Factory Farms – Air Pollution

  • This dairy is known as a "Confined Animal Feeding Operation" or CAFO. It will soon hold 1,500 dairy cows. The animals are kept indoors and are milked three times a day. (Photo by Mark Brush)

The way milk is produced has changed. A lot of
dairy farms are much bigger and more efficient. They’re
often called factory farms. Mark Brush reports, neighbors
of these farms say they’re paying a high price for the cheap
dairy products on your store shelves:

Transcript

The way milk is produced has changed. A lot of
dairy farms are much bigger and more efficient. They’re
often called factory farms. Mark Brush reports, neighbors
of these farms say they’re paying a high price for the cheap
dairy products on your store shelves:



More than 50 cows trudge single file into this big, new building. There’s a bright
white tile floor and lots of light. The animals are herded into individual metal stalls. The
gates close over their heads, kind of like how the bar comes over you’re head when
you get on a rollercoaster. At the other end of the cow, workers insert its udders into
suction cups – and the milking starts:


“They’re milked three times a day – then they go back to the free-stall barn, so we’re
currently milking 1,000 cows.”


That’s Mark van de Heijning. He runs this dairy along with his family. They moved
here from Belgium. And they started milking their cows last year. They just built
another facility – and soon they’ll have 1,500 cows. van de
Heijning says back home in Belgium they had a small dairy farm, but wanted to
expand:


“But in Belgium the land is expensive and there was a quota system so its expensive
to expand there, and there are already a lot of people so that’s why we moved over here.”


It’s a fairly common story. Farmers from Belgium and the Netherlands move here to
build huge livestock operations – operations that would be too costly to run in
Europe.


van de Heijning says they produce more than 8,000
gallons of milk per day. But that’s not all they produce. The cows also make more
that 10,000 gallons of manure a day. And it’s the manure that concerns people most
living around this dairy in northwest Ohio.



The manure is held in huge lagoons out back and eventually it’s spread onto
nearby farm fields. It smells. On some days the smell is intense. Some of the
people who live around these fields say the new mega-dairy has made life pretty
unpleasant:


“I just live a quarter of a mile east of them and wind the wind blows it’s bad.”


“Regular cow manure, when they used to clean the barn – it stunk. But it was a
different… this is sometimes a really vile… like bleach or medicine in it.”


“It just sometimes takes your breath away. One day I tried to work in the garden and
within probably 10 or 15 minutes I was so nauseated I thought I was going to
throw up.”


Dub Heilman, Judy Emmitt, and Jane Phillips have lived in this rural community all of
their lives. None of them had experienced the sharp smells until the dairy began
operating last year. With the operation expanding, Judy Emmitt says she fears the
problems will only get worse:

“I mean we’re all getting older and we’ve already had health issues – how’s
this going to affect us? It’s scary – I mean sometimes it’s a scary feeling – what’s this
going to do to us?”



Exactly what the foul air does to people’s health is debated. The van de Heijnings
think it’s much ado about nothing. But health experts are concerned about a couple
of chemicals generated by the stored manure: hydrogen sulfide and ammonia. Two
studies have found that people living near these mega farms report more
headaches, respiratory problems, nausea, burning eyes, and depression.


The US Environmental Protection Agency regulates hydrogen sulfide and requires reports for ammonia releases from industries,but not for farms. The EPA says it’s looking into the problem with a new, two year
study. But the WAY the study was set up has angered a lot of people. The agency struck a deal with more than 2,000 livestock producers. These
producers represent around 14,000 individual farms. All of them will get
immunity from prosecution for breaking air pollution laws. Each of the producers
paid a small fine, and in exchange, the EPA will study air emissions on 24
of the farms.


The study just started. And it will be three and half years before the EPA makes any
decisions. Jon Scholl is with the EPA. He says right now, if neighbors have any
problems, unless they can prove imminent danger, they shouldn’t look to the EPA
for help. They should call their state agency:


“In terms of anything concerns that they would want to seek redress for at this
current time, EPA certainly encourages residents impacted by those operations to work with their respective state agencies.”


The neighbors we talked to say they’ve tried contacting the state agency responsible
for overseeing these mega-farms. But they were told there’s nothing the agency
could do.


Jane Phillips says the EPA study is just a delay tactic:


“The science is already there. There’s no reason for this study. And I think, you
know, no matter what the science says somebody is gonna dispute it and there’s going to have to be another study, and it’s just
gonna go on and on and on.”


“Farm Bureau will dispute it and they’ll just keep the whole mess goin’ and I don’t
think it’ll end.”



The van de Heijning’s dairy operation is one of the livestock farms that was granted
immunity by the EPA. Mark van de Heinjing says he’s doing what he can to cut
down on the odors and air pollution. Instead of spraying the fields with manure,
they’ve been injecting it into the soil. And next year, he says, they’ll build a new
manure treatment lagoon. But with five hundred more cows scheduled to arrive at
the dairy soon, his neighbors don’t expect the air around their homes to improve in
the coming years. And they don’t hold out much hope that the government will help
either.


For the Environment, I’m Mark Brush.

Related Links

New Concerns Over Wastewater Sludge

  • Triclosan is an active ingredient in many products claiming antibacterial properties. (Photo by Kinna Ohman)

After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:

Transcript

After sewage is cleaned at a wastewater treatment plant, sludge is left behind. This
sludge is often used on farms as fertilizer. But the wastewater treatment doesn’t get
rid of all the drugs and chemicals we flush down the drain. Kinna Ohman reports
researchers are finding some of these chemicals are affecting wildlife and could be
getting into our food:


Take a tour of any wastewater treatment plant and you’ll soon understand the main
objective: to separate the liquids from the solids. Until the mid 90s, most of these solids,
or sludge, used to go into landfills or were dumped in the ocean. But in 1994 the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency started a program to promote the use of sludge on farm
fields as fertilizer. The EPA thought this was the perfect solution… turning waste into a
useful product.


But scientists have found something which could turn the EPA program on its head.
Rolf Halden is an assistant professor at the Johns Hopkins Center for Water
and Health. He says sludge contains most of the chemicals we use:


“If you look at municipal sludge, it really is a matrix that reflects the chemical footprint
of our society.”


Halden’s focused on one chemical he’s found in sludge called Triclosan – and
there’s a lot of it out there. It’s in antibacterial soaps, and can even be in our toothpastes,
deodorants, and shampoos. Until recently, most if it was thought to break down. Now,
Halden says they found something different:


“In the work that we have done at Johns Hopkins, we have demonstrated for example that
Triclosan when it enters a wastewater treatment plant is not effectively being degraded
and half of the mass is left over.”


Halden and his colleagues found this leftover mass in sludge. And since half the sludge
produced each year in the US goes to fertilize farm fields, Halden says we might want to
think about our food supply:


“We really create a pipeline of contaminants that are first discharged into the water and
then accumulated in sludge and then applied in agriculture which opens a pathway for the
contamination of the food supply and the further distribution of these chemicals in the
environment.”


At this point, scientists are still studying levels of this chemical. They haven’t even
begun to understand Triclosan’s effects in agriculture. But there’s something they do
know about it.


Researchers found Triclosan can mimic a thyroid hormone in the North American
bullfrog and disrupt its growth. When its tadpoles were exposed to low levels of
this chemical for a short amount of time, their growth into a juvenile frog was impaired.


But this doesn’t sound like that big of a deal… the frog doesn’t die, it just doesn’t grow
properly, right? Keep in mind that this study tracked exposure to Triclosan over four
hours. Halden says by spreading wastewater sludge in agriculture, we could be exposing
wildlife to chemicals like Triclosan for their entire lives.


“When these chemicals are transported into the environment with the agricultural
fertilizer, which is the municipal sludge, then they sit there for in the soil, not only for
seconds but for days and weeks and for months and to even years and in some situations
in sediments, in aquatic sediments, they can sit there for decades and this implies that
organisms are, for their lifespan, exposed to very high levels of these contaminants.
What the outcome of that is really not fully understood right now and requires more research.”


The U.S. Geological Survey has also been looking for chemicals in sludge – or biosolids –
and they’ve found steroids, antihistamines, and antidepressants. Ed Furlong, a research chemist
with the USGS in Denver, Colorado, says they are now studying how these chemicals react in agricultural
fields:


“We’ve identified that many of the compounds are consistently present in biosolids from
across the country. We’re now trying to understand what happens after those biosolids
are applied to the soil.”


The USGS is not the only agency looking at this issue. The Environmental Protection Agency has been conducting its own survey of chemicals like Triclosan in sludge. They say the results of the survey won’t be released until next
summer. Then comes the complicated process of deciding what to do with the survey
results. A decision about whether to stop using sludge with hormone disrupting
chemicals to fertilize farm fields could be years away.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kinna Ohman.

Related Links

Manure Spreading Pollutes

The government is studying ways to reduce water pollution from
spreading manure on farm fields. Lester Graham reports some experts
believe the way many farmers spread manure is more likely to pollute
lakes and streams:

Transcript

The government is studying ways to reduce water pollution from
spreading manure on farm fields. Lester Graham reports some experts
believe the way many farmers spread manure is more likely to pollute
lakes and streams:


A lot of times, farmers don’t spread manure for fertilizer in the spring because
it can get in the way of opportunities to plant. So, a lot of farmers
spread manure in the winter. But spreading liquid manure on the frozen
ground means it doesn’t get plowed into the soil. Snow and rain can
wash the manure over the frozen dirt and into waterways.


Steve Jann is involved in a study by the Environmental Protection
Agency and the U.S. Department of Ag:


“When that runoff occurs it can carry manure pollutants with it. And
those pollutants when they enter surface waters can kill fish or allow
pathogens to enter surface water.”


And if that river or lake supplies drinking water, it can make people
sick. The study will compare pollution levels in waterways from
manure-spreading in the winter and the spring to see if pollution
from farm fields can be reduced.


For the Environment Report, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Saving Wetland Remnants

  • Winous Point Marsh Conservancy and Duck Hunting Club's Roy Kroll collects millet. (Photo by Julie Grant)

Among the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the loss of thousands of square miles of wetlands along the lakes. From Superior to Ontario and on up the St. Lawrence Seaway, we’ve lost some of the most important wildlife habitat along the edges of the lakes. For example, 200 years ago, much of the southern shore of Lake Erie was a huge swamp. Most of those wetlands have been drained and filled since European settlement. Julie Grant reports on efforts to maintain the little bit that remains:

Transcript

In our next report in the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes, we’re going to hear about changes to a large area that drains into the lakes. Our guide through the series is the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham:


Among the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is the loss of thousands of square miles of wetlands along the lakes. From Superior to Ontario and on up the St. Lawrence Seaway, we’ve lost some of the most important wildlife habitat along the edges of the lakes. For example, 200 years ago, much of the southern shore of Lake Erie was a huge swamp. Most of those wetlands have been drained and filled since European settlement. Julie Grant reports on efforts to maintain the little bit that remains:


Researchers from the Cleveland area park district have been driving hours to get here to this bit of swamp nearly every day since last spring. Biologist Rick Spence and his partner wade through two feet of boot-sucking mud. They’re looking for turtles. Blanding’s turtles, to be exact. With a distinctive bright yellow chin and throat, it’s designated as a ‘species of special concern’ in Ohio…


“The Blanding’s originally were found in this area in the southern portion of Lake Erie, along this basin area. And so there’s a lot of the Blanding’s in here. It doesn’t get any better than this. We have nothing like this really around the Cleveland area that I know of.”


This area is the 150 year-old Winous Point Marsh Conservancy and Duck Hunting Club. It’s the largest privately owned coastal wetland in Ohio. It’s a thin strip of marsh that runs eight and a half miles along the shore.


Roy Kroll has been Executive Director of the Duck Hunting Club for more than twenty years. He keeps busy balancing the needs of researchers, biology classes, and reporters.


Kroll takes me onto the marsh in a wooden boat. He uses an old-fashioned pole to push us through water that’s only a couple of inches deep. It’s slow and quiet. He stops and uses the pole to slap the water for a call and response with migratory birds. (slap) He can hear who’s hiding in the cattails, arrowhead, and other emergent wetland plants…


(Kroll slaps water twice, birds respond)


“Well, looks like the teal have left and the rail are here.”


Kroll says the 4,500 acre marsh harbors over 100,000 waterfowl, mostly ducks, during November’s peak migration. There aren’t many places like this left on the Lake Erie coastline. More than 90 percent of the region’s wetlands have been drained. Most of that was done in the mid-1800s.


The area was once known as the Great Black Swamp. It stretched from Lake Erie all the way to Indiana. Much of it was under a dense canopy of hardwood trees. Kroll says it was a great system to filter river waters entering the lake. But European settlers and land speculators cut down most of the trees, dug ditches and straightened stream channels to move water quickly off the land. They built roads and transformed the swamp into rich, productive farm fields.


“You have to put yourself in the time period. Rightfully so, that was considered progress. And now we have to look back and say, well, yeah, it was progress and now it looks like it’s not progress. And if we’re not going to eliminate all these wetlands, we’re going to have to take some proactive measures to do it.”


Even at Winous Point, some of the wetlands are in poor condition. Standing on a man-made dike we look one way and see all kinds of plants: cattails, duckweed, and lily pads. But look to the side that’s not protected by the dike, and there’s no vegetation. Hand-drawn maps from the 1800s show a diversity of plants here, but now it looks like an open bay…


“What we’re looking at now is an open water wetland. And again, with no plants, we don’t have the structure for fish, invertebrates, and even plankton and algae to colonize on plant stems. It’s nowhere near as productive.”


Kroll says it’s not nearly as productive as the protected area. He says high lake levels, invasive carp, and pollution running off the land and into the rivers that drain into the lake have all made it tough for marsh vegetation to survive. Without plants, Kroll says the wetland can’t clean water running off the land…into the lake. He says it’s unrealistic to expect a short band of remnant wetlands to do the job of a hundreds of square miles of swamp forest.


“The key is to start at the upstream far upstream head of the watershed and begin restoring wetlands from there down to here.”


There are some efforts to re-store small parts of the Great Black Swamp. But Kroll says it’s also important to protect the little bit of the original coastal wetlands that are still left.


For the GLRC, I’m Julie Grant.

Related Links

Ten Threats: Dead Zones in the Lakes

  • These fishermen at Port Clinton, Ohio, are a few miles away from the dead zone that develops in Lake Erie every summer... so far, most fish can swim away from the dead zone. But the dead zone is affecting the things that live at the bottom of the lake. (Photo by Lester Graham)

One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.

Transcript

In another report on the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes series, reporter Lester Graham looks at a
growing problem that has scientists baffled:


One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes is nonpoint source pollution. That’s pollution that
doesn’t come from the end of a pipe. It’s oil washed off parking lots by storms, or pesticides and
fertilizers washed from farm fields. Nonpoint source pollution might be part of the reason why
some shallow areas in the Great Lakes are afflicted by so-called dead zones every summer.


Dead zones are places where there’s little or no oxygen. A dead zone develops in Lake Erie
almost every summer. It was once thought that the problem was mostly solved. But, it’s become
worse in recent years.


(sound of moorings creaking)


The Environmental Protection Agency’s research ship, the Lake Guardian, is tied up at a dock at
the Port of Cleveland. Nathan Hawley and his crew are loading gear, getting ready for a five day
cruise to check some equipment that measures a dead zone along the central basin of Lake Erie.


“What I have out here is a series of bottom-resting moorings that are collecting time series data of
currents and water temperature and periodically we have to come out here and clean them off and
we take that opportunity to dump the data as well.”


Hawley is gathering the data for scientists at several universities and the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. The information helps
them measure the behavior of the dead zone that occurs nearly every year in Lake Erie…


“What we’re trying to do this year is get a more comprehensive picture of how big this low-oxygen zone is and how it changes with time over the year.”


One of the scientists who’ll be pouring over the data is Brian Eadie. He’s a senior scientist with
NOAA’s Great Lakes Environmental Research Lab. He says Lake Erie’s dead zone is a place
where most life can’t survive…


“We’re talking about near the bottom where all or most of the oxygen has been consumed so
there’s nothing for animals to breathe down there, fish or smaller animals.”


Lester Graham: “So, those things that can swim out of the way, do and those that can’t…”


Brian Eadie: “Die.”


The dead zone has been around since at least the 1930’s. It got really bad when there was a huge
increase in the amount of nutrients entering the lake. Some of the nutrients came from sewage,
some from farm fertilizers and some from detergents. The nutrients, chiefly phosphorous, fed an
explosion in algae growth. The algae died, dropped to the bottom of the lake and rotted. That
process robbed the bottom of oxygen. Meanwhile, as spring and summer warmed the surface of
Lake Erie, a thermal barrier was created that trapped the oxygen-depleted water on the bottom.


After clean water laws were passed, sewage treatment plants were built, phosphorous was banned
from most detergents, and better methods to remove phosphorous from industrial applications
were put in place.


Phosphorous was reduced to a third of what it had been. But Brian Eadie says since then
something has changed.


“The concentration of nutrients in the central basin the last few years has actually been going up.
We don’t understand why that’s happening.”


Eadie says there are some theories. Wastewater from sewage plants might be meeting pollution
restrictions, but as cities and suburbs grow, there’s just a lot more of it getting discharged. More
volume means more phosphorous.


It could be that tributaries that are watersheds for farmland are seeing increased phosphorous. Or
it could be that the invasive species, zebra mussel, has dramatically altered the ecology of the
lakes. More nutrients might be getting trapped at the bottom, feeding bacteria that use up oxygen
instead of the nutrients getting taken up into the food chain.


Whatever is happening, environmentalists are hopeful that the scientists figure it out soon.


Andy Buchsbaum heads up the Great Lakes office of the National Wildlife Federation. He says
the dead zone in the bottom of the lake affects the entire lake’s productivity.


“If you’re removing the oxygen there, for whatever reason, for any period of time, you’ve
completely thrown that whole system out of balance. It’s all out of whack. It could mean
irreversible and devastating change to the entire ecosystem.”


And Buchsbaum says the central basin of Lake Erie is not the only place where we’re seeing this
low-oxygen problem…


“What makes the dead zone in Lake Erie even more alarming is that we’re seeing similar dead
zones appearing in Saginaw Bay which is on Lake Huron and Green Bay in Lake Michigan.
There, too, scientists don’t know what’s causing the problem. But, they’re already seeing
potentially catastrophic effects on aquatic life there.”


State and federal agencies and several universities are looking at the Lake Erie dead zone to try to
figure out what’s going on there. Once they do… then the battle likely will be getting
government to do what’s necessary to fix the problem.


For the GLRC, this is Lester Graham.

Related Links

Duck Decline Blamed on Fragmented Habitat

  • A mallard duck hen sitting on her eggs in a strip mall tree planter in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Ducks Unlimited researchers have found that recent declines in duck populations are partly due to a lack of corridors between grasslands where ducks nest and wetlands where they thrive. (Photo by Rebecca Williams)

Researchers with the hunters’ conservation group Ducks Unlimited are reporting they’ve found some of the reasons the duck reproduction rate is falling in the Great Lakes region. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:

Transcript

Researchers with the hunters’ conservation group Ducks Unlimited are reporting they’ve
found some of the reasons the duck reproduction rate is falling. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:


(sound of birds, a duck quacking and a truck door slamming)


YERKES: “Load in.”


Two years ago, we went out in the field with biologist Tina Yerkes and other Ducks
Unlimited researchers.


YERKES: “Every day these guys go out and they track the birds and that’s basically how
we figure out what they’re doing. ”


(sound of newly hatched ducklings peeping with hen hissing)


At the time, they were tracking mallard hens, watching them nest, and watching them as
they moved their ducklings from the nests in the grass to nearby wetlands and lakes.
After three years of study, they found some of the reasons duck reproduction rates are
down. We recently had a chance to sit down and talk with Tina Yerkes about the study.
She says, surprisingly, they found that egg production and nesting are good, despite nests
being destroyed by mowers and predators eating the eggs.


TY: “The problem is duckling survival. We have very poor duckling survival in this
area. And, that leads us to believe that we need to alter habitat programs to actually start
doing more wetlands work.”


LG: “So, what’s happening is the ducks are able to nest, they’re able to hatch out the
ducklings, but then when they move from the grasslands where the nesting is to the
wetlands where the ducks feed, they grow, they’re not surviving. What’s killing them?”


TY: “What we’re seeing is that hens, once they hatch their young, they move right after
the first day into the first wetland and it’s a dangerous journey. Basically, because our
habitat is so fragmented that they’re moving these ducklings through non-grassed areas,
across parking lots, roads. It’s dangerous. And, a lot of the ducklings either die from
exhaustion or predators kill them on the way. A lot of avian predators get them at that
point.”


LG: “So, we’re talking about hawks and not so much domestic animals like cats and
dogs.”


TY: “Ah, cats are a problem, yeah. It’s hard to document exactly what is getting them,
but feral cats and domestic cats are a problem. Hawks and jays, sometimes…”


LG: “Blue jays?”


TY: “Blue jays can be mean, yeah. But, it’s interesting to note that if you put those
corridors back between nesting sites and wetlands, it’ll be a much safer journey for
them.”


LG: “So, what are you proposing?”


TY: “I would look more away from urban areas where those infrastructures are already
intact. We would not certainly expect anybody to tear that type of stuff up. But, outside
the cities and urban areas there are lots of opportunities to look at areas where there is
grass existing or wetlands existing and then piece the habitat back together where we
can.”


LG: “There are places, for instance in Chicago, where they’re working to do exactly that.
Do you see that kind of effort in most of the states you studied?”


TY: “Yes, actually we do. Some states like – Chicago’s a very good example. A very
strong park system not only throughout the city, but out in the suburbs as well and we do
see that in a lot of different places. That’s a positive thing.”


LG: “Where are the worst places for duckling survival?”


TY: “The worst duckling survival was the site that you were at two years ago in Port
Clinton, Ohio. And, if you think about what that habitat looks like, what you have is a
few patches of grass and an area that’s heavily agriculturally based, but all the wetlands
have been ditched and drained so that when a bird has to move from an area where it
nested to get to a nice, safe wetland habitat, they have to make a substantial move across
a lot of open fields that don’t have a lot of cover on them. So, here you’re looking at
maybe piecing cover back between the wetland areas and still being able to maintain farm
operations at the same time.”


LG: “What can farmers do to help duck survival?”


TY: “Oh, let’s see. Leave some patches of grass along the fields, especially if they have
wetlands in their fields. Leave a nice margin around the wetland, a nice vegetative
margin around the wetland because the ducks will nest right in that edge as well. Then
they don’t have to move very far to take the ducklings to a nice food source and a nice
wetland.”


LG: “Now, this is not just about making sure that mallard ducks reproduce. What’s this
going to mean for the ecosystem as a whole?”


TY: “Every time we replace a wetland or replace grass on the landscape, we’re
improving the water quality because those types of habitats remove nutrients and
sedimentation from runoff. So, there’s all kinds of benefits. There are benefits to any
other species that depends on grasslands to nest in or wetlands to either nest in or even
for migratory birds. So there’s just a suite of benefits beyond ducks.”


Tina Yerkes is a biologist with Ducks Unlimited. She says the group will be working
with states to develop programs to encourage development of corridors between the
grasslands where the ducks nest and the wetlands where they thrive.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

Crackdown on Giant Snails

Snails that can grow up to seven inches long have federal health officials cracking down on schools, pet shops and “pet swap meets” across the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:

Transcript

Snails that can grow up to seven inches long have federal
health officials cracking down on schools, pet shops and ‘pet swap meets’
across the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:


Giant African Land Snails are a non-native species known to rapidly eat plants and
possibly spread disease. It’s illegal to possess the snails in the U.S. Federal and state
officials have seized more than 1000 of the snails from schools, pet shops and homes
in Wisconsin over the last few months.


Now, the warnings are going out across the region. David Robinson studies mollusks for
the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He says the snails are not likely to survive an upper
Midwest winter. But Robinson doesn’t want the snails getting into warmer states and
their farm fields.


“There is always a possibility of someone taking a snail down south… very often when
people get tired of a pet…and this applies to any kind of pet… very often the temptation is
to release it to the environment.”


So far, government officials are not levying fines against anyone for
possessing the giant snails, contending most people don’t know about
the potential risk.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Volunteers Tally Migrating Cranes

  • The Phyllis Haehnle Memorial Sanctuary in southeast Michigan is home to thousands of migrating Sandhill Cranes each fall. (Photo by Mark Brush)

The colder weather and shorter days are keeping most of us inside. But for a group of volunteers it’s the perfect time to head outdoors. They’re putting on their gloves and setting up their spotting scopes to go out and watch one of their favorite birds get ready for the long trip south. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports these birds gather by the thousands before migrating:

Transcript

The colder weather and shorter days are keeping most of us inside. But
for a group of volunteers it’s the perfect time to head outdoors. They’re
putting on their gloves and setting up their spotting scopes to go out and
watch one of their favorite birds get ready for the long trip south. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mark Brush reports these birds gather by
the thousands before migrating:


(Sound of cranes)


It’s a dreary and damp evening next to this marsh in rural southeast
Michigan.
The dampness has that edge of cold to it that’s hard to escape.
And while most people are heading to their warm homes for the day –
things here at the Haehnle Bird Sanctuary are just getting started as
volunteers count cranes:


(sound of cranes flying overhead and volunteers)


“I got a whole line of coming in over the flats out there – oh, man – It’s
startin’… how many?”


“Thirty-four.” (sound of clicks)


With the help of a clicker, three volunteers from the Audubon Society
count the birds.
Fortunately for them, the birds they’re counting are… really big.
The Greater Sandhill Crane is one of the biggest birds in the region.
They glide into the sanctuary by the thousands with their gangly legs
dangling behind them.
They’re counting the birds for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
This is part of a wider effort in the region to get an overall count of the
crane population.
They have one night to count – and tonight’s the night.


Gary Siegrist is one of the volunteers. He says the birds come into this
wetland after a day feasting in the farm fields:


“They’ve been out feeding all day… and they stage… this is one of two
places in southern Michigan where they stage. And when they get to a
point where they have enough fuel in their bodies enough fat built up, and
their food supplies are gone, and maybe the mud lake is frozen over, then
they’ll find a favorable wind and head south.”


The gathering is an instinct for these birds. During the summer months
they spread out across the region in pairs. But when it’s time to migrate
they get together in big flocks before they head to Florida. And when they
gather in large numbers – it can get noisy.


Gary Siegrist says the bird’s call is one of the things that draws him here
to count the birds year after year:


“People don’t realize that it’s the oldest living bird species. They’ve got a
relative that goes back 35 or 65 million years – it’s the time of the
dinosaurs…the bird is fantastic and if you can hear the call, you
can hear it in the background, it kind of sends shivers down your back. It
reminds you of a different time.”


(sound of cranes flying by)


The volunteers also spend their time chatting with people who visit the
Sanctuary. And even on a cold night like tonight – people have come out
to see the birds.


Phil DeLang drove with his wife and grandson two and a half hours just to
watch the gathering… and they do it every year:


“I think all of nature is precious, I me an it’s really precious when you
think of things becoming extinct, like the passenger pigeon, what a
tragedy, it never should have happened. I’m just glad there’s places like
this. People have taken the effort to give these birds a home.”


(sound of counting)


The birds continue to arrive by the hundreds as the sun begins to set. As
darkness falls – the volunteers tally up their final number:


“Twenty nine seventy five. Tweny-nine seventy five? Yeah. O.k.”


The count for the evening is over. And by their calculation nearly 3000
birds are settling down for the night.


(3 seconds of sound at night)


The volunteers head home to double check their math – and send in their
final numbers.


(bring up morning birds)


The next morning at the sanctuary the birds are waking up and heading
into the farm fields.


We caught up with Ron Hoffman here. He’s the guy who coordinates the
official crane count for this region. And between all the volunteers that
counted last night – they spotted 4,600 cranes.
Ron has been studying these birds since the 1960’s when they were just
coming off the threatened species list. And he’s seen the bird’s population
grow steadily over the years.


But Ron Hoffman and the other volunteers see a pattern developing in this
area – a pattern that could threaten the number of cranes that use this
sanctuary. The Haehnle sanctuary is surrounded by spreading housing
developments. They fear these developments would use up farmland,
which is important to the birds:


“I’m sure we’ll always have cranes, but at the same time if this area within
ten fifteen miles of hear is so built up that there’s not the food reserves
here for the cranes to feed, then the number of cranes using this would be
diminished.”


But no matter how many cranes are out here, you can bet Ron Hoffman
and the other volunteers will be counting them year after year.
They care about these birds.


While we were talking, he interrupted to watch a young bird fly by:


“This guy is really lost – look he’s coming back over.” (sound of little
bird) Did you see him craning his neck and looking? He’s trying to find
his parents…”


Hoffman says his biggest hope for the Greater Sandhill Crane is that the
population will remain stable, so that he and others can continue to
experience what he calls one of the wildlife spectaculars in this region.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Mark Brush.


(sound of cranes)

Related Links

Market-Based Approach for Water Pollution

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based attempt to reduce water pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:

Transcript

The Environmental Protection Agency is looking at a market-based
attempt to reduce water
pollution. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jenny Lawton explains:


The EPA says a market-based approach to reducing water pollution would
save the government
billions of dollars in enforcement measures and result in cleaner
rivers and lakes.


It would work like this… companies that clean up wastewater beyond
the EPA standards would
get credits. Then those companies could sell their credits to
companies that cannot meet EPA
standards.


Some environmentalists worry that system will legitimize polluters, so
long as they can pay the
price.


But the EPA’s Tracy Mehan calls the trade a means to an end…


“And the end is the attainment of water quality standards. That is part
of the landscape under
the Clean Water Act already, or the watershed, if you will. In other
words, our policy does not
allow any trading that would exceed those water quality standards.”


But targeting water pollution is complicated. It can come from farm
fields or pesticides from your
neighbor’s lawn.


They’ll have to figure out how to measure that before a water pollution
credit market can be
established.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jenny Lawton.

Farming With Computers

You probably have a computer in your car, on your desk and maybe even in your stove. It seems like there are computers everywhere these days helping with everything from our checking accounts to our turkey roasts. Now researchers want to install computers in another place, where most of us would least expect it – in Old MacDonald’s tractor. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Daniel Grossman has this story: