Tag: protection

Forests for Lumber or Wildlife?

  • Loggers and environmentalists fight continually over the use of national forests. Managers at many national forests around the country are developing new long-range plans. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of
national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range
planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service
designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several
forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service
says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage
more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the
new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still
can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:


(sound of car door closing, footsteps in woods)


Jerry Birchem is a logger. He’s visiting one of his harvest sites on
land owned by St. Louis County, in northeastern Minnesota. The highest
quality wood will be turned into wooden dowels… other logs will go to a
lumber mill… the poorest quality will be turned into paper.


Birchem tries to get the highest possible value from each tree. He says in the last ten
years, the price of trees has tripled.


“We have to pay more for timber and the mills want to pay less, and we’re caught in the
middle of trying to survive in this business climate.”


Birchem likes buying timber from the county, like at this logging site. He hardly ever
cuts trees from the national forest anymore. He’d like to, but the Forest Service doesn’t
make much of its land available for logging. The agency says it doesn’t have enough staff
to do the environmental studies required before trees can be cut on federal land.


Jerry Birchem says loggers need the Forest Service to change that.


“You know there needs to be processes set in place so you know, it doesn’t take
so long to set up these timber sales. I mean, they’ve got to go through so
many analyses and so many appeals processes.”


Birchem says it should be harder for environmental groups to get in the way of timber
sales. But not everybody agrees with Birchem.


Clyde Hanson lives in Grand Marais, on the edge of Lake Superior. He’s an active
member of the Sierra Club.


He says it’s true loggers are taking less timber off federal lands in recent
years. But he says the Forest Service still isn’t protecting the truly special
places that deserve to be saved.


He says a place like Hog Creek should be designated a wilderness area, where no trees
can be cut.


(sound of creek, birds)


“Very unique mixture, we must be right at the transition between two types of forest.”


Red pine thrive here, along with jackpine and tamarack. It’s rough and swampy country,
far from roads. So far, loggers have left these trees alone.


But with the value of trees skyrocketing, Hanson says the place will be logged eventually.


Forest Service planners made note of the fact that the Hog Creek area is relatively
untouched by humans. They could have protected it, but they decided not to.


“And we think that’s a mistake, because this is our last chance to protect wilderness and
provide more wilderness for future generations. If we don’t do it now, eventually there’ll
be enough roads or enough logging going on in these places that by the next forest plan
it’ll be too late.”


But the Forest Service says it is moving to create more diversity in the
woods. It wants a forest more like what nature would produce if left
to her own devices.


The agency says it will reduce the amount of aspen in the forest. Aspen has been
encouraged, because it grows fast. When it’s cut, it grows back quickly, so loggers and
paper companies can make more money.


The trouble is, an aspen forest only offers habitat for some kinds of animals,
such as deer and grouse. Other animals, especially songbirds, need older trees to
live in.


So the Forest Service wants to create more variety in the woods, with more old trees than
there are now. But how to get the forest from here to there, is the problem.
Duane Lula is one of the Forest Service planners. He says fires and windstorms are nature’s way of producing
diverse forests. They sweep the woods periodically, killing big stands of older trees, and
preparing the soil for pines and other conifers. Jackpines, for instance, used to be more
common in the northwoods. Lula says the only practical way for man to mimic nature is
by cutting trees down.


“We can’t have those fires anymore just because people live here, there are private
homes here. There’s no way that we could replicate those fires. Timber management is one way of regenerating those jackpine stands in
lieu of having major fires.”


But Lula says the main purpose of timber cutting in the new plan is to move the forest
toward the diversity the agency wants, not to produce wood. And he says that shows the
Forest Service is looking at the woods in a new way.


“The previous plan tended to be very focused on how many acres you were going to
clearcut, how much timber you were going to produce, how much wildlife habitat you
were going to produce, and this one is trying to say, if we have this kind of desired
condition on the ground that we’re shooting for, then these other things will come from
that.”


As it does in the planning process in other national forests around the Great Lakes, the
Forest Service will adjust the plan after hearing from the public. Loggers,
environmentalists, and everyone else will have a chance to have their say. A final version
will be submitted to the Regional Forester in Milwaukee early next year. It could then
face a challenge in court.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

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Some Cities Unprepared for Bioterrorism

State and local officials say not all cities are prepared to respond to a bioterrorist attack. A recent federal report indicates more coordination is needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

State and local officials say not all cities are prepared to respond to a bioterrorist attack. A recent
federal report indicates more coordination is needed. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Lester Graham reports:


Federal agencies need to set benchmarks that define what is adequate protection from
bioterrorism and need to develop a way for cities and states to evaluate and share useful solutions.
Those are recommendations from the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of
Congress. The GAO found that state and local officials reported deficiencies in the number of
people needed, the coordination needed and the labs needed to address such things as
bioterrorism attacks or even new infectious diseases that can spread rapidly such as the West Nile
Virus or SARS. The GAO says the Department of Health and Human Services needs to work
with the Department of Homeland Security to get guidelines to state and local officials so that
they know what’s needed to protect the health of their residents.


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

Biologists Launch Society to Save Sturgeon

Biologists from seven countries are banding together to protect a large, ancient fish. Earlier this month, scientists launched what they call the “World Sturgeon Conservation Society.” The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Patty Murray has more:

Transcript

Biologists from seven countries are banding together to protect a large,
ancient fish. Earlier this month/last month (March) scientists launched what they
call the “World Sturgeon Conservation Society.” The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Patty Murray has more:


Sturgeon are among the oldest fishes in the world. They’ve been around
since the pre-historic era.


But modern pressures are testing the fish. That’s why sturgeon biologists
recently formed the “World Sturgeon Conservation Society.”


Ron Bruch is a sturgeon biologist with the Wisconsin Department of Natural
Resources.


He says North American sturgeon stocks are fairly healthy. But Bruch says
that’s not the case in the Caspian and Black seas where the fish often wind
up on the illegal caviar market.


“The stocks there are on track to collapse in the next 15-20 years because
of poaching, problems with habitat and pollution. There’s a real need in
the sturgeon community for international help to pull that situation out
before it’s beyond repair.”


Bruch says members of the World Sturgeon Conservation Society will share
research that can help reduce illegal sturgeon harvest. One idea is to
raise sturgeon on aquaculture farms to offset the need for black market
caviar.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Patty Murray.

Falcons Hatch a Complete Recovery

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:

Transcript

Thirty years ago, peregrine falcons were nearly extinct in the Midwest. Today, environmental protection efforts have succeeded in returning the fast-flying raptors to their earlier numbers… and even better. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Diane Richard has more:


A twenty-year program to restore peregrine falcons is seeing new signs of
success this summer: hatchlings.


Experts estimate that as many as 300 peregrine falcons will hatch this year.


In the sixties, DDT all but wiped out the population. But the peregrine
falcon is back, thanks to a ban on the pesticide and conservation efforts by the Midwest Peregrine Falcon Restoration Program.


Since the eighties, this regional partnership has released birds bred in captivity. Today, it’s monitoring peregrine falcons at 30 sites across 13 U.S. states and two Canadian provinces.


Mark Martell is a conservation coordinator with the restoration program. He
says the challenge now is to keep the population thriving.


“We don’t have a lot of experience with taking a species from zero
individuals up to a stable population. So we want to make sure this
population stays stable.”


To do so, Martell says researchers will spend the next 20 years keeping tabs
on the falcons and their chicks.


For Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Diane Richard.

Earth Day in Time of Turmoil

Earth Day is upon us once again, but in this time of war we may not grasp its relevance. Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Bob Hamma suggests that this year’s theme – “Protect Our Home” – can lead us to reconsider what kind of future we want, not just for ourselves, but for the world we live in:

Transcript

Earth Day is upon us once again. But in this time of war, we may not grasp its relevance. Great Lakes Radio commentator Bob Hamma suggests that this year’s theme. “Protect Our Home” can lead us to reconsider what kind of future we want, not just for ourselves, but for the world we live in:

Upon his return to Earth after the Apollo 11 mission, the astronaut Michael Collins chose the word fragility to describe how the Earth looked from the moon: “The Earth appears fragile above all else,” he said.

This image of fragility seems an appropriate one for Earth Day 2002. We have learned so much about the fragility of life since September 11. People kissed their loved ones good-bye, went to work, boarded airplanes, all expecting to be home soon. Even now, more than six months later, we are keenly aware of how fragile life is. This tear in the fabric of ordinary life is not easily mended; it has forced us to look more deeply at what we value most, and how to preserve and care for that.

The theme for Earth Day this year is “Protect Our Home.” It is a call to remember that the Earth on which we live is indeed a fragile jewel of life. And in a time of ever-increasing hostility, the earth and those who dwell on it are endangered. How can we protect our home?

Our first instinct is to defend what we treasure, by force if need be. While there is a necessary place for homeland security and military action, these strategies are not the whole solution. Violence can be suppressed by force, hatred cannot. Perhaps Earth Day can be a time to take a look at our situation from another perspective.

If we could view our planet home from a distance today, with all we now know about the Earth and all we have experienced recently, I think we might recognize that the fragility of life on Earth is not only an ecological reality, but a human responsibility. We hold the future of the Earth in our hands. Life on our planet depends on us, on how we use and distribute its resources, and on how we resolve the differences that fuel the destructive power of hatred.

We live in a biosphere where all life is mutually dependent. If we ignore this interdependence on the level of relations among nations, races, and religions, we set in motion a process that imperils life on all levels. The fragile axis of life turns with delicate balance.

This Earth Day invites us to reconsider the idea that we are separate and independent, and that our needs and rights take precedence over those of the global community and of the Earth itself. If we can begin to see the Earth as our shared home, perhaps then we can hope for a better future. Only then can we truly protect our home.

Host Tag: “Bob Hamma is the author of “Earth’s Echo – Sacred Encounters with Nature,” published by Sorin Books. He comes to us by way of the Great Lakes Radio Consortium.”

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Group Criticizes Medical Waste Company

An environmental group is criticizing the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company for not living up to its mission of being environmentally responsible, but the company says its record speaks for itself. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:

Transcript

An environmental group is criticizing the nation’s largest medical waste disposal company for not living up to its mission of being environmentally responsible. But the company says its record speaks for itself. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:

In a new report, the group Health Care Without Harm accuses the medical waste company, Stericycle, of not doing enough to reduce the volume and toxicity of waste. It also criticizes one method of disposal. Charlotte Brody is the director of the group.

“We need Stericycle to stop incinerating, but when we’ve asked them to actually pledge to do that, they’ve backed away.”

Stericycle says it is reducing incineration. Tony Tomasello is the company’s chief technical officer. He says, as the company expanded it acquired other companies’ incinerators.

“We have shut down over half of those. So, I feel we’ve made substantial reduction in the amount of incineration used in the industry.”

Tomasello notes certain waste, such as human tissue and medical records, is required to be incinerated. He adds that Stericycle educates health care providers on how to reduce waste, but the reduction methods aren’t always enforced.

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

Green Technology Can Defeat Terrorism

Small-scale on-site power generation technologies help protect the environment. Will they also help to protect us against terrorism? Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Byron Kennard argues that they can:

Transcript

Small-scale on-site power generation technologies help protect the environment. Will they also help to protect us against terrorism? Our commentator Byron Kennard argues that they do.


Like every American, I am mourning the tragic losses that terrorists have inflicted on our nation. But I mourn too because I fear that in the aftermath of these attacks, environmental protection efforts will be sacrificed to the awful necessities of war. I am reminded of a remark Tolstoy once made to a young friend, “You may not be interested in war,” Tolstoy warned,” but war is interested in you.” War’s interest in the young is fully matched by its interest in the environment.


Apart from what the US does to go after bin Laden, we must also pursue peaceful solutions to this challenge. The best of these options is to vastly increase economic opportunity for the world’s poor. After all, it’s their desperation that provides the breeding grounds for fanaticism. As Jessica Stern, author of The Ultimate Terrorists, observes: “Force is not nearly enough. We need to drain the swamps where these young men thrive. We need to devote a much higher priority to health, education, and economic development or new Osamas will continue to arise.”


Economic development will be hard to achieve and will take much time. But in it environmentalists can find some solace. There are environmental ways to develop economies and often these make the most sense for the world’s poor. For example, two billion people in the world have no access to electricity. Providing them electricity for lighting, clean water, refrigeration and health care, and radio and television is perhaps the best single way “to drain the swamps.” The best way to make electricity available to the world’s poor is through on-site generating technologies that are the environment friendly.


These “micro power” devices generate electric power on a small scale close to where it is actually used. They include fuel cells, photovoltaics, micro generators, small wind turbines, and modular biomass systems. For instance, a micro generator the size of a refrigerator can generate 25 kilowatts of electricity, enough to power a village in the developing world.


The environmental approach toward energy sufficiency in developing nations has been to utilize micro credit. That means providing poor people with affordable mini-loans to purchase on-site energy generators, or micro generation. Currently the US leads the world in exporting solar electric, small wind, fuel cells, and modular biomass systems to the developing world. Such exports of energy generation have become a $5 billion per year market, so this environmentally benign strategy is also economically productive. In short, electrifying the poor regions of the world will benefit our people, our planet and the cause of peace.

U.S. Responds to Year-Old I.J.C. Report

After taking more than a year to consider the matter, the U.S. has now responded to a report that said a new sense of urgency is needed to restore and protect the Great Lakes. The report was issued by a binational commission overseeing U.S. and Canadian cooperation on lakes issues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

After taking more than a year to consider the matter, the U.S. has now responded to a report that said a new sense of urgency is needed to restore and protect the Great Lakes. The report was issued by a bi-national commission, overseeing U.S. and Canadian cooperation on lakes issues. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports.

The International Joint Commission monitors whether the two countries are complying with a water quality agreement, when its reports were released in July of last year. The commission warned that every delay in restoring the health of the lakes carried a steep price. Despite that urgency, the U.S. response to the report was delayed, in part because of the change in administrations in the White House. Mark Elster is an analyst with the U.S. EPA’s Great Lakes National Program Office. He sums up the U.S. response to the I.J.C. report this way.

“I would say we generally agree with most of their recommendations.”

Yet, the U.S. response says it is unable to clean up contamination and stop invasive species quite as quickly as the I.J.C. calls for, and Elster notes the U.S. has to coordinate many of its plans with Canada.

“So, for those bi-national type recommendations, we’ll be in contact with our Canadian colleagues to see if we’re in agreement in the tenor of our responses.”

The Canadian response, similar to the U.S. response, also took a year to be issued. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.

Lakewide Management Plan to Be Released

After a decade of research, the Environmental Protection Agency
will release a report on pollution and other problems on the Great Lakes
later this week (4/27). What started as a report on toxic pollutants,
has
been expanded to include other major environmental problems. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Cormorant Control

In April, the U-S Fish and Wildlife Service denied a permit request
from New York State to kill three-hundred cormorants on eastern Lake
Ontario. The proposed management plan as well as previous killings by
individual sportsmen has Great Lakes Radio Consortium commentator Don
Ogden reflecting: