Zoos Help Foreign Feathered Friends

  • Zoos in the Great Lakes region are helping save two species of hornbills by collecting feathers from their captive birds for ceremonial headdresses in Malaysia. photo by - D. DeMello / Wildlife Conservation Society

Zoos in North America are collecting feathers to help save a threatened bird in Malaysia. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham explains:

Transcript

A watchdog group is out with its annual list of endangered rivers, and this year it’s placing most of the blame for damage to the rivers on one government agency. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

This year the American Rivers’ list of endangered rivers included a section devoted to criticizing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Melissa Samet is with American Rivers. She says this time they looked back at the past several years of the organization’s endangered rivers list.

“We revealed a pretty startling statistic, that 60-percent of the rivers that we have listed over the past 16 years as in danger were on the list because of the Corps of Engineers.”

The American Rivers report accuses the Corps of Engineers of destroying rivers and wasting taxpayers’ money by citing reports of whistle-blowers and independent analyses that charge the Corps exaggerates the cost-benefits of the projects it constructs on the rivers.

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

ZOOS SET STAGE FOR WILDNESS (Part 1)

  • Today's zoo exhibits attempt to immerse visitors in the scene while also enriching the animals' lives. Some zoos are criticized for emphasizing appearances instead of the animals' well-being.

Zoos across the nation are putting their animals in more natural settings instead of cages. For some zoos, it’s done to make the animals’ lives a little more comfortable. But for others, it’s simply done to draw more people rather than to give the animals a better place to live. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham has the details in the first of a two-part series: