Connecting With Nature Profile

Today we’re presenting the first in an
occasional series about peoples’ connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris asked a
range of people if they felt close to nature.
She begins by talking with her uncle, a professional
fly-fisherman:

Transcript

Today we’re presenting the first in an
occasional series about peoples’ connections to
the environment. Producer Kyle Norris asked a
range of people if they felt close to nature.
She begins by talking with her uncle, a professional
fly-fisherman:


My Uncle Mark has run a fishing guide service for twenty-nine years. He
floats down the Potomac River in a 14-foot aluminum raft that he
designed. He goes through Harper’s Ferry, West Virginia, where the
Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers come together near the Blue Ridge
Mountains. My uncle says that for him, the thrill of fishing dates back
to his childhood in Michigan:


“You know, when I first started, it was like I’m going to catch fish
and as a little kid I liked to ride back home from the Detroit River
with a stringer across the handlebars of my bicycle, I was the great
hunter or great fisherman. And we took turns as buddies bringing fish
home on their bikes.”


I don’t get to see my uncle a whole lot. But when I was little, he took
my cousin and me fishing. He made us kiss the first fish that we
caught. Which was kind of silly and fun.


“Oh, you always kiss your first fish. Twenty-five years ago I had some
younger anglers in my boat. And one of them caught a fish and he gave it
a kiss and let it go and I looked at him and then I caught a fish I
think a little bit later and I didn’t kiss it and he goes, ‘What are
you doing?’ and I said, ‘Well, what do you mean?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, you
have to kiss your first fish.’ And I just said, ‘Well, that makes a lot
of sense.’ I think it sets the tone for the day.”


When you hold a fish up to your face and look closely at its glistening
scales and you kiss it, you definitely feel close to it.


“I fish a lot and I hardly ever kill any fish anymore. And in fishing
it’s really the most genteel of the blood sports. You know, you have all
the pleasures of the hunt but you don’t have to make the kill.”


When my uncle talks about nature, he gets this blissed-out look on his
face.


“The water colors can vary from, you know, coffee with cream if it’s
really been a lot of rain and it’s all stirred up to where it’s a
relative clear nice green to it. It can sometimes look like a trout
stream where it’s like gin-clear, you know. It depends on rainfall and the
time of year and stuff. And I love flowing water. ‘Cause it’s always
changing and it’s moving you. Especially when you wade in it. It runs
between your legs and it’s just, you feel like you’re a part of it.”


Some people talk about nature in spiritual terms. That’s something I
never talked about with my uncle but I wondered.


“Oh, it’s probably as spiritual as I get. Yeah, I think sometimes,
sure. You get a lot of respect for nature. And I guess um, spiritual quality…um, yeah. When you really try
to embrace the whole environment and you’re taking in all the flora and
fauna, you’re taking in all the trees and the aquatic vegetation and the
insects that live in that environment and then all the, all the
creatures that live in the environment, plus the fish I might be
pursuing and stuff and then how all that works together. And then how people impact that
too, and I always feel like, I never feel like I’m in control. I always feel like there’s a lot of
variables. I have an idea of what I’m doing but I never feel that I am
like I’m in control. And so I guess there’s a spiritual quality to
that. Got a lot of respect for nature. Got a lot of respect for water.
Flowing water especially.”


The way my uncle talks about the water and the words he uses really
paints a vivid picture in my head. I can hear the love in his voice.
When he talks like that, I feel closer to the places and the fish he’s
talking about. And hearing how he really feels makes me feel closer to
him.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Ten Threats: Bottled Water Diversion Debate

  • Some bottling companies, such as Besco, sell water, but keep it in the Great Lakes basin. Some others bottle it and ship it out of the region in great quantities. (Photo by Lester Graham)

Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture, industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin, but few are more controversial than bottled water:

Transcript

Experts say one of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is water
withdrawal. Water is taken from the Great Lakes for agriculture,
industry, and public drinking supplies. Lester Graham reports there are
many ways that water is used and shipped out of the Great Lakes basin,
but few are more controversial than bottled water:


(Sound of bottling plant)


I’m watching big clear-blue water bottles, the kind you see on water coolers, are
bouncing along on a conveyer to be washed and then filled with water.
Chuck Swartzle is the President of Besco Water Treatment…


“Uh, we treat it – it’s well water – we treat it, purify it with reverse
osmosis, sanitize it, filter it and bottle it.”


Besco also bottles water in smaller containers, the kind you might buy at
the convenience store.


All of Besco’s customers are within the Great Lakes basin, so the water
will eventually make its way back to the lakes, but some bottlers
distribute water far outside the basin.


One of Pepsico’s Aquafina bottled water plants gets its water from the
Detroit River, which connects the upper Great Lakes to the lower lakes.
Aquafina’s bottled water is distributed inside and outside the basin. That
means Great Lakes water is being trucked away. It’s a net loss of water to the
basin.


That’s not anything new. Water from the Great Lakes basin in the form
of beer from Milwaukee or milk from Minnesota or any of the other
products you can think of that are mostly water are shipped far and wide
and have been for a long time, but some environmentalists say trucking bottled water
away is different. They argue it’s a lot like a recent attempt to take tanker ships
of Lake Superior water to Asia. It’s not like a value-added product that’s made
from water, it’s just water.


Bill Lobenherz is a lobbyist for the Michigan Soft Drink Association.
He says bottled water is a value-added product, just like the many others.


“Indeed, there’s a lot more water in lumber, for example, Christmas
trees, and sometimes a lot less value added to it too. You don’t have to
do that much to cut it and ship it. Cherries, baby food and other non-
consumable products like paint. What about the water we have to put in
the automobile radiators? I really don’t know that there is a distinction
there. It seems to be more of a misplaced perception than it is any kind
of environmental reality.”


“I guess I’m having a hard time getting my head around the difference
shipping water out in a truck-load of bottles and shipping it out by
tanker. What’s the real difference there?”


“I think the difference is that there’s the fear that if it’s by tanker in those
quantities, that it could be abused. If it’s in bottles, it’s really quite
controllable, because there’s so much more value added to put it in small
bottles.”


Not everyone is buying that argument.


Dave Dempsey is the Great Lakes advisor for the environmental group Clean Water Action.
He says the most recent debates about water withdrawals started when that shipping company
planned to take about 156-million gallons a year to Asia. Dempsey says a single new bottled
water plant trucks away even more than that.


“The Nestle’ project, a single project in Michigan that has been sited and
is operating takes 168-million gallons per year. So, the volumes can be
greater in bottles than in tankers.”


But that’s still not that much water compared to other uses.


According to figures in a report by the Great Lakes Commission, the
cities and industries around the Great Lakes withdraw more than 43
billion gallons a day. Much of it is used and returned to the lakes, but
nearly two billion gallons a day is lost. It’s not returned to the lakes
because it evaporates or it’s incorporated into products. Two billion
gallons a day makes the Nestle’ bottled water plant’s 168-million gallons
a year seem minor.


But Dave Dempsey argues there’s a more sinister concern. He believes
if water is treated like any other commodity, large corporations that can
profit from it will begin to horde it, and control it.


“You will hear bottled water companies say that they’re just another user
like a farmer or a manufacturer or even a city water supply, but they’re
not because they’re asserting private ownership of a public resource and
if we essentially allow that by not putting controls on the water-for-sale
industry now, I’m afraid the Great Lakes may become the world’s largest
privately owned reservoir.”


A recent agreement between the states and provinces around the Great
Lakes allows bottled water to be shipped out in bottles as large as five-
gallons, but some environmentalists say that’s a slippery slope. They say
corporations will soon be asking why just five gallons? Why not 55-
gallon barrels? And then, tankers.


The bottling industry says the environmentalists are making a big deal
out of nothing, and would do better spending their time teaching
everyone to conserve water better instead of complaining about someone
in another state quenching their thirst with a bottle of water from the
Great Lakes.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Saving an Ancient Fish

  • A juvenile lake sturgeon. (Photo courtesy of USFS, Rob Elliott)

Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:

Transcript

We’ve been bringing you reports from the Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s series ‘Ten Threats to the Great Lakes.’ Lester Graham is
our guide through the series. He says our next report is about an ancient
fish that’s been disappearing.


Biologists have been concerned about a number of native species that
have been disappearing. One of them is the largest fish in the Great
Lakes. Over-fishing and gravel mining in riverbeds have wiped out 99-
percent of the population of lake sturgeon. Sturgeon used to be common
throughout the Great Lakes, but they’re a rare sight these days. Celeste
Headlee reports… biologists are trying to save some of the sturgeon’s
spawning grounds:


(Sound of the lake)


Sturgeon are the largest fish in the Great Lakes. The grayish brown
creatures can grow up to seven feet long, and weigh more than 200
pounds. Sturgeon have been on Earth for 100 million years, and they’ve
remained essentially unchanged in all that time. Instead of scales, the
fish have an almost leathery skin with five rows of bony plates running
along their torpedo-shaped bodies.


Fish biologist Bruce Manny says sturgeon were once abundant in the
Great Lakes. Back in 1880, in one month’s time, fishermen pulled four
thousand of them from the Detroit River.


“They tore holes in their nets when they were fishing for other fish that
they cared about. So, when they found a sturgeon in their nets, they
would kill them, bring them to the shore, pile them up on shore, dry them
out and use them for fuel in the steamships. Burn them up.”


Most of the time, the creatures were caught and killed while fisherman
angled for more valuable fish. Scientists think over fishing has caused
sturgeon populations in all of the Great Lakes to dwindle to less than one
percent of their former number.


The state of Michigan closed the Detroit River to sturgeon-fishing years
ago. Bruce Manny says he decided to check on the sturgeon and see if
the fish population had started to recover.


Manny assembled a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey.
He says he was surprised when his team caught only 86 fish over the
course of four years. Manny says he realized the sturgeon were in
serious trouble.


USGS scientists followed the tagged fish for two years, and their
patience was eventually rewarded. Manny found the first known
spawning site ever documented in Detroit River in modern times.


“We were excited all right. Eureka moment. I mean this is like a very,
very great coincidence that we were able to find these spawning ready
males, and they were able to find a female. When there are only 86 fish
caught in four years out here, there aren’t that many around. So, to find
someone to spawn with is a real challenge, I would say.”


The area where the sturgeon mated lies close to a sewer discharge pipe.
There are limp, brown grasses bordering grey, mucky water. Manny sent
divers down and discovered the fish had actually produced fertilized
eggs. Manny says this was a major step forward for his project.


Sturgeon are pretty picky about their nesting sites. They need a fast
moving current and several layers of rock where eggs rest safely. The
problem is a lot of the gravel has been mined out of the Detroit River for
use in construction.


Another problem is the sturgeons’ long life. Fish biologist Ron Bruch is
in Wisconsin. He oversees sturgeon populations in Wisconsin’s
Winnebago river system. He says female sturgeons live more than 100
years and they don’t spawn until they are at least 20 years old.


“Their life history works well for a long-lived species, but it doesn’t
work well for a species that’s exploited heavily. So, sturgeon can only
tolerate very low exploitation rates, and when that exploitation is high
the populations collapse.”


Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to create a sturgeon management
program more than 100 years ago, and the fish are more abundant there.


Biologists in Michigan monitored the nesting sites in the Detroit River
this spring. Eight species of fish used the beds, including popular sport
fish like yellow perch and walleye. Only two sturgeon came by the sites,
but they weren’t ready to spawn.


Ron Bruch says biologists will have to create a lot more spawning sites
like the ones in the Detroit River before the sturgeon population is firmly
reestablished in the Great Lakes.


“In and of itself, it’s not going to restore all of Lake Erie or all the Great
Lakes, but it’s a shining example of what can be done in many areas
around the Great Lakes to help produce Lake Sturgeon spawning habitat
and rehabilitate the Lake Sturgeon population.”


USGS biologists will go back to the nesting sites next spring. They say it may
take years for sturgeon to notice the small beds in the 32-mile river.


One important development, though, is a change of policy from the
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources. Canadians used to allow
fisherman to take one sturgeon a day out of the river. Now, it’s illegal to
possess one of the endangered fish on both sides of the channel.


For the GLRC, I’m Celeste Headlee.

Related Links

Epa Completes Toxic Sediment Cleanup

The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed
toxic sediment cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great
Lakes. There are 31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.”
Officials say this site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency says it has completed toxic sediment
cleanup at one of the most polluted sites along the Great Lakes. There are
31 such sites in the U.S. known as “Areas of Concern.” Officials say this
site is one step closer to being cleaned up. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Michael Leland reports:


The Black Lagoon along the Detroit River in Trenton, Michigan, got its name
because years of industrial contamination had discolored the water. Months of
dredging has changed that.


Dennis Schornack is the U.S. chairman of the International Joint Commission.
It monitors the water quality treaty between the U.S. and Canada.


“Over 115-thousand cubic yards of muck, heavily contaminated with
PCB’s, oil, grease, mercury and other toxic metals, have been removed from
the Detroit River, and disposed of and secured in a facility that will be operated
by the Detroit district of the United States Army Corps of Engineers.”


Three years ago, the Great Lakes Legacy Act authorized 270-million dollars
over five years to clean up the pollution hot-spots. It’s never been
fully funded, and is currently paying for cleanup work at only two other
sites along the Lakes.


For the GLRC, I’m Michael Leland.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Predicting New Invaders

  • Some say it's only a matter of time before the Asian Carp enters the Great Lakes. (Photo courtesy of the USFWS)

More than 160 kinds of foreign creatures are in the Great Lakes right now, and every few months, a new one finds its way into the Lakes. Those invasive species are considered the number one problem by the experts we surveyed. The outsiders crowd out native species and disrupt the natural food chain, and it’s likely more will be coming. Zach Peterson reports scientists are putting a lot of time and effort into figuring out which new foreign creatures might next invade the Great Lakes:

Transcript

There are new problems for the Great Lakes on the horizon. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is our guide in a series that explains that new invasive species are one of the Ten
Threats to the Great Lakes:


More than 160 kinds of foreign creatures are in the Great Lakes right now, and every few months, a new one finds its way into the Lakes. Those invasive species are considered the number one problem by the experts we surveyed. The outsiders crowd out native species and disrupt the natural food chain, and it’s likely more will be coming. Zach Peterson reports scientists are putting a lot of time and effort into figuring out which new foreign creatures might next invade the Great Lakes:


(Sound of boat motor)


Jim Barta is a charter boat captain just above Lake Erie on the Detroit River. He says over the last decade, zebra mussels and other foreign species have altered the habitat of the walleye he fishes for.


Water that once had a brownish hue is now clear. That’s because Zebra mussels have eaten the algae and plankton that used to cloud the water, and that means Barta’s boat is no longer invisible to the fish he aims to hook.


“You could catch the fish a little closer to the boat because they weren’t as spooked by the boat. They weren’t as afraid of what was taking place.”


So Barta had to rethink his tactics. He now casts his lines out further, and he’s changed lures to continue catching walleye.


But there are other problems the zebra mussel is causing. Eating all the plankton means it’s stealing food at the bottom of the food chain. And, that affects how many fish survive and how much the surviving fish are able to grow.


Anthony Ricciardi is trying to help Barta, and other people who rely on a stable Great Lakes ecosystem. He’s an “invasion biologist” at McGill University in Montreal.


Ricciardi looks for evidence that can predict the next non-native species that might make it’s way into the Great Lakes. He says species that have spread throughout waterways in Europe and Asia are prime candidates to become Great Lakes invaders.


“If the organism has shown itself to be invasive elsewhere, it has the ability to adapt to new habitats, to rapidly increase in small numbers, to dominate ecosystems, or to change them in certain ways that change the rules of exsistence for everything else, and thus can cause a disruption.”


Ricciardi says most aquatic invasive species are transported to North America in the ballast tanks of ocean freighters. Freighters use ballast water to help balance their loads. Some of the foreign species hitchhike in the ballast water or in the sediment in the bottom of the ballasts.


Ships coming from overseas release those foreign species unintentionally when they pump out ballast water in Great Lakes ports. Ricciardi says one of the potential invaders that might pose the next big threat to the Great Lakes is the “killer shrimp.” Like the Zebra Mussel, it’s a native of the Black Sea.


“And it’s earned the name killer shrimp because it attacks invertebrates, all kinds of invertebrates, including some that are bigger than it is. And it takes bites out of them and kills them, but doesn’t necessarily eat them. So, it’s not immediately satiated. It actually feeds in a buffet style: it’ll sample invertebrates, and so it can leave a lot of carcasses around it.”


Ballasts on cargo ships aren’t the only way foreign species can get into the Lakes. Right now, scientists are watching as a giant Asian Carp makes its way toward Lake Michigan. It’s a voracious eater and it grows to a hundred pounds or more.


This non-native fish was introduced into the Mississippi River, when flooding allowed the carp to escape from fish farms in the South. A manmade canal near Chicago connects the Mississippi River system to the Great Lakes.


If it gets past an electric barrier in the canal, it could invade. Many scientists believe it’s just a matter of time. Another invasive, the sea lamprey, also got into the Great Lakes through a manmade canal.


But, researchers don’t usually know when or where an invader will show up. David Reid is a researcher for the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor. He says they can’t predict the effect an invader will have when it arrives in its new ecosystem.


“That’s the problem. We don’t know when the next zebra mussel’s going to come in. We don’t know when the next sea lamprey type of organism is going to come in. Generally, if you look at the invasion history of the Great Lakes, you’re seeing about one new organism being reported probably about once every eight months.”


Knowing what the next invader might be could help biologists, fisheries experts, and fishermen know what to do to limit its spread. Invasional biologists hope that their work will help develop the most effective measures to limit harm to the Great Lakes.


For the GLRC, I’m Zach Peterson.

Related Links

Study: Sturgeon Stocks Down Worldwide

A new survey by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science finds sturgeon populations are severely depleted throughout the world, including in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

A new survey by the Pew Institute for Ocean Science finds sturgeon populations are severely depleted throughout the world, including in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


Sturgeon are called “living fossils” because their bodies are virtually unchanged since the time of the dinosaurs. The only species native to this region is the lake sturgeon. Nancy Auer is a fish biologist with Michigan Technological University.


She says sturgeon populations in the Great Lakes dropped severely in the 1850’s because of overfishing and because dams were built that blocked migration routes. She says now there are only a couple of places where sturgeon are somewhat abundant.


“One is the St. Clair River area and Detroit River are and one is up in Lake Superior in the Portage Lake area and these stocks are some of the last ones that have free capacity to range throughout the Great Lakes system.”


Hour says the state of Michigan has closed all sturgeon fisheries in an effort to boost populations. Other Great Lakes states are developing lake sturgeon management plans.


For the GLRC, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links

A Second ‘Hot Spot’ Considered for Cleanup

It looks as though a second pollution hot spot in the Great Lakes
will receive money for cleanup. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Mike Simonson reports on the progress of the Great Lakes Legacy Act:

Transcript

It looks as though a second pollution hot spot in the Great Lakes will receive money
for cleanup.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports on the progress of the
Great Lakes
Legacy Act:


The Great Lakes Legacy Act was passed in 2002. It earmarked 54 million dollars a
year for five
years to clean up pollution hot spots. In the first several years, not all the
money promised was
delivered. So clean up on the 31 polluted areas has been slow.


Right now, the Black Lagoon on the Detroit River is the only pollution hot spot
being cleaned
up. Officials from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency say they’re hoping to
start on a
second project in Lake Superior next year.


Wisconsin will need to pony up a third of the 5.2 million dollar cost to dredge the
sediments in
Superior Harbor. Wisconsin Project Supervisor John Robinson is hopeful. He says
two decades
after identifying the pollution, money may finally be available.


“The Legacy Act is clearly a catalyst that will allow us to go ahead. Without it,
the project
would be delayed into a period of time that we’re uncertain of.”


Some of the money will come from companies partly responsible for the pollution.
Robinson
hopes to begin cleanup in February.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mike Simonson.

Related Links

Work to Begin at First Great Lakes Legacy Act Site

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it’s beginning the first clean-up project under the Great Lakes Legacy Act. The measure allots 270 million dollars in federal funding over five years to target contaminated sediment in the region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:

Transcript

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has announced that it is beginning the first
clean up project under the Great Lakes Legacy Act. The measure alots 270 million dollars
in federal funding over five years to garget contaminated sediment in the region. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jerome Vaughn has details:


The EPA and the state of Michigan will spend 6.5 million dollars to clean up the Black
Lagoon on the Detroit River. The area was given its name when aerial pictures showed oil
and grease swirling in the lagoon. The project is the first that will take place under the
new Great Lakes Legacy Act. EPA administrator Mike Leavitt says plans to build a new housing
development nearby played a role in making the Black Lagoon project a priority.


“The most important thing is the where we can make the biggest difference and the fastest.
Because there is a good plan in place that will not just improve the environment, but also
boost the economy, that’s so much the better.”


The EPA says about 90 thousand cubic yards of sediment contaminated with oil, mercury, and
PCBs will be dredged from the Black Lagoon. The agency says the project should begin
in mid-October and be completed by mid-January.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jerome Vaughn in Detroit.

Related Links

Essay: Tuning in to Urban Frogs

  • Ed Herrmann tries to hear some frogs through the traffic near the Rouge River. (Photo by Ed Herrmann)

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for amphibians, and has this essay:

Transcript

Each Spring, thousands of people spend their evenings listening to frogs and toads. It’s
not just for fun. They’re helping assess the water quality of rivers and wetlands around
the country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Ed Herrmann joined the search for
amphibians, and has this essay:


I’ve always enjoyed being outside and listening to nature. Recording nature sounds is a
hobby of mine. So when I saw an ad asking for people to listen for frogs and toads, I
thought, “All right. Beats watching campaign commercials.”


I called up Friends of the Rouge…(that’s a local group dedicated to helping out the Rouge
River watershed) and a few days later I got a package in the mail. It was full of maps and
information, and had a CD with the songs of the local frogs and toads. I studied my area,
and found some good looking wet spots where I thought they might live.


I memorized the sound of the Wood Frog (sound), Chorus Frog (sound), Spring Peeper
(sound), and American Toad. Then, on the first night when the temperature and wind
conditions were just right, I headed out to hear some frogs.


(sound of traffic roaring by)


I don’t know what I was thinking. This is suburban Detroit, not exactly a wildlife refuge.
In fact, the only animal I see is a rabbit dodging traffic. And the only thing I hear is…
(more traffic sound)


The Rouge River flows into the Detroit River and then Lake Erie. It used to be one of the
dirtiest rivers around, mainly from all the industry down by the mouth. That problem is
more or less under control but now there’s a larger one.


If you look at a map from the 1970s, you see miles of wetlands, small farms and
orchards. Today you see nonstop subdivisions and shopping malls. It might seem like
progress to you, but for the river, the constant barrage of fertilizers, pesticides, soap and
other chemicals that everybody uses to keep their suburbs looking pretty is a lot worse
than an occasional dose of battery acid from a factory. Also having acres of concrete
instead of wetlands means there’s nothing to soak up and filter the water, which means
after a big rain, it floods. It’s obvious this river needs some help.


(sound of river)


In 1998, volunteers began surveying the frogs and toads in the Rouge watershed. These
creatures were chosen because they sing, so they’re easy to track. The reason they’re
good indicators is that, like other amphibians, they absorb water through their skin. That
means they get poisoned by everything that we in the civilized world pour into the water.
Plus, their eggs hatch in water and their larvae (the tadpoles) live in water. It’s pretty
simple: if the water is good, there’s plenty of frogs and toads. If not, they disappear.


So, night after night, I’m out there listening. Listening in the dark. Listening hard.


Not a peep.


I’m beginning to think that the price of all these well-manicured lawns is a silent spring.
Then finally one night, (sound of American toads) the good old American toad! All
right, it is the most common species around, but at least it’s a start.


(sound of chorus frogs and green frogs)


A few weeks later, I join a group at a “mitigated” wetland. That means that when a
developer decided that a real wetland would be the perfect place to build condos and a
golf course, the government said, “Sure, go ahead. Drain it. Just be sure to dig a hole
over here and fill it with water.” Now, five years later, some frogs have moved in and
seem to be fine.


But they still have a little problem…


(jet roars overhead, followed by a few green frogs)


Ah, location, location. This new wetland is right
next to the airport.


Now, the reason these frogs sing is to attract a mate. So if nobody hears them, there are
not going to be any tadpoles to make next year’s frogs. In order to survive, they need not
only to sing, but to be heard.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Ed Herrmann.


(frogs fade out)

Related Links

Biologists Help Prehistoric Fish Make a Comeback

  • Sturgeon like this adult used to be common in the Great Lakes. Today biologists are trying to restore populations of the ancient fish. (Photo courtesy of the USFWS)

Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are trying to bring Lake Sturgeon back to the Detroit River. The giant fish once spawned in the riverbed every spring before moving on to Lake Erie… now, the sturgeon are rapidly disappearing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:

Transcript

Biologists with the U.S. Geological Survey are trying to bring Lake Sturgeon
back to the Detroit River. The giant fish once spawned in the riverbed every spring before
moving on to Lake Erie. Now, the sturgeon are rapidly disappearing. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports:


Sturgeon are the largest fish in the Great Lakes. The grayish brown creatures can grow up to
seven feet long, and weigh more than 200 pounds. Sturgeon have been on Earth for 100 million
years – 40 million years before the dinosaurs – and they have remained essentially
unchanged in all that time. Instead of scales, the fish have an almost leathery skin and five rows
of bony plates running along their torpedo-shaped bodies.


Fish biologist Bruce Manny says sturgeon were once abundant in the Great Lakes. Back in 1880,
in one month’s time, fishermen pulled four thousand of them from the Detroit River.


“They tore holes in their nets when they were fishing for other fish that they cared about. So
when they found a sturgeon in their nets, they would kill them, bring them to the shore, pile them
up on shore, dry them out and use them for fuel in the steamships. Burn them up.”


People didn’t eat a lot of sturgeon, but the creatures were caught and killed while fisherman
angled for more valuable fish. Scientists estimate that over-fishing has caused sturgeon
populations in all of the Great Lakes to dwindle to less than one percent of their
former number. The state of Michigan closed the Detroit River to all sturgeon fishing years ago.
Bruce Manny says he decided to check on the sturgeon and see if the fish population had started
to recover.


Manny assembled a team of biologists from the U.S. Geological Survey. They started trapping
and then tracking sturgeon with electronic transmitters. Manny says he was surprised when his
team caught only 86 fish over course of four years. Manny says he realized the sturgeon
were in serious trouble and he obtained grants to investigate further. USGS scientists followed
the tagged fish for two years, and their patience was eventually rewarded. Manny found the first
known spawning site ever documented in Detroit River in modern times.


“We were excited all right. Eureka moment. I mean, this is like a very, very great coincidence
that we were able to find these spawning ready males, and they were able to find a female. When
there are only 86 fish caught in four years out here, there aren’t that many around. So to find
somebody to spawn with, so to speak, is a real challenge, I would say.”


The area where the sturgeon mated lies close to a sewer discharge pipe. There are limp, brown
grasses bordering grey, mucky water. Manny sent divers down and discovered the fish had
actually produced fertilized eggs. Manny says this was a major step forward for his project.


Sturgeon are pretty picky about their nesting sites. They need a fast moving current and several
layers of rock where the eggs rest safely. The problem is a lot of the gravel has been mined out of
the Detroit River for use in construction.


Another problem is the sturgeons’ longevity. Fish biologist Ron Bruch is in Wisconsin. He
oversees sturgeon populations in Wisconsin’s Winnebago River system. He says female
sturgeons live more than 100 years and they don’t spawn until they are at least 20 years old.


“Their life history works well for a long-lived species, but it doesn’t work well for a species that’s
exploited heavily. So, sturgeon can only tolerate very low exploitation rates, and when the
exploitation is high the populations collapse.”


Wisconsin was the first state in the U.S. to create a sturgeon management program, more than
100 years ago, and the fish are abundant there.


Bruch says that’s why many other states have come to him for advice on how to strengthen their
sturgeon populations. He helped build the first man-made Lake Sturgeon spawning site and he
thinks a program started in Michigan has a good chance to succeed.


Bruce Manny plans to build three sites, using limestone, coal cinders and gravel. He’ll monitor
them closely to determine which kind of rock the fish prefer. Manny says he doesn’t mind
spending so much time with sturgeon. He says he admires the fish, and imagines that
each of them has a distinct personality.


“I wish they could talk to me and they do in some ways, because some of them have scars and
evidence of propeller hits which show that they’ve managed to take that sort of punishment and
survive it spite of it all. You know, they’re long-lived, they’re survivors, they’re
tough, and they’re successful.”


Ron Bruch it’ll be 100 years before fisherman will reel in these huge fish. He says many
generations of biologists will have come and gone before the sturgeon population is firmly
reestablished in the Great Lakes. And biologists, he says, will have to create a lot more
spawning sites like the ones in the Detroit River.


“In and of itself, it’s not going to restore all of Lake Erie or all the Great Lakes, but it’s a shining
example of what can be done in many areas around the Great Lakes to help produce Lake
Sturgeon spawning habitat and rehabilitate the Lake Sturgeon population.”


It’ll cost about half a million dollars to build the three fish nesting sites. Officials say they’ll be
ready in time for the sturgeon’s spawning season next May. If the project is successful in the
Detroit River, biologists hope to expand the program into other areas of the Great Lakes where
sturgeon were once abundant.


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

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