World Governments Failing on Biodiversity

  • The recovery of the European Bison is one of the recent successes in the fight against biodiversity loss. Despite some improvements, the UNEP report suggests efforts to address the loss of biodiversity need to be substantially strengthened.(Photo courtesy of Gil Wojciech, Polish Forest Research Institute, Poland)

Transcript

A new report finds an agreement among the world’s governments to protect nature is failing. Lester Graham reports on the assessment which finds more animals, forests and other habitats are being lost.

World governments signed the 2002 Convention of Biological Diversity, agreeing to protect more habitat and species that are at risk. An assessment of the progress has been published in the journal Science and it finds biodiversity is at greater risk than it was when the agreement was signed eight years ago. Matt Foster is with the environmental group Conservation International. He says despite some government efforts to protect habitat, there have been more pressures destroying habitat and biodiversity.

“And it’s a scary prospect, not just from a biodiversity side, but considering that there are so many vulnerable people around the world for whom the services provided by nature and biodiversity are essential such as for water, for food and all of us depend on nature and forests especially to try to mitigate climate change.”

Foster says much more needs to be done by governments and the private sector to preserve natural areas and protect species.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

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Scientists Hob-Knob in Chicago

  • Former US Vice President Al Gore will deliver a special address to the thousands of scientists gathered at the American Association for the Advancement of Science's meeting this week. (Photo courtesy of the US Department of State)

Thousands of scientists from around the world will be hob-knobbing in Chicago, starting today. They’re going to be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and how he changed science forever. But they won’t be just celebrating – they’ll be thinking through one of the biggest environmental problems we all face:

Transcript

Thousands of scientists from around the world will be hob-knobbing in Chicago starting today. They’re going to be celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and how he changed science forever. But they won’t be just celebrating –- they’ll be thinking through one of the biggest environmental problems we all face:

The group’s called the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and they’re putting on their annual meeting – one of the biggest science meet-ups in the world.
This time around there’s plenty of attention on the science of climate change.

The group doesn’t mince words on the issue.

Here’s CEO – Dr. Alan Leschner.

“The last five or more years has been a period of, frankly, denial by the US government about the need to address the problem of global change and its consequences for the world. Now , we think there’s a big opportunity, particularly with the new science appointments made by President Obama to be able to address these kinds of issues in a focused and coherent way.
Scientists there will present work on whether biofuels really help cut carbon emissions, what kind of food crops are best for the climate, and whether we’re losing fish species because global warming.”

And to headline the whole thing – former Vice President Al Gore’s dropping in later this week.

For The Environment Report, I’m Shawn Allee.

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A Dow Jones Index for Animals

  • Scientists have created a species index that tracks populations much like the Dow Jones (Photo courtesy of the US Fish and Wildlife Service)

Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:

Transcript

Biologists have created a way to
track endangered species that they say is
similar to the way we track financial markets.
Rebecca Williams has more:

The new system is nicknamed the Dow Jones Index of Biodiversity.


It’s put together by the International Union for Conservation of Nature and the
London Zoo.


Jonathan Baillie is with the zoo. He says the system helps keep track of which
species are doing well and which ones are close to extinction.


“So if you thought of a group of species like a company you can track what’s
happening to birds through time, what’s happening to mammals through time
what’s happening to amphibians through time – and we’re seeing amphibians
are crashing quite quickly, birds are going down but not as rapidly.”


Of course species can’t be tracked exactly like financial markets. The species
index gets updated every few years instead of every day.


Soon they’re hoping to track things like beetles, mushrooms, and lichens on the
index.


For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

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Housing Developers Go Native

  • Views like this attract new housing developments around the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. (Photo courtesty of the National Park Service.)

In recent years, the land surrounding America’s national parks has become attractive to residential developers. But the landscaping in these new neighborhoods can often feature aggressive, exotic plants, many of which threaten to choke out native plants. Now, a new program aims to keep these plants from sneaking their way into the nation’s most-visited park. As Matt Shafer Powell reports, the program depends upon an uncommon alliance of environmentalists and developers:

Transcript

In recent years, the land surrounding America’s national parks has become attractive to residential developers. But the landscaping in these new neighborhoods can often feature aggressive, exotic plants, many of which threaten to choke out native plants. Now, a new program aims to keep these plants from sneaking their way into the nation’s most-visited park. As Matt Shafer Powell reports, the program depends upon an uncommon alliance of environmentalists and developers:


Jason Love is standing next to a wall of roadside rock. He’s watching as the mimosa trees anchored in the rock wave in the wind from a passing stream of cars. The cars are all headed to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, only a few miles down the road. These days, he says the mimosas are a predictable part of the landscape for those visitors heading into the park.


“The mimosa was probably planted as an ornamental and from there, was spread by birds eating the seeds, and now, instead of just being in one place in one person’s yard, you can see it up and down the roadside here.”


Love is an ecologist with the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont. It’s an environmental education group that works with the Park Service. Love admits the mimosas are beautiful trees, with their brilliant spray of pink and white flowers and their strong perfume-like scent. His problem with them is that they’re killing off some of the plants that have called the Smokies home for thousands of years.


“We see more and more of these invasive exotics creeping up along the park’s edges and that makes it harder to control inside the park because just as birds brought this mimosa here beside us, these same birds go inside the park and carry these same seeds and then the park has to actively deal with it.”


And the park does deal with it the best it can. Each year, the Park Service spends a lot of money and time monitoring the plants inside the park and yanking out any invasives. The question is why, especially if the mimosas are so appealing. Back at the Tremont Institute, Love has a simple answer.


“We love this environment. This is the Smoky Mountains. It has over 130 species of trees, more than all of Europe. And when we bring in these invasive exotic plants, we are lessening that diversity, we’re making it a little less special.”


With new neighborhoods full of exotic invasives creeping toward the park, the park service and the Tremont institute decided the best way to address the problem was by educating developers. So they created a pilot program called the Native Landscape Certification Program. It’s a voluntary program where residential developers like Robin Turner promise to use only native plants in their landscaping schemes. Turner is currently developing a neighborhood on more than seven hundred wooded acres next to the park.


“That’s really why we’re all here. We’re here because of the beauty of this place, I mean we can pick anywhere in the country to live and we’ve picked this region because of the park and because of the National Forest and because of what’s here.”


Turner is sitting on the back porch of his sales office, a refurbished one room schoolhouse that stands only a few feet from a creek that dribbles through the development. He says he wants his exclusive – and expensive – development to blend in seamlessly with the natural landscape of the park. But he says it also has to make financial sense.


“It’s the right thing to do and it’s excellent business. I mean, we will make a very nice living doing this. I think our sales are higher and we’re getting higher prices because of what we’re doing.”


Ultimately, that’s what will determine the success or failure of such agreements. Meredith Clebsch runs an East Tennessee nursery that specializes in native plants.


“It comes down to money with them. Most of the time, they’re not going to be environmentalists like some of us might be, so they’re going to have to have a reason that it’s going to be beneficial to their pocketbook and you know, their customers have to want it.”


For the folks at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute at Tremont, this idea of ecologists and developers reading from the same page takes a little getting used to. Ken Vorhis is the Executive Director of the Tremont Institute. He says he often has some explaining to do to his environmentally conscious friends.


“Some people say, ‘Oh, you’re joining up with the developers, aren’t you? Going over to the dark side?’ And we’re saying “No, these people want to do it right. There are going to be developments, we need economic development, those kinds of things, but can we do it in a way that makes more sense, that’s sustainable, a way that is environmentally friendly.”


Voorhis admits that the Native Landscape Certification Program isn’t going to resolve all of the friction between the forces of development and natural preservation. But he says it may be an important first step.


For the Environment Report, I’m Matt Shafer Powell.

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Sand Mine Company Restoring Dunes

Anyone who drives a car in North America likely has
an engine block molded from sand. Fairmount Minerals supplies 400-thousand tons a year of industrial sand to manufacturers like Ford Motor. Fairmount prides itself as an environmentally responsible company. Now they’re going beyond what’s required to restore land for wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:

Transcript

Anyone who drives a car in North America likely has an engine block molded from sand. Fairmount Minerals supplies 400,000 tons a year of industrial sand to manufacturers like Ford Motor. Fairmount prides itself as an environmentally responsible company. Now they’re going beyond what’s required to restore land for wildlife. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bob Allen reports:


“Okay, we’ll go all the way to the east side of the property…”


Craig Rautiola comes from a family of Finnish rock miners in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He looks like he could have played linebacker on his high school football team. Now he manages four sand mines for Fairmount Minerals near the Lake Michigan shore.


“You can see a front-end loader on your right, it’s just doing a little cleanup work right now…”


Rautiola’s red Ford pick-up bounces over a rough track past a network of conveyor belts, pipelines, and silos, and 100-foot-high pile of sand. The 350-acre site is called Wexford Sand.


(Sound of heavy machinery)


Previous owners dug into the gently rolling hills to remove the sand, then left the land exposed, but Rautiola says his company has a different approach.


“We have a vision of the future that we can run a responsible operation and make a reasonable profit and provide a good product to society, but we can do so in a way that we can restore land to better than original. And we really believe that. I know that sounds like some marketing statement but we really believe that we can do a better job with this piece of land than versus the way we accepted it in the beginning.”


But to get at the sand operators still have to clear about five acres of woods a year. They used to put back the topsoil, grade the land, plant some grass and call it good. Now Rautiola says they’re getting more creative.


“We’re getting a lot more sophisticated in how we define restoration. Restoration today means getting creative with our topography trying to create water features, trying to get diverse with plant species, diverse with insect life.”


The restoration includes a series of ponds kept aerated to support fish and amphibians year around.
There’s an irrigated nursery where three thousand seedlings are under cultivation to see which ones will thrive.


Rautiola used to count success by watching deer and wild turkey return, but now he sees songbirds and shorebirds as indicators of restoration that’s working. That’s because birds require diverse habitat.


“This mature forest might be great for a scarlet tanager, but an indigo bunting would rather be over in the blackberry bushes. Over to the north we had over a hundred bank swallows just a month ago. We’re trying to attract other threatened species like osprey.”


Rautiola brought in experts to show him how to get more diversity on the site. One of them is Kay Charter. She started Saving Birds Through Habitat. The group runs a small wildlife education center in northern Michigan.


Charter says native species of grasses, plants, and trees produce the most diversity. They attract a variety of insects preferred by birds and other small critters.


“You’re going to have Yellow Warblers in here, you’ll have Common Yellowthroats in here, you’ll have Willow Flycatchers in here, you’ll have all kinds of things in there… Catbirds.”


Charter has documented forty species of songbirds and shorebirds nesting at Wexford Sand. She says that’s pretty amazing for an industrial site, but she insists the effort is necessary to lessen the impact on wildlife. She notes some worldwide populations of songbirds have declined fifty percent in the last forty years.


“I think it’s important for the future of our planet. We all have to be involved in conservation or we’re in greater trouble than we’re in today because mining does take something out of the land. But if you can put it back in a way that is used by many species then you don’t leave the footprint that you might otherwise have left.”


Fairmount Minerals has given Craig Rautiola free reign to restore the site at Wexford Sand, and he’s going all out with the effort because he believes it’s the right thing to do.
Kay Charter of Saving Birds Through Habitat hopes the company’s commitment catches on with the whole industry.


“I think it can give all of us hope that business and corporations and companies in this country aren’t all filled with greedy people at the top.”


On a ridge perched eighty feet above the floor of the sand mine is a stand of one-hundred-year-old sugar maples. Underneath the trees is a million dollars worth of sand in today’s market. And they say it’ll stay there. What they call “Maple Island” will be the centerpiece of their restoration.


For the GLRC, I’m Bob Allen.

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Seniors Find Niche in Environmental Work

  • In the forefront, Evelyn Kolojejchick, Ivan Pettit, and John Lundquist help to improve water quality as part of the Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. (Photo by John Kolojejchick)

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore. Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:

Transcript

Environmental work isn’t just for young professionals anymore.
Retired engineers, former biology teachers, and others with time on their hands are working on

environmental problems as volunteers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jennifer Szweda Jordan

reports on how senior citizens are keeping environmentally active:


(Sound of bird)


75-year-old Ivan Pettit is officially retired from his job as an environmental regulator, but he

hasn’t stopped monitoring streams, promoting recycling, and solving a nagging safety issue in his

state.


(Sound of walking)


On a sunny day in Oil Creek State Park in northeast Pennsylvania, he drops a stone down a corroded

pipe.


“Okay, go.”


(Sound of rattling, splash)


Pettit is estimating the depth of this remnant of an old oil well. It’s one of thousands of

abandoned oil wells in this region. The wells date as far back as 1859. Pettit and a team of senior

volunteers regularly hunt for old wells. The seniors’ work improves water quality and safety for

hikers and hunters, and Pettit says it helps keeps him fit.


“It is work that I have always enjoyed doing as well as getting you outdoors and being able to

observe the things that’s going on around you, that is not a sedentary task whatsoever.”


Pettit belongs to the national Environmental Alliance for Senior Involvement. The group claims

members as young as fifty-five. Pennsylvania has the third highest number of residents older than

sixty among U.S. states. Its active Senior Environmental Corps is touted as a national model, and

has been honored by the United Nations Environmental Program.


But senior groups across the nation are working on environmental problems. In Cape Cod, they

monitor West Nile virus. Seniors clean hazardous waste sites in Indiana. Michigan volunteers

install solar water heaters on poor peoples’ homes.


It’s a fast growing program. In 1993, 26 older adults made up the Senior Environment Corps. A

decade later, over 100 thousand were involved in work across the country.


Ivan Pettit’s work looking for old oil wells is the kind of effort that makes a real difference.

Besides being a hazard for hikers and hunters, some of the old wells seep oil into the ground and

it gets into streams.


In less than two years, the seniors have found almost two hundred wells. Environmental Alliance for

Senior Involvement president Tom Benjamin compares that to two college interns who worked full-time

one summer, and found fewer than fifty.


“Most of these individuals that were volunteers know that community and know the area. They grew up

there, they hunted those woods, they know what a oil well looks like, so they have some instant

recognition.”


(Sound of forest)


Every other week, from spring to fall, the well hunters line up horizontally, twenty feet apart,

and comb a section of forest. Some well holes are several feet across and twenty feet deep. Others

have narrow openings, but drop as deep as a thousand feet. Evelyn Kolojejchick and her husband John

lead Ivan Pettit and other volunteers in seeking out the wells and marking coordinates.


“Ok, longitude is?”


“Seventy-Nine.”


For both Evelyn and John Kolojejchick, well-hunting and other environmental projects are an

extension of teaching high school science for thirty years. Evelyn once aimed to spark interest in

many young minds. Now she feels she’s working on a smaller scale, but hopes to remain effective.


“I belong to Audubon, used to belong to a lot of other environmental organizations and it just

seemed like you needed… you needed to do something that was going to make a difference. I never

had any money to donate to all of these causes and you just you know, you want to do something that

an individual can do.”


Recently, the seniors saw results of well-hunting. They found sensitive species in a stream that

had once been polluted. Several oil wells nearby had been sealed with cement to keep acid mine

drainage out of the water.


“The first year we tested it for aquatic life, there was almost nothing there. And yesterday when

we were there, we had better diversity in that stream than we have in some of our streams that we

test all along that we know don’t have those kinds of problems. So they have made a significant

difference on that stream by plugging those wells. It’s remarkable.”


And it’s the kind of reward that these senior citizen volunteers had hoped for: making a difference

in their part of the world.


For the GLRC, I’m Jennifer Szweda Jordan.

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Companies Push for Forest Certification

  • Magazine publishers and other companies are thinking ahead and getting their paper from forests that have been certified. But what does this really mean? (Photo by Stanley Elliott)

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousands of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Officials in the Midwest want to prove they’re not damaging their state forests. States that sell timber to paper companies are spending thousand of dollars to earn a certificate that says they’re managing the forests in a sustainable way. Paper producers are demanding that state foresters earn certification because officials want to stave off protests from consumers. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


It’s lunchtime and employees on break from Compuware in downtown Detroit are browisng through the magazine racks at Borders. Melody Kranz says she reads three different magazines every month. She says she is an avid recycler and an impassioned environmentalist, but never considered what kind of paper was going into her magazines.


“I don’t know why I haven’t thought about it, I just haven’t. I will now. Because I’m a gardening nut, I love to garden. So yeah, I just never really thought about it.”


But executive David Refkin is betting that Franz and others like her would think twice before picking up Time Magazine if they thought a forest was demolished to make the paper. Refkin is the Director of Sustainable Development for Time Incorporated. He says he’s noticed a strong surge in environmental awareness over the past two or three years.


“We don’t want people looking at a magazine and feeling guilty that a stream has been damaged and the fish are dying in there, or that habitats aren’t being protected because people are practicing bad forestry practices.”


Refkin says his company wants to take action now, before consumer groups decide to boycott its magazines over ecological issues. Time uses more coated paper for its publications than any other company in the U.S. The company is asking that 80 percent of all paper products Time buys be certified by 2006.


To the average consumer, that may not seem like big news. But for paper producers and foresters, it’s earth shattering. Larry Pedersen is with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. Pedersen says getting certified means years of work for state employees. The government has to prove to investigators that its management standards take into account issues such as biodiversity, water quality, soil erosion and wildlife habitat. Pedersen says the state is also required to provide records for each tree from the moments it’s planted or inventoried to the time it’s cut down and then made into planks or paper. But he says it’s worth the effort.


“A number of wood and paper-using companies brought it to our attention that they needed to have certified products because their consumers were demanding those. And with us having four-million acres of state forestlands, we saw the writing on the wall that we needed to jump on this.”


State forests in the region generate a lot of revenue. Wisconsin’s forests earn two and a half million dollars from timber sales and Ohio pulls in almost three million. Michigan’s forests bring in 30 million dollars annually. Earlier this year, Michigan’s Governor Jennifer Granholm announced that all state forests will be certified by January 1st of 2006. And the Great Lakes State is not alone… New York, Wisconsin, and Maine are also pursuing certification and Ohio and other states are considering it.


Andrew Shalit, with the environmental activist group Ecopledge, says he’s glad Time Warner is encouraging paper companies and state governments to get certified. But he says that doesn’t necessarily mean the paper is produced in an environmentally friendly way.


“It’s great to say that they’re going to get all of their paper from certified forests. The question is, who is certifying? And in the case of Time Warner, a lot of the forests are certified by a group called SFI, the Sustainable Forestry Initiative, and their standards are so weak as to be almost meaningless.”


There’s a heated debate over just what certification means. There are currently two groups that certify forests in the U.S. The Sustainable Forestry Initiative, or SFI, was originally founded by the timber industry but is now an independent body. The Forest Stewardship council, or FSC, came out of the environmental movement… or more specifically, out of the effort to protect South American rainforests. Shalit says he doesn’t think SFI certification is as rigorous or as comprehensive as FSC.


“It really is a problem for the consumer because you see something in the store and it has a little green label on it with a picture of a tree and it says sustainably certified, and you think you’re buying something good. It’s hard for the individual consumer to keep up with that.”


Shalit says several states, like Michigan, have solved the dilemma of rival certification programs by getting dual certification. he says although the system has flaws, it will improve if consumers demand more stringent forestry regulations.


Executives at Time Warner hope they can avoid boycotts and pickets by taking action preemptively. The company is leading the push for forest certification in the U.S., and environmentalists say the federal government may have to bow to pressure eventually and get the national forests certified as well.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.

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Forecasting Monarch’s Future in Warmer World

Every winter, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from backyards in North America to nestle in trees in Mexico. The weather conditions in the mountains there are perfect for the insect. But scientists say climate change could spell disaster for the species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has this report:

Transcript

Every winter, millions of monarch butterflies migrate from backyards in
North America to nestle in trees in Mexico. The weather conditions in the
mountains there are perfect for the insect. But scientists say climate change could
spell disaster for the species. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby has
this report:


The fir trees in central Mexico are ideal conditions for the monarch
butterflies of North America to spend the winter. The habitat there is cool
and dry.


“They are looking for a refrigerator.”


That’s Karen Oberhauser, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. She
Says the orange-and-black-speckled butterflies spend up to five months there
Before coming north again.


The new study was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences. It shows that the biggest threat to the monarch’s Mexican habitat
may be an increase in rainfall. She says that would cause the monarchs to freeze
to death.


“It’s worrisome to me that, in a sense, we humans are kind of conducting this huge experiment and
we don’t know the outcome.”


The long-term climate change could force monarchs to flutter off in search
Of new places to winter. She says if they fail, the results could mean the end
of a species.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Todd Melby.

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Weeding an Invasive Purple Plant

  • Although a pretty plant, purple loosestrife crowds out native plants necessary for wildlife habitat. (Photo by Roger F. Thoma)

We’ve all heard about exotic species invading the Great Lakes states. Zebra mussels, gypsy moths, and Asian carp all pose serious threats to the ecosystems they invade, but insects and fish aren’t the only unwelcome visitors. Invasive plants are also creeping in. One U.S. Forest Service biologist is hoping to recruit a small army of volunteers to help him keep the invasive weeds under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

We’ve all heard about exotic species invading the Great Lakes states. Zebra mussels, gypsy
moths, and Asian carp all pose serious threats to the ecosystems they invade. But insects and
fish aren’t the only unwelcome visitors. Plants that don’t belong in Great Lakes forests are
creeping in. One U.S. Forest Service biologist is hoping to recruit a small army of volunteers to
help him keep the invasive weeds under control. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:


Jack Greenlee wades through chest-high grasses, rushes, wild raspberries and roses. He reaches
for a clump of lacy plants with soft purple flowers. He yanks one out of the ground.


“It’s got an extensive root system, big & woody. The plant itself is 6 feet tall, these spikes of
beautiful light purple flowers, lots of them, so very eye-catching.”


It’s purple loosestrife, and it’s invading everywhere – including Johnson Creek, in the Superior
National Forest, north of Duluth Minnesota. The creek flows into a wetland here, near a
highway.


This area is a favorite spot for mallards and other water birds. But Greenlee says the loosestrife
could change that.


“As the invasion of a marsh progresses, there’s more and more loosestrife and fewer and fewer
native marsh plants – consequently fewer resources for waterfowl that might stop.”


That’s because loosestrife isn’t on the menu for a mallard.


Purple loosestrife is one of several plants that arrived in North America in grain shipments a
hundred years ago. They’ve been spreading across the continent since then. Some – like
loosestrife – have also been grown in gardens.


“It came from Europe, and there are different insects that eat the plant there, but when it was
brought here, the insects didn’t come along. There’s no insect predators, viruses, molds – so
consequently, it’s able to thrive.”


Because they have no natural predators, the exotic plants can shoulder aside the native ones.
That can affect everything in the complex web of life.


“Once they’re there, they’ll always be there, can’t ever restore truly to what used to be. always be
component, so aggressive and hard to get rid of. So it’s kind of a one-way street.”


(walking)


Greenlee is taking an inventory of all the non-native plants in the Superior National Forest. He
says they usually show up along roads and other places where the land is already disturbed.
People bring them, without knowing it, on their tires or their boats.


“And here’s another species we’re tracking; it’s common tansy.”


These kinds of exotic plants are causing a lot of problems around the Great Lakes. The remote
parts of the Superior National Forest aren’t too badly infested yet.


So Greenlee is training a cadre of vigilantes to keep an eye out for non-natives, especially in the
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness.


“It’s a large, pretty intact ecosystem without a lot of invasives yet. It’s a lot harder to get into,
there’s not a lot of people driving down the roads, so the more eyes the better.”


So far, about a dozen people have volunteered. Hikers, and other people who enjoy the outdoors,
people concerned about preserving the unique wilderness of the Boundary Waters. They spent a
day learning how to recognize purple loosestrife, tansy, and the other invasive non-natives.
Greenlee tells his recruits to report to him when they see some, or even to pull them up.


“We’ve had patches pulled in before, our seasonal crews revisit sites & don’t see them after
pulling them. when you have small infestations, can be effective.”


Greenlee hopes next year more people will want to join his volunteer team, and help him prevent
a major infestation of non-native invasive plants in the Superior National Forest.


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

Related Links

Wildlife Officers Allowed to Kill Cormorants

A new federal plan will grant state wildlife officers the ability to control local populations of double-crested cormorants. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:

Transcript

A new federal plan will grant state wildlife officers the ability to control local populations of
double-crested cormorants. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Karen Kelly reports:


Double-crested cormorants are big fish eaters. And the birds have wreaked havoc on game fish
populations throughout the Great Lakes.
Up until now, states needed a federal permit to disturb or destroy the cormorant eggs and the
birds themselves. A new federal plan will allow agencies in 24 states to control the cormorants
on their own.
Shawna Hanisch is a biologist with U.S. Fish and Wildlife.


“It allows them to carry out control more quickly. They don’t have to go through the permit
process. And if there’s a problem, they want to prevent it before it even gets started, you know,
before it becomes a serious problem, they can go ahead and take action.”


Hanisch is quick to point out that state and tribal officials are the only people allowed to kill or
disturb the birds.
The service ruled against a cormorant hunting season.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Karen Kelly.

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