Congress is looking at restricting antibiotic use on livestock farms. The drugs are added to the animals’ feed to help stop diseases. Antibiotics also make the animals grow faster, and that’s good for farmer’s profits. Mark Brush reports… public health officials are concerned:
Transcript
Congress is looking at restricting antibiotic use on livestock farms. The drugs are added to the animals’ feed to help stop diseases. Antibiotics also make the animals grow faster, and that’s good for farmer’s profits. Mark Brush reports… public health officials are concerned:
A lot of researchers say overuse of antibiotics on farms can lead to bacteria that are resistant to the drugs.
A bill in Congress would stop the drugs from being used to promote growth… and just use them to treat sick animals. The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act is sponsored by the only micro-biologist in Congress. Representative Louise Slaughter from New York:
“And we’re watching a whole new classification now of bacteria, which was basically just a cut above harmless, become deadly. Particulary Staphylococcus aureus, which was as common as dirt, but now is MRSA. And can kill you in twenty-four hours.”
Slaughter says the Food and Drug Administration is not doing enough. So Congress has to step in.
The livestock industry says current regulations are enough.
The Black-and-White Ruffed Lemur, threat category: Critically Endangered (Photo by Jean-Christophe Vié, courtesy of the IUCN)
There’s a new report out on the
state of the world’s creatures.
It’s called the Red List of Threatened
Species. And, as you can imagine,
the Red List is not a good list to
be on. Mark Brush has more:
Transcript
There’s a new report out on the state of the world’s creatures. It’s called the Red List of Threatened Species. And, as you can imagine, the Red List is not a good list to be on. Mark Brush has more:
This report is put out by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They cataloged about 45,000 species worldwide. They say about 38% of those are threatened with extinction.
Species sometimes naturally go extinct. But, the researchers say, today’s extinction rates are happening a lot faster – mostly because people are destroying habitat.
Jean-Christophe Vié is the senior editor of the report.
“If you think of nature as a company, it’s the largest in the world. So now we are in this economic crisis, if there was one company to save, it’s not the car industry, or saving a bank – it’s saving nature, because it’s for the benefit of all of us.”
Vié says they were only able to report on about 3% of all the known species around the world.
But, they still feel they have a pretty good idea of the overall trend. And it’s not a good trend.
Louise Engel admits she and her husband were initially a little nervous about setting the lambs lose in their valuable vineyard. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
David Johnson, owner of the Featherstone Winery, first heard about the lambs while visiting wineries in New Zealand. (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
The owners of the winery say that the young, spring lambs are perfectly designed for pruning the vines (Photo by Joyce Kryszak)
Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines. Joyce Kryszak visited the winery to get a first hand look:
Transcript
Wine makers are shaking things up in their vineyards. Some of them use natural and organic methods to control pests and weeds instead of using pesticides. Now, one winery has discovered a unique, natural way to prune their grape vines. Joyce Kryszak visited the winery to get a first hand look:
At the Featherstone Winery in Southern Ontario there are 20 acres of perfectly manicured grape vines. They stretch out in neatly groomed rows across rolling green hills.
But no man or machine maintains this vineyard. There are 40 cute, little, wooly lambs on duty pruning the grape vines into tip-top shape.
David Johnson says he knows the idea of using lambs on his vineyard is a bit odd. Johnson thought so too when he first heard the idea. He found out about it visiting wineries in New Zealand.
“I didn’t believe them at the time. I thought they were having fun with a tourist and that this would be a big joke, some Canadian when he went back home, telling a story. So, yeah, I’ve taken a ribbing on the lamb thing, for sure.”
But Johnson ignored the jokes and decided to try it out.
His wife Louise Engel admits they were a little nervous at first setting the lambs lose in their valuable vineyard.
“We watched these lambs like hawks. I mean, all the staff were sitting out there and following them around – ‘did they eat any grapes, did they eat any grapes?’ But they didn’t. They’ve got very nimble little mouths and little teeths and little lips and they just eat around them.”
You see, pruning grape vines is delicate business. Only a targeted area of leaves is removed from the lower part of the vines to help the fruit grow better.
But Engel and Johnson say the lambs are perfectly designed to handle the job. The young, spring lambs aren’t tall enough and their necks can’t stretch up to reach the grapes. And, since they only weigh about 50 pounds, they don’t trample the soil. And, yes, their droppings do make excellent organic fertilizer.
(sound of lambs bleating)
Three years, and three flocks of sheep later, nobody’s laughing. Area vintners even have copied them; and for good reason. It would cost about $300 an acre to hire seasonal workers to come in for seven weeks in the summer to hand prune the vines. The lambs cost a fraction of that. And, when the pruning is done in August, off they go to the butcher.
Johnson says it turns out that free-range lambs fed a diet of grape leaves end up being pretty tasty.
“We sold them off last year to some caterers and some pretty nice restaurants, and they got back to us and said, ‘wow, these lambs are really special.’ They’re different; they’re almost veal-like in color and flavor and very, very lean. And they’re going to do lamb specials all month and pair it with our wines all month.”
But he admits there are some drawbacks.
They had a tough time finding enough lambs to do the job. There are about fifty million of them in New Zealand. But, it turns out, they’re kind of sparse in Ontario.
Johnson says there are some logistical problems, too. Even some organic pesticides are toxic to lambs. And, there’s all that fence building and moving around to limit the lambs’ access, so they don’t over-prune.
Still, they think it’s worth the hassle. Engel says the lambs fit in beautifully with their philosophy of sustainable farming and diversity in the vineyard.
“They’re lovely, tranquil, placid things, and there’s something almost biblical about having lambs roaming the place and wine here. And, it’s just, I don’t know, there’s just some itch that scratches that’s quite fulfilling.”
People visiting the vineyard enjoy watching the lambs too.
Customers enjoy lunch on the veranda as they look out on the pastoral scene. And, of course, they have a little wine. And one of the top selling wines is Black Sheep Reisling.
A few years ago, urchins had mowed this huge kelp forest down to just a few square feet (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
The crew counts the urchins before tossing them into their new home territory (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Most of the world’s forests are on dry land. But in a few special places on earth, forests grow underwater. They’re kelp forests. And they’re home to an astounding array of marine life. Trouble is, these underwater forests are vanishing. Ann Dornfeld reports on efforts to turn the tide:
Transcript
Most of the world’s forests are on dry land. But in a few special places on earth, forests grow underwater. They’re kelp forests. And they’re home to an astounding array of marine life. Trouble is, these underwater forests are vanishing. Ann Dornfeld reports on efforts to turn the tide:
A healthy kelp forest is so thick with fish and invertebrates that you’d swear you were looking at an aquarium exhibit.
They’re biodiversity hotspots – places that feed and protect an extraordinary number of species.
Brian Meux of Santa Monica Baykeeper standing on the deck of a boat in his wetsuit. He’s looking proudly at a thriving kelp forest along a rocky coastline near Los Angeles.
“This is our little jewel on this coast. Not only does the kelp forest have over 800 species dependent on it, but more than a quarter of all California marine species are dependent upon the kelp forest during some part of their life cycle.”
Since the 1960s, Southern California has lost 90% of its kelp forests. The culprit looks like a small purple pin cushion.
It’s a sea urchin!
Urchins love to eat kelp, and their populations have gone out of control. That’s because overfishing has removed most of the large fish and lobsters that eat urchins.
A few years ago, urchins had mowed this kelp forest down to just a few square feet. So Meux and a team of Baykeeper volunteers are trying to restore the balance.
They’re licensed by the state to do “urchin relocation.”
“what we do is go down, collect urchins by hand, get them on the boat and relocate them to areas where they will no longer harm the kelp forest.”
Sounds easy enough.
“Some of them you’ll want to just pull off the reef – they’ll look like they just can come off – I recommend using the tool. Urchin spines in your fingers… just not fun. ”
Or maybe not.
Either way, it’s time for the us to gear up and jump in.
(sound of diving in and scuba breathing)
Twenty-five feet underwater, the ocean surges so violently that the divers cling to rocks so they won’t be swept away.
It’s tricky to find a safe rock to grab because most of them are covered in urchins that have moved in on this young kelp forest.
But urchins aren’t the only migrants.
Huge purple sheephead and fire-orange Garibaldi fish swim by. A small octopus sits curled in a crevice. Pastel sea stars are everywhere.
Four years ago, this site was pretty much just rocks and urchins.
Two dives later, the divers are back on the boat.
Diver 1: “That was a workout!”
Diver 2: “That was a workout. I’m tired.”
After the team hauls up bag after bags of purple and red urchins, we try unsuccessfully to extract a spine from one volunteer’s finger.
Next, we move to deeper water a mile away. This will be the urchins’ new home.
The divers count the prickly balls as they throw them overboard.
Diver: “Purple!”
Each time a diver counts ten urchins of a particular color, they call it out.
Divers: “Purple! Purple.”
Similar kelp restoration efforts have revived kelp forests along other stretches of the California coast. But while those projects involved reseeding of the kelp forest, Meux says Baykeeper focuses on urchin relocation.
“We’ve found that mostly just get rid of the urchins and natural kelp spores will seed the reef and the return of kelp will ensue.”
Diver: “Purple!”
In all today, the team has relocated about 1500 urchins.
Between weekly trips like these and giant kelp’s ability to grow as fast as two feet a day, kelp restoration is a
heartening environmental success story.
In order for Southern California’s kelp forests to make a widespread comeback, Brian Meux says the state will need to limit the fishing that caused this problem in the first place.
The island of Bonaire is somewhat of an anomaly in the Caribbean due to its remarkably preserved coral reefs (Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
(Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
(Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
(Photo by Ann Dornfeld)
Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:
Transcript
Scientists say nearly half of the coral reefs in the US are in bad shape.
Many are dead. The situation is similar in much of the world. But not
everywhere, as Ann Dornfeld found on the Caribbean island of Bonaire:
(sound of waves on shore)
Jerry Ligon was working as the on-board naturalist on a small Caribbean
cruise ship when he first saw Bonaire.
“And I saw how clear the water was. And I’d been able to compare, during
my stint on the cruise ship, other islands in the Caribbean, and I realized
how special Bonaire was. So that was at the end of my contract, so I
decided to stay here. And I’ve been here for 15 years!”
It’s wasn’t just the clarity of Bonaire’s water that made Ligon stick around. It
was the remarkably healthy coral reefs that lay beneath the waves.
“I can even talk to divers who come to Bonaire and they say, ‘What
fantastic diving!’ and they remember, ‘This is how the way it was in Cayman
Islands 25 years ago!'”
Ligon says the Cayman Islands might have even had more impressive
reefs than Bonaire’s back in the day. But coral throughout the US and
Caribbean has been in sharp decline for decades.
So how do Bonaire’s reefs remain intact?
Ramón de León is the manager of the Bonaire National Marine Park. He
says the island has an advantage in that it has no industries to pollute the
water.
The island is mostly undeveloped, which means relatively little farm and
lawn fertilizer run-off that can create marine algae blooms. And cool
upwellings in the region help balance the rising ocean temperatures. Warm
oceans can cause coral bleaching, which often kills the coral animal.
But de León says Bonaire really owes its healthy reefs to its history of
conservation laws. They date back to an era when such policies were rare.
“Bonaire start to protect sea turtles and turtle nests in 1961, back when
everybody was promoting sea turtle soups and nailing shells in the walls.”
By the end of the 1970s, Bonaire had banned spear fishing and made it
illegal to damage coral. For years, divers have been required to pay a
sizeable fee and take an orientation course before they’re allowed to dive
on the island. That helps them avoid touching the coral, which can kill it.
De León says the island still allows too much fishing. So several years ago,
he told the island’s fishermen they needed to choose a no-take zone to let
the reefs recover.
“I refuse to decide myself. I give the fishermen some prerequisites that they
have to have to close, and they chose which area. Is not my number-one
option, but is their number-one option. So I have to respect that.”
De León says because the fishermen chose the no-take zone, something
important happened. Compliance is high.
For all of Bonaire’s success in coral conservation, there are still some
problems. De León says its reefs suffer from leaky septic tanks and boat
pollution. And there are few of the large predator fish that used to maintain
population balance on the reefs.
But the island is a haven for researchers like Mark Patterson. He designs
underwater robots at Virginia Institute of Marine Sciences.
Last year he led a NOAA expedition to use robots to map Bonaire’s reefs.
He says the island’s reefs are valuable as a baseline by which other reefs
can be judged.
“If you’re an up-and-coming marine scientist and you go to a lot of the coral
reefs on the planet now, you might think that all coral reefs have always
look like this. And they haven’t! So the fact that we’ve got some pristine
reefs left is very important, and we’ve got to work very hard to protect them
because it shows us how the ecosystem should look and used to look
around the planet before things started to go downhill.”
Large Burmese pythons are now regularly encountered along trails and visitor areas in the park (Photo courtesy of the National Park Service)
A python native to Asia is popping up in one national park. Kyle Norris reports:
Transcript
A python native to Asia is popping up in one national park. Kyle Norris reports:
The Burmese Python is showing up in Everglades National Park in Florida.
That’s because people who no longer want their pet pythons are releasing them there.
Now these babies are big — usually they between 6 to 12 feet long. And there could be as many as 150,000 pythons in the Everglades.
The snakes are not so much a threat to humans. But they are a threat to animals – especially to endangered ones.
Scott Hardin is an exotic species coordinator. He’s with the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission.
“You just got a great big snake, nothing like it, nothing analogous in the native snake fauna in Florida. So it opens up a whole new range of prey that was not susceptible before.”
He says officials are brainstorming ways to deal with the problem.
They’re trying to rig up some really big traps. And they’ve also thrown out the idea of a bounty — basically a cash reward for catching the snakes.
Only two Right Whales have been spotted in
the last 50 years off the southern tip of Greenland (Photo courtesy of NOAA)
Scientist think they’ve found
a rare whale in a place where
they thought they were wiped
out. Sadie Babits reports,
they haven’t seen the whale
but they’ve heard it:
Transcript
Scientist think they’ve found
a rare whale in a place where
they thought they were wiped
out. Sadie Babits reports,
they haven’t seen the whale
but they’ve heard it:
Scientists thought the North Atlantic Right Whale
was gone. Only two of them have been spotted in
the last 50 years off the southern tip of Greenland.
But some underwater microphones picked up right
whale calls.
“They sound like mmmmmmick… kind of like that.”
That’s David Mellinger. He teaches at Oregon State
University.
He says they recorded more than two
thousand right whale calls in a year. That doesn’t
mean there are a lot of the whales, but Mellinger
says hearing any in the North Atlantic is significant.
“Because the population is so endangered. There
are only 300-350 maybe right whales in the world.
So finding any new whales is important.”
But there is a concern. As the Arctic Ice Cap
melts because of global warming, more ships are
expected to pass through the area. That could
mean ships could strike and kill the few right
whales that are left.
JP Anderson, Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore Park Ranger, at
the start of National Geographic and the National Park Service's 2009
BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo by Enrique Pulido)
BioBlitz volunteers turned up two species of fungi that hadn't been
officially identified in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. (Photo courtesy of The Field Museum of Chicago)
The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:
Transcript
The National Park Service has a slightly embarrassing problem. It manages some of the nation’s most
environmentally valuable land – but it doesn’t have a full account of plant and animal species that live in
the parks. One remedy is the BioBlitz. A BioBlitz is a kind of whirlwind count of all the species in a
specific place. The Park Service has been co-sponsoring BioBlitzes with National Geographic. We sent
Shawn Allee to their latest:
The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore is spread along Lake Michigan’s southern shoreline.
During this BioBlitz, scientists and volunteers fan out in teams to search the sand dunes, woods, and
grassland around here.
At first, the mood’s high, but then it rains kinda hard.
We’re supposed to be counting species for 24 hours, but at first, we can’t even get out of our cars.
(ring of a phone)
“Hello? Yeah. We’re stuck in traffic, here. We came out here and I thought we were going
out in the wrong direction.”
I hitch a ride with Dr. Patrick Leacock. He’s a mycologist, a kind of mushroom expert.
I’m actually lucky to be on his BioBlitz team, because organizers from National Geographic and the National Park Service want people to count all the species
in the park.
And they mean everything – not just plants and animals that are a cinch to find.
Allee: “Are fungi something you feel that the average person doesn’t think about when it comes
to biodiversity?”
Leacock: “Yeah, there’s people, you tell them you study mushrooms, and they talk about their
athlete’s foot, or they think there’s only six different kinds or something like
that.”
Leacock says, in fact, the Indiana Dunes Lakeshore has at least 600 fungi species. He hopes the
BioBlitz team will add to that list.
Leacock: “Here we are.”
Allee: “I’m hunting mushrooms with three trained mycologists and there are six other volunteers on my team here. One of them is Zachary Benes – he’s just 9 years old. But, I gotta say, Dr. Leacock is pretty lucky
to have Zachary on the team – since he’s found the most mushrooms of anyone on the team.”
Benes: “Is it poisonous?”
Leacock: “Nope. A real mushroom.”
Tang: “Yeah.”
Allee: “Looks like you found another one, too. Where’d you find it?”
Benes: “Over there by the wood.”
Leacock: “This is collybia sub-sulphurea. Do you know what sulfur means?”
Benes: “No.”
Leacock: “It’s a kind of a yellow-orange color. So, this might be a new record for the dunes. So that’s a good one. Was it
just the one?”
Benes: “Yeah. Just the one.”
Leacock: “It’s in good shape.”
Along the trail, I chat with Yaya Tang. She’s one of the other mycologists on the team.
Tang says she’s glad to see BioBlitz volunteers search for elusive species of bats, bugs, and fungi.
“I feel like that’s an issue with biodiversity in general. Where people care about things that are cute or
that they see immediately. Like, there’s insects, too, that don’t get a lot of attention.”
Allee: “Dr. Leacock, we’re pretty much finished here. You got this container of many varieties
of fungi we’ve collected within an hour, would you have been able to get this many
yourself? If you had come out here on your own?”
Leacock: “No. The more people you have searching, that helps a lot. Different people will see
different things, too, I think. So we’ve 14 or 15 things right in my box. We have two that might be new
records for the dunes.”
The BioBlitz at The Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore lasts another 20 hours.
A few days later, Dr. Leacock writes me.
He tells me volunteers turned up at least one fungi specimen no one had ever seen in the Dunes park.
It’s a small success – enough that National Geographic, the Park Service, and other groups are
planning more BioBlitzes across the country.
Bobby Begay has been patrolling the Columbia River below Bonneville Dam for the past three years, hazing sea lions. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Robin Brown is a marine mammal researcher for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
Bobby Begay and his crew on board the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission boat. (Photo by Sadie Babits)
The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest historically has been a super highway for salmon. But dams, development, and pollution have taken their toll on salmon. The fish have declined to the point that several species are endangered. Now the salmon face another threat, sea lions. As Sadie Babits reports wildlife managers are trying to get rid of the sea lions to protect the salmon:
Transcript
The Columbia River in the Pacific Northwest historically has been a super highway for salmon. But dams, development, and pollution have taken their toll on salmon. The fish have declined to the point that several species are endangered. Now the salmon face another threat, sea lions. As Sadie Babits reports wildlife managers are trying to get rid of the sea lions to protect the salmon:
Bobby Begay steers his small boat up the Columbia River. He knows this river, and he
knows the salmon. His ties to the salmon go back generations.
As a member of the Yakima Tribe, he comes out here to tribal fishing sites to catch
salmon. It’s something Indians along the Columbia River have been doing for thousands
of years. He says the salmon are considered sacred food.
“It’s part of our livelihood. It’s part of our health and well being.”
They use the salmon to feed everyone from the tribal elders to the children. Tribal
fishermen tell stories of seeing so many salmon in the Columbia River that you could
walk across their backs. Those days are gone.
A series of dams on the river make it hard for fish to get from the Pacific Ocean to fresh
water and back again. The salmon have fallen victim to over-fishing, agricultural
pollution, and habitat destruction. Pacific salmon are now listed as endangered. And they
face yet another threat on the Columbia River – sea lions.
“Sea lions have probably always been in the Columbia but not to this extent and have
done damage to salmon populations like it has and all of it is due because of a man-made
structure, which is Bonneville Dam.”
Sea lion numbers have exploded along the Pacific Coast. And more than a thousand of
them travel up the Columbia River looking for food. Some of them have figured out that
if they gather at the base of Bonneville Dam, they can easily catch salmon that are trying
to pass by.
Biologists estimate that every year sea lions eat some 13,000 salmon. This year, the
federal government gave state wildlife agencies in Oregon, Washington and Idaho, the go
ahead to kill up to 85 sea lions.
Begay won’t really talk about whether he thinks this is right. He’s torn.
“Well, ah, sea lion is a spiritual animal not only to us but to coastal tribes and we respect
the animal as it is, but also the salmon is a scared food to us as Columbia River Indians.”
So Begay works to protect the salmon without killing the sea lions. He works for the
Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission.
That’s why he’s out here in this boat. He patrols the river most days using fireworks to
scare sea lions away from the salmon.
Crew: “There he is 1 o’clock, 50 yards.”
(sound of gun shots and boat)
Begay’s crew shoots firecrackers over the sea lion.
“And hopefully we’ll get them into the main stem of the river and start hazing them down
stream.”
“The hazing really is not highly effective. The animals are really quick to learn.”
Robin Brown is a marine mammal researcher for the Oregon Department of Fish and
Wildlife.
Brown says they’ve euthanized seven sea lions this year. He says the decision to kill a sea
lion is made after everything else has failed.
“We have to have observed them killing salmon and steelhead, and they have to have
been exposed to all the non-lethal methods of harassment that you’ve observed here
today and shown that that isn’t detouring them from being here and feeding.”
The Humane Society opposes killing the sea lions. It’s asked the courts to put a stop to it.
While this legal battle plays out, Bobby Begay will keep hazing the sea lions until the end
of May.
That’s when the sea lions leave the dam and head back down the Columbia River to the
Pacific Coast to breed.
The American Shad became so rare that hatcheries had to help restore depleted populations (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)
A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-Achour explains:
Transcript
A million year old cycle of fish migration almost came to an end in the waters off of the nation’s
capital. But a monumental conservation effort has brought them back from the brink. Sabri Ben-
Achour explains:
I bet you can’t recognize this sound.
It is the sound of a female shad – it’s a type of fish – having its eggs squeezed out into a metal
bowl.
“In the bowl, it looks like applesauce.”
That’s biologist Catherine Lim. We are on a boat in the middle of the Potomac, 20 miles south of
Washington DC, harvesting and fertilizing shad eggs. Lim picks up a male shad and gives it a
squeeze.
“Yeah, he sprayed out there.”
She mixes the brew around and adds water.
“We’ll bag them up and send them to the fish hatchery.”
This is all part of an effort to restore the population of the American Shad. For millions of years,
the large silver-iridescent fish have swum in from the Atlantic and up the rivers of the East Coast
every spring to spawn. They return to the same place where their lives began, guided by a
unique geological odor that seeps from the earth and mountains that feed each river.
Once upon a time – only a century ago – these fish were so numerous they turned the water silver
and made rivers move.
At least that’s what Jim Cummins says, he’s a biologist.
“On the Susquehanna, there were so many of them they created a wave as they came up the
river, a standing wave.”
On the Potomac they fueled entire industries. According to newspaper reports, Washington DC
exported 4 million barrels of salted shad every year in the 1840’s.
“The wagons would come into Georgetown were so heavy that they crammed up the city – I think
it’s the first report of gridlock in Washington.”
The fish fed more than just commerce – they nourish everything from crabs to dolphins. Bald
Eagles actually evolved to time their egg laying early, so their chicks would hatch just as the Shad
and their relatives appeared in the river. And then came overfishing, dams, and pollution.
“In the 1960’s, there were times when the migratory fish came up to spawn in the area and met
that pollution, and hundreds of thousands of them died and made a stinking mess.”
The clean water act was passed in 1972, but by 1980, the fish were almost wiped out. A
moratorium on fishing at the time was too little too late. Water quality gradually improved as
waste water treatment plants were upgraded and aquatic grasses returned. But still, no Shad.
So Cummins began the Shad restoration project.
They had to use several nets – each hundreds of feet long – just to catch one fish. They got help
from fisheries and even elementary schools. Dams were fixed to let fish go around them. The
Shad population exploded.
At a boat house just outside of DC, anglers Steve Bocat and Louis Covax are enjoying success
that up until recently, few alive have seen here.
“It was great we had incredible fishing. I mean, between the two of us, we had, what, 50-60 fish
up to the boat?”
Another sign of success, a pair of Bald Eagles recently returned to the area following the fish –
the first in decades.
