‘Copters in National Parks?

  • Leading Edge Aviation has put in an application to offer as many as 300 helicopter tours a year around the edge of Crater Lake. Travis Warthen is the company Vice President. (Photo by Jessica Robinson)

When Congress returns from its August
recess, one of the tasks on the agenda is
confirming President Obama’s pick to head
the National Park Service. If confirmed,
Jonathan Jarvis will have some tough
decisions to make about what kinds of tourist
attractions to allow in the parks. Jessica
Robinson reports on the latest proposal to
add aerial sightseeing tours at a National
Park in Oregon:

Transcript

When Congress returns from its August
recess, one of the tasks on the agenda is
confirming President Obama’s pick to head
the National Park Service. If confirmed,
Jonathan Jarvis will have some tough
decisions to make about what kinds of tourist
attractions to allow in the parks. Jessica
Robinson reports on the latest proposal to
add aerial sightseeing tours at a National
Park in Oregon:

Nearly 8,000 years ago, Mount Mazama spit out ash and lava and collapsed in on itself, leaving what became Crater Lake.

Park Superintendent Craig Ackerman says the stillness of the blue waters is matched only by the stillness in the air.

“You can stand on the east flank of Mount Scott and you can absolutely hear the wind whispering through the white bark pines and the hemlocks.”

It’s true – there are moments when it’s just your footsteps, the wind, and the birds.

But then, at the popular viewpoints, there are the other species you find at many national parks: like Toyotas, Winnebagos, and Harleys.

(sound of a motorcycle)

Now, a company up the road in Bend, Oregon, has a proposal that could add one more sound to the mix.

(sound of a helicopter)

Leading Edge Aviation has put in an application to offer as many as 300 helicopter tours a year around the edge of Crater Lake. Travis Warthen is the company Vice President.

“I mean, it really is a majestic sight to see. And, the noise level is less than that of a car – you know, definitely motorcycles, RVs, the bus tours. I mean, it’s difficult for us to understand the huge opposition.”

At 1,000 feet up, he says, the choppers sound to someone on the ground, about as loud as a normal conversation.

“So you say, ‘it’s already compromised by the motorcycles and the motor-homes, so what’s wrong with a little more?’”

That’s Scott Silver. He’s executive director of Wild Wilderness, a group he started with a friend to monitor motorized recreation on public lands.

Silver sits in his back yard, just across town from the aviation company proposing the tours. He says National Parks should provide a respite from some of the noise we’re used to in everyday life. As he explains this, a passing helicopter interrupts our interview.

(sound of a helicopter)

“That’s actually the helicopter from the hospital. But, okay, it’s no big deal really in town. It’s just a distraction. But everyone still stops and looks up if it’s flying over a national park. And really, why should visitors have need to look up to listen to sounds over head?”

National Parks advocates worry that helicopter flights at the Grand Canyon, Glacier National Park, and others are making commercial tours the norm for parks visitors. They’re hoping Obama’s pick to lead the National Park Service, Jonathan Jarvis – a former Crater Lake biologist – will reverse the trend.

But here’s the rub: there’s nothing stopping you from flying over any National Park right now – if you have a private plane.

And Jeff Allen, head of the Crater Lake Trust, wonders if that’s fair.

“There’s a part of me that feels like, if you’re going to allow it at all, I’d rather see regular folks be able to have that experience, than have you have to go out and own a plane or know someone who owns a plane.”

Aerial tours of Crater Lake won’t be offered any time soon though. There’s a hefty backlog of similar requests at other parks – and they’ll all have to go through not one but two federal bureaucracies: the National Park Service and the FAA.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jessica Robinson.

Related Links

Airlifts for Wildlife

  • On March 5, 2008 the Wisconsin Army National Guard airlifted 75 tons of mature trees to improve wildlife habitat in the Kettle Moraine State Forest. The aviation training mission used UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters to lift the trees on the east shore of Long Lake. (Photo by Steve Apps, courtesy of the Wisconsin State Journal)

There’s an old saying that goes ‘There’s more
life in a dead tree than a live one.’ That’s because
bugs and birds and burrowing animals can all find homes
in dead trees. Trees that are cut down are also sometimes
dropped into lakes to make habitat for fish. Chuck
Quirmbach reports sometimes getting the right tree to the
right spot requires some creative thinking:

Transcript

There’s an old saying that goes ‘There’s more
life in a dead tree than a live one.’ That’s because
bugs and birds and burrowing animals can all find homes
in dead trees. Trees that are cut down are also sometimes
dropped into lakes to make habitat for fish. Chuck
Quirmbach reports sometimes getting the right tree to the
right spot requires some creative thinking:

(helicopter noise)

It’s not every day you seen an upside down tree flying through the air.

But this Blackhawk helicopter is skimming along with a big tree dangling on a
line beneath it.

We’ll get to why in a moment. But to do that you’ve got to meet the guy who thought
up the idea.

Mark Sesing is sitting in his pickup truck. He’s
a wildlife manager – actually, a water specialist. He’s looking through the windshield at a
stretch of shoreline of Long Lake in Wisconsin.

“The habitat’s been stripped away. We’ve got piers; we’ve got boats, boathouses, we’ve got houses
and cottages. All that development has resulted in, I guess what I’ll call a
sterilization of the shore.”

On the other side of the lake there’s an area that’s a bit better for birds and fish.
But Sesing thought the wildlife needed a little help. He knew putting some dead
trees there could benefit the animals.

Put the crown of the tree in the water for the fish, so they can hide from predators
and lay eggs in the thicket. Put the trunk on the shore, and all kinds of animals can
make a home. Or birds can find bugs in the dead tree.

But there was a problem: you couldn’t get to the area with trucks without cutting a road down a steep hillside. And Mark Sesing was not interested in damaging more of the
shoreline.

So he got to thinking. Why not get the Wisconsin Air National Guard to help?

(helicopter sound)

So why would the Air Guard want to move trees? Practice!

Chief Warrant Officer Dirk Brandt is with the National Guard’s 832nd medical
company. He says practicing lifting trees and placing them on the shoreline could
help pilots and crew prepare for a med.-evac. lift in a war zone.

“If it was medical supplies, or critical medical supplies, since our unit is med.-evac., then the more we practice with, I guess you could say, ‘inanimate objects’, then the
better off when we actually physically have to do it.”

The airlift worked like this: first, one of the copters would hover over a forested
area about a quarter mile from the lake. That’s where trees had been cut down to
improve the health of the woods.

(hover sound)

Then, ground crew would grab a nylon strap hanging down from the aircraft and wrap it around a tree.

(helicopter lifting sound)

The helicopter would then go up. And carry the dead tree to the water’s edge.

(helicopter fades)

By the time the project was done, there were 23 dead trees placed along about a-
quarter mile of lake shoreline.

Wildlife managers will start watching the trees and collecting scientific data on the
project this summer. They estimate the trees will provide habitat for fish and birds for
the next ten to twenty years.

For the Environment report, I’m Chuck Quirmbach.

Related Links

Noise Pollution: Shhhhhh!

  • Everywhere you go, there's bound to be something making noise. (Photo by Lester Graham)

We live in a world that’s filled with noise. But when things get
too loud, the sounds can affect us in all kinds of ways. Kyle
Norris talks to one man who says that loud noises are a health,
ethical, spiritual, and environmental issue:

Transcript

We live in a world that’s filled with noise. But when things get
too loud, the sounds can affect us in all kinds of ways. Kyle
Norris talks to one man who says that loud noises are a health,
ethical, spiritual, and environmental issue:


For Les Blomberg, it all started with a sound like this:


(Sound of Blomberg imitating buzzing)


That’s Blomberg imitating the sound of the street sweeper. It
would clean his street at four in the morning. Blomberg says he
had never thought much about noise pollution…until this
happened, and it made him all tired and cranky. Eventually
Blomberg got the city to change the time of day when it cleaned
the street.


This experience got him interested in the topic of noise
pollution:


“To me kind of at the core, noise is an issue of civility. How
you treat your neighbor. It’s an environmental issue. Noise is a
pollutant that we’re casting out. It’s a waste product. It’s kind of
like second hand smoke. It’s the waste product of our activities
that we’re casting out into the environment.”


Blomberg’s passion for noise pollution grew as he learned more
about it, and he realized it’s an under-rated, under-appreciated
problem. Now he runs the Noise Pollution Clearinghouse. It’s
an organization that tries to keep the peace and quiet, the
organization connects people with noise experts and activists.
It fights for stronger noise regulations and standards, and it tests
consumer products to find out which are the quietest.


Blomberg says people usually contact him with one of three
kinds of noise problems. Jets and helicopters (sound of jet),
highway noise (sound of highway), and noises from electronic
amplification (sound of music) — like loud stereos. People tell
him these noises ruin their sleep, concentration, and quality of
life… and all those things put people in bad moods and can ruin
how they deal with other people.


Loud noises also trigger a physiological response in our bodies.
That’s what Les Blomberg says:


“When we were evolving, when things were noisy it was
usually a warning that something wrong was happening. If the
lion walk through camp and you didn’t hear it coming, you
would be breakfast for that critter. And so we evolved to deal
with that. Our hearing works twenty-four hours a day, it can
wake us up if we hear noises in our environment.”


As humans evolved, Blomberg says that loud noises would
trigger a quick little shot of adrenaline, leading to fight or flight.
He says we still go through this stress response today, when we
hear a loud noise, even though we know it’s only a siren or an
air conditioner and not a lion.


Loud, isolated noises like a street sweeper or a leaf-blower can
be temporarily problematic, but if you’re continuously exposed
to loud noises like these over time, they can lead to serious
damage. Each year in this country 30 million people suffer
from hearing losses.


Paul Kileny is the Director of Audiology & Electrophysiology
at the University of Michigan’s Health System. He says hearing
is the essence of human communication:


“People who have significant hearing loss they have a variety of
emotional problems. They withdraw. They isolate themselves
because they have trouble hearing. They don’t socialize.”


So loud noises aren’t just an inconvenience. They can bring
about real emotional problems. Les Blomberg with the Noise
Pollution Clearinghouse says we don’t have to live in a noisy
world. Technology has the ability to make things quieter.


Noise-cancellation systems and acoustic buffering can make
cars, appliances, and even lawn equipment quieter. Engineers
can make road surfaces quieter to drive on, but these changes
cost money and will have to come from the various industries
wanting to change.


Blomberg says that’s starting to happen, but slowly. He believes
loud noises are also an ethical issue. He says it’s like the golden
rule, of treating people the way you’d like to be treated and that
we can all do a “politeness check,” by making sure we’re not
imposing our sounds on our neighbors.


For the Environment Report, I’m Kyle Norris.

Related Links

Raccoon Rabies Making Its Way West

Raccoons from East Coast states are spreading rabies westward… and health officials say some animals are getting past their immunization barrier. That could be bad news for other Great Lakes states, particularly Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota. The rabid raccoons are a threat because they can bite dogs and cats… and those animals, in turn, can bite humans. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:

Transcript

Raccoons from East Coast states are spreading rabies westward… and
health officials say some animals are getting past their immunization
barrier. That could be bad news for other Great Lakes states,
particularly Indiana, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota.
The rabid raccoons are a threat because they can bite dogs and cats…
and those animals, in turn, can bite humans. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Bill Cohen reports:


For seven years, Ohio has tried to keep raccoons with rabies on the Pennsylvania side of its
border. Airplanes and helicopters have dropped vaccine-laden biscuits for raccoons to eat… to
immunize the animals and stop the spread of the disease westward. But now comes word that two
rabid raccoons have made it past the 25 mile-wide immunization zone.


Kathleen Smith is a veterinarian for the Ohio Health Department. She notes the biscuit drops are a practical tactic in an area that’s hemmed in by Lake
Erie and the Ohio river… but if the disease pushes deeper into Ohio, the
immunizations won’t be practical… and states to the west will be infected.


“If it gets past our barrier, northeast Ohio, it would be too cost prohibitive to use the oral vaccine to
stop it from spreading out of the state into the Midwest.”


Officials are asking northeast Ohio residents to tell them about any dead raccoons they spot,
even road kill, so authorities can try to figure out how the disease is moving westward.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Bill Cohen in Columbus.

Related Links

Potato Farms Create ‘Super-Sized’ Problem (Part 1)

Ron Offutt grows more potatoes than anyone else in the
world. He grows them for the French Fry market. Press reports call him
the Sultan of Spuds and the Lord of the Fries—but his success has an
environmental price, as people in small towns near his potato farms have
learned to their dismay. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mary
Losure reports in the first of a two part series:

Potato Farms Create ‘Super-Sized’ Problem (Part 2)

Ron D. Offutt is the biggest potato grower in the world.
His privately owned company raises 1.8 BILLION pounds of potatoes a
year. They go to make French fries for fast food chains like McDonalds
and big potato processors like J.R Simplot. But Offutt’s
success has a downside. Many people who live near his potato farms
worry about the pesticides sprayed on his fields…but they soon find
they’re up against a system much bigger than they are. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Mary Losure reports, in the second part of a two part
series: