sound of quarry)
Back at Stearns Quarry, you can see just how those demands are being incorporated. Meeting all those different needs in a relatively small area with a relatively small budget is played out in each square foot.
This new use of the site is again reflecting the city’s needs. The little piece of land has evolved as the city has evolved. First it provided stone for building the city. Then it was a dumping ground. And now it’s a break from the asphalt and concrete, a place to play and rest in a bit of nature.
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.”
Water contamination from sources that might include some wastewater treatment plants closes some beaches. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus reports:
Transcript
Municipal sewer plants are sometimes blamed for high E. coli bacteria counts
that close beaches to swimmers. Some cities are working to find better ways to treat the
water and put it back into nature. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris McCarus
reports:
(sound of cars moving along a small street and a few people talking)
A typical summer day by the lake: SUVs pull boats on trailers. People saunter from an
ice cream shop to the city beach. Jet skis and water skiiers slice through the waves.
Carpenters raise trusses on homes being built into the remaining lakefront lots.
Just a few years ago it seemed towns like this were just for loggers and locals. But now
people are flocking to the lakes around the Midwest and staying there. And that’s putting
a strain on local sewer plants.
(sound of machines inside the water treatment plant)
For 40 years, the treated waste water from the Boyne City, Michigan sewer plant has
been released into the big lake it was built on…Lake Charlevoix.
“It’s located right adjacent to a public swimming beach, park, marina and some valuable
waterfront property. We are only a block off the downtown district.”
Plant manager Dan Meads wants to stop mixing the end product with the water where
tourists and the locals swim and play. He tests daily for E. coli bacteria. He
doesn’t want anyone getting sick. But it’s still a concern, and there are other concerns.
In recent years, the United States Geological Survey has reported on new kinds of
contaminants that they’ve found in ground and surface water. The USGS says treated
wastewater from sewer plants can contain hormones from birth control pills, antibiotics,
detergents, fire retardants, and pesticides.
USGS microbiologist Sheridan Haack says the effects of all these compounds are still
unknown. Most are found in tiny quantities, but combined they could cause any number
of chemical reactions.
“There are many different chemical structures and it would be very difficult to state for
all of them what we would actually expect the environmental fate to be and how they
would actually be transported through the environment.”
Haack says the medicines people take don’t disappear. They eventually leave the body
and are flushed down the toilet. Those drugs have been tested for safe human
consumption, but the question is: what happens when those chemicals are mixed in with
industrial waste, accidental spills and nature’s own chemical processes? Haack says they
just might come back around to hurt humans, fish and wildlife.
The Boyne City solution is to build a new wastewater treatment plant two miles from the
beaches up the Boyne River. Officials say contaminants will be diluted by the time they
flow back down into Lake Charlevoix.
(sound of the Boyne River)
Larry Maltby volunteers for a group called “Friends of the Boyne River.” The group
doesn’t like the city’s plan to discharge treated wastewater directly into the river. It wants
them to consider some non-traditional methods. They say the new sewer plant could run
a pipe under a golf course or spray the treated water on farm fields… or let it drain into
wetlands to let nature filter it out.
“It will seep into the soils which are very sandy and gravelly underneath the golf course
and then the filtration through the ground will have a great deal of effect of continuing to
purify that water. Much more so than it would be with a direct deposit, straight into the
surface waters of Michigan.”
Lawyers for the Friends of the Boyne River have appealed to the state dept of
environmental quality and filed a lawsuit.
But wastewater treatment plant manager Dan Meads says the city doesn’t want to please
just one group and end up angering another…
“There isn’t any guarantee that you can satisfy everybody. We think we have the best
option available.”
As municipalities are short on funds and personnel, they don’t want to wait for decades
for the perfect solution. Still, nobody wants any amount of pollution to affect their home
or their recreational area.
Sheridan Haack with the USGS won’t take either side in this dispute. She says not only
are the dangers from contaminants unknown, the best way to deal with them is unknown.
“I am not aware of any consensus in the scientific community on the nature or types of
treatment for this broad range of chemicals.”
In the meantime… communities such as Boyne City have the unenviable task of trying to
dispose of their residents sewage without polluting the beaches, the fishing, and the
environment that brought folks there in the first place.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris McCarus.
Small shrimp fishers are concerned about the Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' because shrimp can't survive in the oxygen depleted water. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some Midwest farmers leave no grass buffer between their fields and nearby streams, allowing excess nitrogen to easily enter the waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some farm fields drain stormwater from treated farm fields directly into nearby creeks that are tributaries of the Mississippi River. Scientists believe the fertilizer pollution contributes to the Gulf 'dead zone.' (Photo by Lester Graham)
The government has been working with agriculture, environmentalists and scientists to come up with a way to reduce the size of a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead zone causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. It’s believed the dead zone is caused by excess nitrogen on farm fields in the Midwest that’s washed to the Mississippi River and then to the Gulf. A government task force has determined that if the flow of nitrogen into the Gulf can be cut by 30 percent, the size of the dead zone can be reduced. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… a new study predicts a 30 percent reduction won’t be enough to make a difference:
Transcript
The government has been working with agriculture, environmentalists and scientists to
come up with a way to reduce the size of a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico. The dead
zone causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. It’s believed the dead zone is caused
by excess nitrogen on farm fields in the Midwest that’s washed to the Mississippi River
and then to the Gulf. A government task force has determined that if the flow of nitrogen
into the Gulf can be cut by 30 percent, the size of the dead zone can be reduced. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports… a new study predicts a 30
percent reduction won’t be enough to make a difference:
The idea that fertilizer used on a corn field in the Midwest can cause a ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico
is hard to fathom. But when you realize that all or parts of 31 farm states drain into the
Mississippi basin, it becomes a little easier to understand. Excess nitrogen causes a huge algae
bloom in the Gulf. When the vegetation dies, it decays on the bottom and bacteria feed
on it. The huge expanse of bacteria depletes the oxygen.
Nancy Rabalais is a professor with the Louisiana Universities Marine Consortium. She
says most life under the water needs that oxygen to survive.
“The oxygen is depleted in the water column so that the fish and shrimp, anything that
can swim, leaves the area. All the indicators show that it’s gotten much worse since the
1950’s to present, and that’s consistent with the increase in nitrogen in the Mississippi
River.”
Since 1985, Rabalais has been measuring the size of the dead zone every year. The zone
ranges in size from about 2,000 square miles to about 10,000 square miles.
That’s about the size of Lake Erie.
Jerald Horst is a biologist with the Louisiana Sea Grant. He says it’s hard to know the
exact impact on life under the sea…
“Very difficult to say ‘Gee, this year the shrimp
production is down somewhat because of hypoxia,’ or whether the shrimp production is
down somewhat because of a host of other environmental factors.”
But the fear is the hypoxic zone could stop being a dead zone that shrinks and grows
– and one year disappeared altogether… and instead become a permanent dead zone where nothing would ever live. That’s happened in a few other places on the globe such
as the Black Sea. It’s not clear that the same kind of thing can happen in the Gulf, but
signs are ominous. Horst says upwellings of oxygen-starved water near the shore after a
storm used to be very, very rare. Lately, they’ve become more and more frequent. He
says it means the problem is getting worse.
There’s still a lot of debate about whether the dead zone in the Gulf is a serious problem.
But, at this point, most agricultural agencies and farm groups have stopped disputing the
science and whether their nitrogen is causing the problem. Now they’re trying to figure
out the best and cheapest way to deal with it.
The government task force that’s working on the problem has arrived at an Action Plan;
the task force has determined the amount of nitrogen getting into the Mississippi River
needs to be cut by 30 percent to reduce the Gulf zone by half in ten years.
Donald Scavia has been working on the problem. He was involved in the debate when he
was a senior scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He’s
retired from NOAA and now directs the Michigan Sea Grant. From his office at the
University of Michigan, Scavia explained how the task force arrived at the figure.
“We agreed to a 30 percent reduction because it was similar to what was done in other
places, probably acceptable to the community and will head us in the right direction.”
After arriving in Michigan, Scavia started research to determine if a 30 percent reduction
would do the job. Using three very different computer models, Scavia and his team
learned that they could actually predict the size of the dead zone from year to year…
“From that analysis, that not only looked at the size of the zone, but actually looked at
potential inter-annual variability caused by changes in climate, changes in weather say
that probably 35 to 45 percent nitrogen load reduction’s going to be needed to get to that
goal in most years.”
Scavia’s study was published in the journal Estuaries.
A 35 to 45 percent reduction is a much tougher goal than the 30 percent the task force is
recommending. As it is, states were planning massive artificial wetlands and extensive
drainage programs to soak up excess nitrogen before it got to the tributaries that fed the
Mississippi River. They also planned to get farmers to reduce the amount of nitrogen
they’re using. That’s a tough sell for a couple of reasons. First of all, it would have to be
voluntary because nitrogen use is nearly completely unregulated. Second, farmers
often use what they call an insurance application of nitrogen… they use a little more than
is actually needed to get a good crop, because nitrogen is relatively cheap. The excess
often ends up washed into ditches and streams and creeks and rivers… and finally to the
Mississippi and the Gulf of Mexico’s dead zone. So… cutting nitrogen flow into the
Mississippi by 30 percent was a huge task. Cutting nitrogen by as much as 45 percent… well… you can imagine…
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Small shrimp fishers are concerned about the Gulf of Mexico 'dead zone' because shrimp can't survive in the oxygen depleted water. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some Midwest farmers leave no grass buffer between their fields and nearby streams, allowing excess nitrogen to easily enter the waterways. (Photo by Lester Graham)
Some farm fields drain stormwater from treated farm fields directly into nearby creeks that are tributaries of the Mississippi River. Scientists believe the fertilizer pollution contributes to the Gulf 'dead zone.' (Photo by Lester Graham)
A new study predicts the government’s plan to reduce the size of the ‘Dead Zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico won’t be strong enough to make a difference. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
A new study predicts the government’s plan to reduce the size of the “Dead Zone” in the Gulf of
Mexico won’t be strong enough to make a difference. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:
The Dead Zone in the Gulf is believed to be caused by excess nitrogen used by farmers in the 31
states that drain into the Mississippi and ultimately into the Gulf of Mexico. The Dead Zone
causes problems for the fisheries in the Gulf. A study published in the scientific journal, Estuaries, predicts that an Action Plan put together by a government task force might not
go far enough. Michigan SeaGrant director Donald Scavia used computer modeling in the
study…
“What we tried to do here is take three different, very different models and ask the same question
of those models to try to get an answer.”
The answer was the same… the government task force plan to reduce the amount of nitrogen
reaching the Mississippi River by 30 percent is not enough. The models indicated a 35 to 45
percent reduction is needed to shrink the Dead Zone by half in the next ten years.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
The American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable recovery. It's done so well, it might soon be taken off the Endangered Species list. (Photo courtesy of USFWS)
The eagles and their nest at Crosswinds Marsh, a mitigated wetland in Wayne County, Michigan - click on "view" for a closeup. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)
Crosswinds Marsh in Wayne County, Michigan features a boardwalk and shelter for viewing the wetlands. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)
With more than 7600 breeding pairs in the continental United States alone, the American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable comeback. A new proposal to remove the bird from the Endangered Species list is expected soon. But that means removing a powerful safety net that can affect future research, monitoring and habitat protection. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:
Transcript
With more than 7600 breeding pairs in the continental United States alone, the
American Bald Eagle has made a remarkable comeback. A new proposal to remove the
bird from the Endangered Species list is expected soon. But that means removing a
powerful safety net that can affect future research, monitoring and habitat protection.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:
In the history of the Endangered Species Act, only a dozen or so of the more than 1200
plants and animals listed as threatened or endangered have actually recovered. The eagle
may be the latest to join that little group.
(Young birder: “I see a big birdie…”)
This is a pretty unlikely spot for an eagle — a manmade wetland by a landfill in a busy
airport flight path on the outskirts of Detroit. But state wildlife biologist Joe Robison
shows this young visitor the bulky nest across the marsh where two adult birds are
teaching their gangly fledglings to fly.
“Something just landed in the tree out there. Oh. That’s the other juvenile. This is the
first time I’ve seen them flying this year. They look like they’re flying good though.”
These birds are among more than 400 pairs in Michigan monitored by state and federal
wildlife officials. The eagles are banded, the nests are watched and when a bird dies it
ends up in the freezer of wildlife pathologist Tom Cooley.
(sound of Cooley opening the freezer)
“Lots and lots of ’em. You can see that one was a road kill along I-75…”
Right now, Cooley’s freezer is brim full of dead birds stacked like frozen Thanksgiving
turkeys in plastic bags. Road kill has become the leading cause of death among eagles
he examines, but Cooley says they still investigate suspicious looking deaths for the
heavy metals and pesticides—like DDT—which once caused the eagles’ demise.
“Birds that kind of send up a red flag to us are adult birds that are in poor condition and
you don’t see a reason why they could be in poor condition. Those are the ones that we
especially look at for pesticide analysis because there are still the organochlorines out
there. The DDTs are still picked up by eagles or still contained in eagles. Those
pesticides can cause real problems for them and actually kill them.”
Cooley sends tissue samples to another state lab for analysis. But the testing is
expensive. And with the eagle on the way to recovery, it’s not as urgent. Right now, he
says all the samples he sends are being archived—shelved basically. That means the
testing won’t be done until the money is available.
“I never like archiving anything if I can help it. You’re probably not missing anything
but that kind of data is always nice to have if you can get it right away and look at it right
away.”
The question is, if it’s hard to get funding for monitoring and testing now—while the bird
is still on the Endangered Species List—what happens when it’s taken off the list? The
reality, say state and federal wildlife experts, is that budget priorities change as a species
recovers. Ray Rustem heads Michigan’s non-game wildlife program.
“There’s not enough money for every species. So you try to take a species to a level
where you feel comfortable with and you take money and apply it to another species to
try to recover.”
The federal Endangered Species Act requires the Fish and Wildlife Service to monitor
what it terms a delisted species for five years. After that, responsibility largely shifts to
the states. That concerns groups like the National Wildlife Federation. Attorney John
Kostyak questions whether states can really afford to protect fragile species and their
habitat over the long term.
“That’s going to be an issue with any delisting. A tough question that we’re going to
always be asking is: all right assume you go forward with delisting—how are you going
to be sure the species doesn’t turn right around and go back toward extinction again?”
With some species, that means habitat management. With others, like the recovering
gray wolf, it means public education—teaching people not to kill them. With the eagle, it
means ensuring that the birds are not threatened by the pesticides, heavy metals and
newer chemicals that contaminate the fish the eagles eat. Because of the bird’s
importance as an indicator species, Fish and Wildlife biologists are hopeful banding and
testing programs will continue after delisting. But it will likely mean finding new ways
to pay for them.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sally Eisele.
The Bush Administration has been under a lot of pressure from environmentalists, hunting groups, and state agencies to do something about wetlands protection. On Earth Day, President Bush responded by announcing a new initiative that he says will take wetlands protection to a higher level. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush takes a closer look at the President’s latest proposal:
Transcript
The Bush Administration has been under a lot of pressure from
environmentalists, hunting groups, and state agencies to do something about
wetlands protection. On Earth Day, President Bush responded by announcing a
new initiative that he says will take wetlands protection to a higher level.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush takes a closer look at the
President’s latest proposal:
In the last thirty years, urban sprawl and farming have destroyed millions of
acres of wetlands. Because of that, the past two Presidents called for a
policy of “no net loss of wetlands.” The current Bush administration says it also
supports that goal. And says it wants to go a step further.
On Earth Day, the President unveiled his latest plan to protect and restore
wetlands.
“The old policy of wetlands was to limit the loss of wetlands. Today, I’m going to
announce a new policy and a new goal for our country: instead of just
limiting our losses, we will expand the wetlands of America.”
(Applause – fade under)
The Bush administration says its policy will restore, improve, and protect a
total of three million acres of wetlands in the next five years. In his speech, the
President gave a general outline of the plan, saying he’s going to increase support for a
number of programs already in place.
Ben Grumbles is an Assistant Administrator at the Environmental Protection
Agency. He heads up the water and wetlands programs for the EPA. He says
the President has called on many agencies to implement the new plan:
“The heart of the President’s new goal and commitment is to use
collaborative conservation-based programs to gain three million acres of
wetlands and to do so through USDA, Interior, Fish and Wildlife Service, conservation programs and
partnerships with the private sector.”
While environmentalists approve parts of President Bush’s new plan, many of
them say it’s the wrong first step to take. Julie Sibbing is a wetlands
policy specialist with the National Wildlife Federation.
“Although it’s a great thing that they’re going to get a million acres of
wetlands restored, and a million acres enhanced, and a million acres
protected, it’s only a drop in the bucket compared to what’s currently at
risk due to their policies on protecting wetlands under the Clean Water
Act.”
And that’s the main criticism – environmentalists and some hunters say the
Administration is not doing its job in enforcing current federal laws. Laws that protect
rivers, lakes, and wetlands – and worse – they say the administration has
actively weakened laws that protect millions of acres of smaller, isolated
wetlands. These critics see this latest announcement by the Bush Administration
as an attempt to shore up its dismal record on the environment in general…
and on wetlands in particular.
The National Wildlife Federation’s Julie Sibbing says the Administration
would make better use of taxpayers’ money by reviewing some of its policies
and protecting wetlands that already exist:
“It’s just too hard to build new wetlands for us to ignore protecting what’s
there right now. We love the programs that restore former wetlands, but the
most important thing is to try to protect those wetlands that we still
have.”
Officials in the Bush Administration say they are serious about enforcing
the law. And they say they are protecting wetlands. They say they’re just
taking a different approach.
In his speech, President Bush said good conservation will
happen when people don’t just rely on the government to be the solution to
the problem, saying more people should look to private sector land trusts
and voluntary efforts by landowners to get the job done.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.
The Environmental Protection Agency says it’s trying to get states around the Great Lakes to use uniform standards to monitor water quality. But the EPA says the fact that different states use different methods doesn’t put anyone at risk. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill:
Transcript
The Environmental Protection Agency says it’s trying to get states around the Great Lakes to use
uniform standards to monitor water quality. But the EPA says the fact that different states use
different methods doesn’t put anyone at risk. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:
The agency is responding to a report from the Environmental Integrity Project. That group says
different states have different standards, and that means no one has a clear idea of how clean – or
dirty – our rivers and lakes really are.
Thomas Skinner is administrator of EPA’s Region Five. He says the Clean Water Act allows
each state to design its own program.
“It may be that some states are being overly protective or over protective of their citizens, and
that’s their right to do it. But if that’s the case, then that could explain some of the
inconsistencies. It doesn’t mean the states that have a different set of fish advisories are not
protecting their citizens; they’ve just chosen to go about it in a slightly different way.”
Skinner says the EPA asked the states seven years ago to use the same standards. He says the
states are gradually moving toward that goal.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
A new study states that it may take longer than previously thought for a lake to recover from phosphorus buildup. (Photo by Jere Kibler)
