Tag: natural resources

KEEPING AN EYE ON CHRONIC WASTING DISEASE (Part 2)

Several captive elk in Colorado have tested positive for chronic wasting disease. This fatal neurological ailment attacks an animal’s brain, slowly eating away healthy tissue. Chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has also spread to the wild deer population near the Colorado and Wyoming border. That’s prompted wildlife officials in the Midwest to begin looking for CWD in their wild deer herds. In the second of a two-part series, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby visited one such testing site in rural Wisconsin and filed this report:

Transcript

Several captive elk in Colorado have tested positive for chronic wasting disease. This fatal neurological ailment attacks an animal’s brain, slowly eating away healthy tissue. Chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has also spread to the wild deer population near the Colorado and Wyoming border. That’s prompted wildlife officials in the Great Lakes region to begin looking for CWD in their wild deer herds. Todd Melby of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium visited one such testing site in rural Wisconsin and filed this report.


The opening of the deer-hunting season in Wisconsin is a big day for Pauline Nol. But it’s not because she’s a hunter. Nol is a veterinarian. Instead of wearing a blaze orange vest, Nol sports a blue Dickie jumpsuit. She’ll need it to keep the blood of dead deer from staining her clothes.


(sound of medical instruments, followed by background sound of Nol and another vet moving instruments around on a table)


Nol and another veterinarian are arranging medical instruments on a folding table. It’s the kind of portable table you might find in a school cafeteria or church basement. Only today, the table is set up outside, in the parking lot of a Department of Natural Resources building just outside Spooner, a small town in northwestern Wisconsin.


In about a half hour, hunters will be pulling up in their pickup trucks to register deer they’ve shot just this morning. When they do, Nol, who works at the Department of Interior’s National Wildlife Health Center, will ask hunters if she might take a few samples from the carcass. The purpose: To check for chronic wasting disease.


Chronic wasting disease is a fatal neurological illness that is part of the same family of diseases as scrapies in sheep, mad cow disease in cattle and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease in humans. CWD destroys a deer’s brain and is always fatal. Before death, the infected animal seems listless, confused and often stumbles around aimlessly.


There is concern among some people that CWD may be transmittable to humans. Yet many states in the Great Lakes region, such as nearby Minnesota, have just begun testing for CWD in wild deer herds. While it still seems limited to captive herds, officials are worried the disease could spread. Dennis Stauffer is a spokesman for the Minnesota DNR.


“The greatest problem, we think, in terms of not just the animals but in terms of human health is if this gets into the wild population. That would be, I think, very problematic. Because then once it’s no longer just limited to captive animals, then you have a real issue of how in the world do you get to it and eradicate it.”


In Wisconsin, veterinarians like Nol, have been testing dead deer since 1999. So far, the news has been good. No cases of CWD have been detected in the state’s wild deer herds.


(sound from deer testing station: Cars on nearby two-lane highway)


Back at the parking lot, employees are now ready to tag incoming deer. And that’s got Nol busy too. She strolls over to a couple standing next to a dead buck resting its head on the tailgate of a red pickup.


“Who got the deer this morning? That would be you? Congratulations. That’s great, that’s really great. So, we’re doing some sampling for looking at different diseases in the deer herd. So we’re wondering if we could take some samples from your deer?”


The pair agrees and Nol gets busy. The first thing she does is pull the deer’s head beyond the edge of the tailgate. And then she begins slicing through the fur and into the neck.


“What I’m doing is I’m making a cut in the neck just behind the jaw line. And that exposes the base of the brain, the brain stem and those lymph nodes we’re looking for.”


The lymph nodes are tested for bovine tuberculosis, or TB, a disease that’s been found in Michigan’s free-ranging deer herd since 1994. Wisconsin began testing deer for TB in 1996 and has yet to find an incidence of the disease.


The man who shot the deer is Tom Hack of Hartford, Wisconsin. Once the brain stem, lymph nodes and blood samples are analyzed back at Nol’s lab, Hack will be notified of the results.


There’s been no evidence linking CWD to humans. However, the state is testing deer for diseases and I ask Hack if that gives him pause.


“Well, sure. If I’m going to be eating the meat. Yeah, yeah it would worry me.”


“So, are you going to wait until you get the postcard back before you eat the meat?”


“No, I don’t think so.”


A little later, I catch up with Ken Jonas. He’s a wildlife biologist with the state DNR. This morning, he shot a deer himself. And now he’s tagging animals nabbed by other hunters. I ask him if hunters should wait until they receive their postcards back in the mail before eating the meat.


“No. Again, we consider all the deer currently to be safe in the state of Wisconsin. The monitoring is being done to determine if there is a problem at this point in time. We have no detects of either of those diseases in the wild herd.”


The reason for the testing, Jonas says, isn’t to let individual hunters know of a personal health risk, but to see if CWD has found its way into the state’s wild deer herds. For the Great Lake Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby in Minneapolis.

What Is Sustainability?

Enter the keyword “sustainability” into any Internet search and dozens of web pages instantly appear – filled with words used to describe the ambiguous theory. Conservation, egalitarianism, and biodiversity to name just a few. But what does the environmental buzzword really mean? The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak was at a recent forum on sustainability in search of a definition, and she spoke with some of the world’s leading ecologists:

Transcript

Enter the keyword “sustainability” into any Internet search and dozens of web pages instantly appear – filled with words used to describe the ambiguous theory. Conservation, egalitarianism, and biodiversity to name just a few. But what does the environmental buzzword really mean? The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak was at a recent forum on sustainability in search of a definition. And she spoke with some of the world’s leading ecologists.


The impressive line-up of speakers included such notables as Jane Goodall, David Suzuki and Paul Hawken, people who certainly need no introduction with environmentalists, and for good reason. These three experts on ecology have more than a century of combined experience. Yet, when asked to define the subject they were invited to talk about – sustainability – their responses were well…less than definitive.


Paul Hawken is a best-selling author on corporate environmental reform, who isn’t usually uncertain with words -especially crucial words about the environment. But Hawken was quick to admit there are simply too many ways to describe sustainability. And, he says even the most commonly used definition falls short.


“As you can tell from my reciting of it, it’s not a definition I warm to at all – because it’s not a definition you wake up in the morning and say, ‘uh, man, I’m so happy to be alive, and what I’m going to do today, is to meet the needs of the current generation in a way that doesn’t compromise future generations. It’s so flat, and non-dynamic.”


Hawken says that sustainability, by its very nature, is a multi-dimensional concept. Which resources get used, and how much, from where, to produce what goods and services, for which people, and then what to do with the waste – and how do we fix what we’ve already ruined? Hawken says the answers to these tough questions require a broad understanding. And he says, in an increasingly more specialized world that makes a clear definition much more difficult to nail down.


“Most of us have been, or are educated, in schools that ask us to specialize and to really focus on one area of knowledge. Sustainability really cuts across all denims – from not just economy and ecology, but biology, sociology, psychology, forestry, geology, chemistry, physics…In a sense to really be conversant in sustainability you have to have a working knowledge of a lot of different subjects.”


Milling about the convention floor we find David Sukuzi, perhaps the most conversant proponent of sustainability. The award winning geneticist and broadcaster stops occasionally, chatting casually about bio diversity, reductionism, or maybe genetic polymorphism. But then, Suzuki is well known for easily making such complex science understandable. So, how does Suzuki define sustainability?


“I don’t know what sustainability means. We’ve changed the world so much that we can’t rely on nature’s abundance and productivity. We’ve already added thirty percent more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere than existed two hundred years ago. We have no idea what that’s going to do. So, we don’t know what is going to compromise or not compromise. We know that we are trashing the natural world on which we ultimately depend.”


Any hope for a definition would seem to be lost. As would be any hope for sustainability itself. But Suzuki says, although there are big question marks, sustainability is the only option.


“We’ve got to pull back. We’ve got to protect as much wild nature as we can where it exists – and keep our fingers crossed.”


Jane Goodall is known for her monumental faith in nature. Forty years of research has earned her a reputation for an unfaltering commitment to social and environmental causes. Goodall admits that as the indigenous peoples of the world have vanished, so too, she says, has the true definition of sustainability – “to make only what is needed to sustain life.” But Goodall says we must not give up on that principle.


“That’s very dangerous for us, if we’re thinking about a sustainable world and a world that will be there for our grandchildren. We mustn’t let up. We must continue to work for the things, which we think, are important. If we have the ability to influence some little area of the community and the environment around us, then that is what we must do.”


And all the experts agree. They say that “urgency” is now the most important word in any definition of sustainability. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Joyce Kryszak.

New Bottling Plant Stirs Water Debate

  • A test well being dug in preparation for the construction of the Ice Mountain bottling plant. Perrier hopes to have the plant up and running by next spring. Photo by Patrick Owen/MLUI.

Is Great Lakes water for sale? That’s the issue on the table in Michigan right now, where the Perrier Group of America has begun construction on a 100 million dollar water bottling operation. Last year, government officials in Wisconsin rejected a similar proposal from Perrier. The Michigan plan has sparked local opposition and more. The start of the plant’s construction has given birth to concerns about whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be considered part of the Great Lakes water basin. And if it is, some question whether it should be for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell reports:

Transcript

Is Great Lakes water for sale? That’s the issue on the table in Michigan right now, where the Perrier Group of America has begun construction on a 100 million dollar water bottling operation. Last year, government officials in Wisconsin rejected a similar proposal from Perrier. The Michigan plan has sparked local opposition and more. The start of the plant’s construction has given birth to concerns about whether groundwater in Great Lakes states should be considered part of the Great Lakes water basin. And if it is, some question whether it should be for sale. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Matt Shafer Powell reports.


Eight Mile Road in rural Mecosta County, Michigan is one of the area’s busier roads, one of the few ways to get to the interstate. It’s surrounded by thousands of acres of farmland. And at its peak, you can see the Little Muskegon River Valley as it stretches for miles across this point where Michigan becomes Northern Michigan.


(sound of construction)


When Perrier Group Project Manager Brendan O’Rourke saw this stretch of Eight Mile Road, he knew that it would be the perfect place for Perrier’s new Ice Mountain spring water bottling operation.


“Clearly, it’s a beautiful place to live and work, it has abundant natural spring water, the highway system allows for easy access to the marketplace, there’s an available work force and there’s high quality spring water.”


But local resident Terry Swier rarely uses Eight Mile Road anymore. She says it upsets her too much to see the walls of the Perrier plant rising out of what was once a cornfield. Swier is president of the group Michigan Citizens for Water Conservation, a group that formed out of citizen opposition to the plant. Since December, Swier says her group has attracted more than 12-hundred local residents. Most of them are concerned about how local streams, rivers and lakes will be affected by an operation that plans to pump more than 700-thousand gallons of water a day from the ground. But despite her efforts to stop the plant’s construction, work has continued and the plant should be ready to begin operation next Spring.


“It’s just very frustrating how they have the arrogance to say that ‘we can proceed.’ It’s like not even paying attention to the people who are here in the area.”


Perrier officials insist the company has made every effort to listen to local residents and address their concerns. They say they’ve done studies that show the environmental impact will be minimal. And they say the extra 600-thousand dollars a year in tax revenue the plant will generate will go a long way in Mecosta County. Local government officials agree. But Mecosta Township Supervisor John Boyd says he’s more excited by the possibility that Perrier may bring up to 200 new jobs to the area.


“I’ve been to meetings and they say ‘Well, what’s the tax base, what’d you gain on the tax base?’ and I say ‘Hell, I ain’t even looked at it’, because basically, we’re looking for good jobs that sustain people, that will let our kids stay here, stay in the community, and last, we’re looking for a business that will be here tomorrow when we’re gone.”


But construction of the plant and local opposition to it are only the starting points for an issue that has reached far beyond the farmlands of Mecosta County. That’s because the natural springs that lie beneath the ground there feed into the Little Muskegon River, which in turn, feeds into Lake Michigan. Of primary concern to critics is a federal law that requires the approval of all eight Great Lakes governors for any water diversion from the Great Lakes basin. In September, Michigan’s attorney general concluded that the groundwater in Mecosta County should indeed be considered Great Lakes water, and its sale should be approved by the governors. Michigan’s Governor John Engler, though, disagrees on both points and has even offered Perrier nearly ten million dollars in tax breaks. That’s something that frustrates Keith Schneider, of the Michigan Land Use Institute.


“If states are approving diversions of Great Lakes water, they need to consult each other. And the reason they need to consult each other is because we sit on the largest source of fresh water on the planet and this resource is getting ever more valuable. I mean we’re essentially the Saudi Arabia of water here.”


If it’s proven nothing else, the controversy over the Perrier plant has exposed the lack of solid, enforceable groundwater policy throughout the Great Lakes. But in Michigan, that may be changing. In the state capitol of Lansing, various legislative and environmental groups have already begun to unveil their own water control packages—they include everything from the abolishment of tax breaks for companies that bottle water to mandatory assurances that local water quality won’t be sacrificed by those companies. And some groups are calling for a law that would require companies that sell water to pay royalties in the same way that oil and gas companies do now. If it’s ever passed, such a royalty would put a definitive value on water as a natural resource. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Matt Shafer Powell in Mecosta County, Michigan.

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Keeping Resources Safe From Terrorism

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water resources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts say the attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. are reminders of how vulnerable the U.S. is. However, they say utilities and cities can take simple steps to safeguard natural resources such as forests and water sources against terrorist attacks. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The terrorist attacks prompted alarm across the nation, and even people in areas that will likely never be the targets of terrorism are wondering aloud about their vulnerability.


Peter Beerings is the terrorism prevention coordinator for the city of Indianapolis, and speaks on the subject across the nation. Beering says because the U.S. has such great wealth well beyond its cities, it is vulnerable.


“We have vast expanses of natural resources, forests, parks, things that we consider to be natural treasures are just as easily national targets. But, it is important, I think, to remember that while we are vulnerable by virtue of our size, that this is not particularly something of interest other than to, perhaps, a single issue aggressor.”


By single issue aggressor, Beering means these areas aren’t likely to be the targets for international terrorists, but are occasionally targeted by fanatics for single causes. For example, forest fires have been ignited to protest development near wilderness areas, and an extortionist threatened to poison the water in Phoenix.


A small town about 50 miles southwest of Indianapolis also has been a target of a terrorist group. Dave Rollo sits on the Bloomington, Indiana Environmental Commission. Last year, environmental terrorists repeatedly hit Bloomington, destroying highway construction equipment, burning a house under construction in a sensitive watershed, and spiking trees in a nearby state forest to prevent logging.


“It really brought terrorism home to a small town such as
Bloomington when this sort of activity usually takes place elsewhere. So, I think that public officials, especially, had to rethink many things about how we– how Bloomington has to safeguard the community from these acts.”


Rollo says one thing is certain. Bloomington lost its complacency about the possibility of terrorism. After a period of fear and confusion, the city is now struggling with the proper security measures.


“How does one go about safeguarding a forest from deliberate arson, or how does one go about safeguarding a water supply the size of Lake Monroe which is the largest lake in Indiana. It’s an enormous challenge.”


And it’s a challenge that governments have been unwilling to talk about publicly, at least until now.


Jim Snyder is a researcher at the University of Michigan. At the direction of the President’s commission on critical infrastructure protection, he co-authorized a report on protecting water systems, possibly the most vulnerable target. But instead of getting information to the water purification plants across the nation, the government buried it, fearing that it might cause panic or give radical ideas.


“Some ten years ago we wrote a manual on how to secure water supplies for the EPA, but because they’re always worried about getting that notion into the public eye –which of course now any of these things are in the public eye– but they basically decided not to distribute that manual.”


Snyder says the manual outlined simple things, such as an emergency response plan, locking gates in sensitive areas and securing wells, and having guards on duty at water plants, things that would dissuade vandals or disgruntled employees. However, Snyder says, there’s little to prevent a determined terrorist with the right knowledge from poisoning a water system, undetected with contaminants small enough to fit in a backpack.


“It is certainly possible to put something in the water (which would go) which would be odorless, colorless, tasteless, uh, and not detected. And, your best indication that you have a problem are sick people or dead people.”


The terrorism prevention experts say no one can predict or prevent all acts of terrorism. But cities and utilities can make it more difficult, and that might be enough to dissuade some of these single-issue aggressors. Peter Beering in Indianapolis says natural resources have one more thing going for them.


“The good news is that these are comparatively uninteresting targets to an aggressor. And, as we learned, unfortunately, in New York and in Washington, that certainly there are much higher profile targets that are of much greater interest to people who are upset with the United States.”


Beering adds that should not be an excuse to ignore the risks to natural resources. He recommends every municipality assess its risks and take proper measures to secure its vulnerable areas.

KEEPING RESOURCES SAFE FROM TERRORISM (Short Version)

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Terrorism prevention experts who’ve been calling for better security at vulnerable targets now have the public’s attention. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.


The experts say although a determined attack by a terrorist probably cannot be stopped. Security measures can be taken that would cause them to look for an easier target. Jim Snyder at the University of Michigan has co-authorized reports on water protection for the defense department. He says natural resources such as community water supplies and forests can and should be better protected.


“There’s lots of security measures that can be taken that are, compared to the value of the asset, is relatively minor expense. So, I suspect, because of this latest incident in New York and Washington, that there probably will be a renewed attention to all kinds of infrastructure.”


Snyder and other terrorism protection experts urge local governments to assess their risks and secure vulnerable areas. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Living Next to Wild Neighbors

People moving out to wooded lots in the suburbs are finding
those lots are already inhabited. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports… some homeowners are battling nature,
but others are finding ways to live in harmony with it:

Stronger Restrictions on Water Export

The number of people living in areas without fresh water is
growing. And that’s made the Great Lakes more vulnerable to proposals
that would remove large volumes of water. In late March, the International Joint Commission announced a plan to regulate
water removal from the Great Lakes. If adopted, it will severely
restrict
bulk exports of drinking water. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Karen Kelly reports:

Pipeline to Go Under Lake Michigan

Two energy companies are proposing a natural gas pipeline under
Lake Michigan. Peoples energy services corporation and coastal
corporation want to lay more than a hundred miles of pipe under the
western shore of the lake. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy
Nelson reports, the project has environmentalists wondering what might
be next:

Peter Raven-Are We Facing a Mass Extinction?

  • Peter Raven is the director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. More than that, Raven is a world-leader in the effort to classify, understand, and use plants in a sustainable fashion.

Recently Time Magazine labeled Peter Raven one of the "Heroes of the Planet"
for his work in understanding plants and the environment. Raven is the
director of the Missouri Botanical Garden. In the first installment of a
three-part interview at the botanical garden, the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham talked with Peter Raven about his conclusion that
we’re facing a mass extinction of species:

The Fate of Slant Drilling

Far below the bottom of the Great Lakes, valuable pockets of oil and
gas sit waiting to be tapped. But laws prohibit offshore drilling. So
for the last twenty years, oil companies have been using another method
to get to the deposits; it’s called directional or slant-drilling. Up
until this point, there hasn’t been much opposition. But now a number
of bills are pending that could change oil and gas development beneath
the lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Wendy Nelson reports: