Oil Spill Cleanup Seeks Volunteers

  • Until they work out the logistic challenges that go along with hosting out-of-town volunteers, organizations are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.(Photo courtesy of the NOAA)

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

Transcript

No one really knows how many thousands of barrels of oil have gushed from the British Petroleum pipeline on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. But, the environmental damage is expected to be astounding. Lester Graham reports… Gulf Coast groups are preparing for the worst.

The Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana is a consortium of environmental groups trying to coordinate volunteers to help clean up the environmental damage to hit the coast.

Steven Peyronnin is Executive Director of the group.

“There is the potential that we may need volunteers for extended periods of time–for weeks, but certainly there are challenges to arranging logistical and housing support for that. So, in the interim we are looking for people who are locally based, who are easily within driving distance and may be able to contribute a day’s worth of work.”

Right now they’re in need of people with HazMat training, but anyone can register to volunteer. The website is crcl.org.

You can also volunteer for clean-up at volunteerlouisiana.gov.

They’ll likely be looking for volunteers for months.

For The Environment Report, I’m Lester Graham.

Related Links

A Cup of Conscience

  • Dennis Macray of Starbucks speaks about the coffee company’s social and environmental efforts. He was the keynote speaker for the annual George McGovern lecture for United Nations’ employees. (Photo by Nancy Greenleese)

People who work to help people in poor countries have always had big hearts. Some of
those helping these days have fat wallets as well. Multinational corporations are helping
the people who grow raw materials for those companies. They’re protecting the
environment, building schools, trying to improve living conditions – just like charities.
Nancy Greenleese reports there’s controversy over the businesses’ motives. But there’s
no denying they’re changing how help is given in poor countries:

Transcript

People who work to help people in poor countries have always had big hearts. Some of
those helping these days have fat wallets as well. Multinational corporations are helping
the people who grow raw materials for those companies. They’re protecting the
environment, building schools, trying to improve living conditions – just like charities.
Nancy Greenleese reports there’s controversy over the businesses’ motives. But there’s
no denying they’re changing how help is given in poor countries:

(sound of steaming milk and cups clanking)

At a Starbucks in Germany, customers are clamoring for their daily fix of caffeine.

“My name is Ellen Sycorder and I’m from Bonn. And I’m drinking a black coffee.”

What she doesn’t realize is that it’s coffee with a conscience.

Starbucks buys the bulk of its coffee from farmers in its program called Coffee And
Farmer Equity or CAFÉ. The farmers agree to grow quality coffee without jeopardizing
the environment. They pledge to take care of their workers and pay them fairly. Ellen
can drink to that.

“I think the idea is positive and I think I would drink more coffee here than somewhere
else.”

That’s exactly what Starbucks ordered a decade ago when it teamed up with the
environmental group Conservation International. They started by helping farmers in
Chiapas Mexico grow premium beans while protecting the region’s famous cloud forest.
CAFÉ practices grew from there. Starbucks and its non-profit partners are working with
farmers now from Costa Rica to East Timor.

Dennis Macray of Starbucks says the environmental advice is paying off.

“We’ve had farmers come to us and say these practices helped me weather a hurricane
for example, where neighboring farms had mudslides.”

Starbucks’ director of global responsibility says the company sometimes even
discourages farmers from growing beans. That might seem like a grande step backwards.
But Macray says keeping the farmers in business is the goal and sometimes that means
diversifying.

He recently found out how well it was working when he visited the mud hut of a Kenyan
farmer .

“In this case, the farmer was really proud of all the fruit and other vegetables that he had
on his farm. So he walked around and showed us how interspersed in-between the coffee
and providing shade for the coffee which is very important were a number of other crops
and fruits and things that he could either sell or his family could feed itself.”

Starbucks is among a growing list of multinational companies that are pouring money
into the developing world. Veteran international aid worker Carl Hammerdorfer says
working with big corporations made him pause at first.

“I’m a pretty skeptical, maybe even cynical, person about the motives of business. I
would have said 5 years ago that these Fortune 500 companies are only talking about
environmental and social concerns for marketing purposes, so they would improve their
image and sell more product.”

But he says global climate change prompted the companies to take their mission more
seriously. Any changes to the climate that shrink the rain forest, parch or flood land
would drastically affect their supplies of raw materials.

The former Peace Corps country director says his views have changed as he’s watched
companies such as McDonalds help farmers build more stable businesses.

“The evolution of their consciousness about social and environmental bottom lines is all
good. It’s a net gain for all of us who care about these enduring gaps.”

But there are concerns that the collapse of the economy will make the companies’
generosity shrivel up. There’s not a lot of evidence of that so far. While Starbucks is
closing 900 stores, the CAFÉ program is expanding. The company says it’s vital to its
long-term success to keep grinding on.

“Grande Cafe Latte!”

(sound of milk foaming)

For The Environment Report, I’m Nancy Greenleese.

Related Links

Noisier Oceans Bad for Whales

  • Beluga whale (Delphinaptherus leucas) with its mouth wide open, White Sea, Russia, Kareliya. (© Andrey Nekrasov / WWF-Canon)

Scientists say the oceans are
getting noisier. The racket threatens
whales and other marine mammals that
communicate through sound. Nancy
Greenleese reports:

Transcript

Scientists say the oceans are
getting noisier. The racket threatens
whales and other marine mammals that
communicate through sound. Nancy
Greenleese reports:


The oceans are already noisy from military sonars and oil and gas exploration. Scientists say it could get worse. Some of the greenhouse gas, carbon dioxide, is getting soaked up by the oceans and seas. The carbon dioxide makes the water more acidic. Sound travels through that acidic water more easily. A UN climate change panel recently issued a report raising concerns about the chemistry change. Mark Simmonds of the Whale and Dolphin Conversation Society says already there’s an “acoustic fog” in the world’s waters.

“The ambient noise levels in the oceans because of pH are likely to rise. This is a very unexpected finding. They’re anticipating that marine mammals will have further problems communicating.”

The noise confuses marine mammals. So, they’re beaching themselves and running into ships more often.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nancy Greenleese.

Related Links

Protecting Whales Across Borders

  • Mother-calf pair of "Type C" orcas in the Ross Sea. (Photo by Robert Pitman, NOAA)

Environmentalists have wanted to
“Save the Whales” for decades. But experts
say that can’t happen until the people
realize whales don’t know if they’re in
American waters, Mexican waters or Japanese
waters. Nancy Greenleese reports whales
cannot be saved until all countries protect
them:

Transcript

Environmentalists have wanted to
“Save the Whales” for decades. But experts
say that can’t happen until the people
realize whales don’t know if they’re in
American waters, Mexican waters or Japanese
waters. Nancy Greenleese reports whales
cannot be saved until all countries protect
them:

Whales travel off many countries’ coasts and different countries have different laws
about protecting the animals. Chris Butler Stroud is with the Whale and Dolphin
Conservation Society. He told a United Nation’s conference for the Convention on
Migratory Species that international cooperation is key.

“When countries try to take political action to conserve an animal, they often think of
their own borders. Not remembering that animals are able to move beyond those because
they don’t see the lines in the sand or lines in the water.”

(sound of Gray Whales splashing)

Gray whales swarm around fishing boats off Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.
They’ve traveled -without passports – from the Bering Strait in Russia, into U.S. waters,
through Canada, and back into the U.S. before arriving in Mexico. Here they’re
breeding, and providing a water show to rival Sea World for ecotourists.

“Oh…it’s the baby. Right there! Right next to us. And here comes mom! (Splash) Hey,
wow, right at us.”

There’s an international agreement that bans commercial hunting for gray whales. And
the whales draw tourists. That’s pretty important for a poor country such as Mexico.

The whales are safe here, but not everywhere.

And everywhere the whales travel and threat looms: climate change. Many whale species
migrate to the poles where the ice is disappearing. The World Wildlife Fund predicts
30% of the ice will melt away in the next 30 years unless action is taken.

Wendy Elliot says that means the whales will have to travel even farther to get to the ice
and the food they find there.

“So they’re already hungry, tired, they’ve traveled a long, long way and now they are
going to have 500 km extra to go. So how these species are going to adapt is very
unclear and it’s very concerning.”

Another worry is the growing acidity of sea water. Greenhouse gases from burning fossil
fuels mix with the water and make carbonic acid in the ocean. Monterey Bay Aquarium
Research Institute chemists have determined that the altered chemistry will increase the
distances that underwater sounds travel. That disturbs the communications of marine
mammals. The oceans and seas are becoming a headbangers’ ball from rumbling ships,
air guns used for oil and gas exploration and military sonars.

Nicolas Entrup, managing director for the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society,
lobbied at the UN meeting for an international resolution on marine noise pollution.

“Look, we stressed to the governments that underwater noise is a key threat to whales and
dolphins in the ocean. These animals are acoustic animals.”

The Whale and Dolphin Conservation society says research shows loud underwater
noises causes some whales to beach themselves.

At the UN conference, nations passed watered-down resolution to reduce ship sounds.
They did nothing about the noises made by oil and gas industry and the military. Entrup
is furious.

What we’ve passed is absolutely not enough. And I have to say it’s giving in to the
interests of the military and the industries in that occasion. That’s really bad.”

Officials admit that industrial noise can be reduced but the military, that’s another matter.

The 85 governments at the U.N. conference did agree to provide addition protection for
some small whales. But putting any initiatives into effect will be difficult. The global
financial crisis has drastically limited countries’ contributions to field research on whales
and other migratory species. Entrup with the Whale and Dolphin Conservation Society
says the nations of the world cannot ignore the problems.

“If you care, then start now and do not wait until it’s too late. That’s expensive, that’s
irrational, that’s stupid.”

Wildlife groups say rich countries have to reach across borders and give a hand to poorer
countries if we’re going to save the whales.

For The Environment Report, I’m Nancy Greenleese.

Related Links

Paddling Through Pollution

  • Dredgers, a group that gets together to canoe on the Gowanus, hope that if people see the state of the canal, they'll be inspired to help clean it up (Photo by Samara Freemark)

A group of New Yorkers is trying
to convince people to get out on one of
the most polluted bodies of water in the
country – literally out there, in canoes.
Samara Freemark reports that they hope once
people see the water up close, they’ll
realize just how dirty it is. And maybe
then they’ll help clean it up:

Transcript

A group of New Yorkers is trying to convince people to get out on one of the most
polluted bodies of water in the country- literally out there, in canoes. Samara
Freemark reports that they hope once people see the water up close, they’ll realize
just how dirty it is. And maybe then they’ll help clean it up:

(sound of water, paddling)

You wouldn’t believe the stuff people have pulled out of the Gowanus Canal.
Refrigerators. Bathtubs, rusted cars. A 5000 pound dead whale. A suitcase full of
human body parts. Sewage floods into the canal all the time. So you see everything
people flush down their toilets. The water itself is a sickly, opaque green.

And that’s just the stuff you can see. The canal used to be a dumping ground for the
factories that line it. And the sediment at the bottom is still full of a laundry list of
toxic chemicals: cyanide, mercury, lead, asbestos. Scientists found strains of
gonorrhea in a water sample just last year.

And I’m sitting in a canoe in the middle of it.

(water noise, “Ewww, oh, God, gross. It’s like a subway down here.”)

The Gowanus is a 2 mile long trough of murky water that flows into the New York
Harbor – though the word ‘flowing ‘ is a bit optimistic, since the water mostly just sits
there.

You wouldn’t think anyone would want to canoe in this kind of water – much less
see it as a good way to spend a lazy summer afternoon.

(Laughs.) “ My first day was like, hell no. I knew it was going to be nasty.” (Laughs.)

That’s Alex Kovaleski. She’s a Dredger, a member of a group that gets together to
canoe the Gowanus.

“But I’m always looking for an adventure or a way to see things from a new
perspective, so I went out. And then I started having dreams about it, and it was all
over.”

Kovaleski knew she had to do something.

So almost every summer weekend she and the Dredgers gather at a makeshift pier
and paddle up and down the canal.

They invite others along. Anyone who shows up can jump in a borrowed canoe and
take it for a paddle. They get a lot of first-timers, New Yorkers who have heard about
the trips and come for the novelty or to get a taste of nature in this most urban of
cities.

That’s why Stephen Kline and Beatrice Aranow came. This is their first time at a
Dredgers event. I speak with them on the pier, before they step into a canoe. They
say they came because they love nature, they love being out on the water, and they
want to see their city from a whole new perspective.

Stephen and Beatrice are in for a big surprise. Twenty minutes later, they had their
new perspective.

(talking over each other) “ There were like dead rats, turds. It was a lot worse than I
could have ever imagined. It wasn’t that mysterious. I actually thought I was going
to have a pleasant time going out but it was pretty intense. It was repulsive.”

This doesn’t sound like a ringing endorsement of the Dredgers.

But Alex says Stephen and Beatrice’s reaction isn’t that bad – it’s actually kind of the
point.

“Part of it is just being out there with the poop and the trash, like, hah, here it is,
there’s no getting away from it. When you’re in it, you’re naturally longing to see it
restored.”

A week later I came back to the Gowanus canal for another Dredgers event. This
one’s a cleanup day, and volunteers are out with rubber gloves and bags, picking up
trash. It’s kind of a festive scene- there’s music and free pizza. And there’s a group of
high schoolers who came to spend the day canoeing and helping out.

(students talking about canoeing, cleaning)

Alex says those students are who the Dredgers really want to reach. The Gowanus
isn’t going to be clean anytime soon. But those kids are going to grow up, and they’re
going to be tax payers and voters. Soon they’re going to make the decisions that
decide the future of the canal.

For The Environment Report, I’m Samara Freemark.

Related Links

Repairing Backyard Rivers

  • The Conservation Resource Alliance works with property-owners to repair their rivers from problems such as erosion (Photo courtesy of the Conservation Resource Alliance)

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

Transcript

American rivers have gone
through a lot in the last century.
Their twists and turns have been
turned into straight channels.
Their banks have been washed away.
And pollution is still flowing off
farm fields and city streets. Fixing
these rivers is a big challenge. A lot
of the land that rivers run through is
privately owned. So that means – to
fix a river, you often have to work with
landowners. Rebecca Williams has the story
of one group that thinks they’ve found
the secret to winning people’s trust:

(bird sound)

Di Rau is the fourth generation of her family to farm this land in Northern
Michigan. Her grandpa homesteaded the land and set up a sawmill.

“It was the primary industry – I mean there was logging camps just
everywheres you turned.”

Back then the rivers were the only way to get those logs downstream. But
years of rolling logs down the bank into the river were causing serious
erosion. Huge trees were crashing into the water.

Rau says she didn’t know any of her family’s legacy until one day, when a
local group gave her a call. The more she learned about the problems, the
more she felt, well…

“Guilt! (laughs) Because of my ancestors. It’s like practicing medicine. It’s
always evolving and you don’t really know lots of times what you’re doing
wrong until another generation comes along and tells you this is what
you’ve created. Then it’s like okay let’s do something about it.”

So Rau let construction workers on her land. And now, ten years later, she
says it’s beautiful.

“Go down and just listen to creatures. You have deer come splashing
through, we have a bear around here, he likes to visit, couple bobcat.
There’s a lot of wildlife – it’s pretty cool.”

The woman who won Di Rau over is Kim Balke. She’s a biologist with the
group Conservation Resource Alliance. She says working with Di Rau was
pretty easy. But not everyone opens their doors so quickly.

There was the divorced couple who still owned land together, the fighting
brothers, the neighbors who nobody liked.

“Other people have said you know don’t go to their house they’ll greet you
with a shotgun!”

So far, no shotguns. Balke says she’s learned not to listen to what neighbors
say about each other. She approaches each person one by one, and talks to
them about what’s at stake. Her sales pitch? We’re just here to help – and
hey, we’ll pay most of the bill.

“You know a lot of our projects are erosion control, when banks are
completely falling into the stream – landowners, it’s not hard for them to
realize they’re losing property.”

But Balke says, still, you can’t just rush in and tell people what to do. She
says it can take months or even years to warm homeowners up to the
project.

That’s because fixing rivers is serious work. If a riverbank is eroding or an
old bridge is falling into the water, we’re talking about heavy construction
equipment. You have to be willing to have bulldozers and port-a-johns on
your lawn for a long time. And you might have to lose a tree.

“Things can look a little rough when you’re doing construction and some
people are a little worried about change.”

Balke says she just takes her time. She sends letters, sits down for coffee,
lets people think it over.

And it’s not just homeowners who Balke’s group needs to win over. There
are road commissions, tribes, sportfishers, and environmentalists. People
who sometimes just don’t trust each other.

Amy Beyer directs Conservation Resource Alliance. She says her group has
gotten all those people together.

“Yes they have been historically mortal enemies and that doesn’t mean all of
the baggage falls away but I can tell you it feels awfully good to go around
the circle when we complete a project and hear all the different voices and
how they’re celebrating that success.”

Beyer says this is not a quick and easy process – it can take years to get
people to actually find some little thing to agree on. But she says you can
fix a river without ever going to court.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

Hotlines for Wild Animal Rescue

  • Possums pretty much just want to be left alone – and they let you know by opening their mouths full of teeth. It’s called an alligator gape. (Photo by Patti Roman)

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell

out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car.

Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people

who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health…

and get them back to the wild:

Transcript

Let’s say you find a baby chipmunk that fell out of a tree… or worse, you hit an animal with your car. Who do you call? Rebecca Williams has the story of people who feel it’s their duty to nurse these animals back to health… and get them back to the wild:


(sound of phone ringing)


“Thank you for calling the Friends of Wildlife hotline for squirrels, chipmunks and other small rodents. If you have rescued a small animal please keep it warm and quiet…” (beep)

There are hotlines like these set up all over the country. There are bunny hotlines, woodchuck hotlines… you name it and there’s a volunteer hotline for it.

The woman who answers the Possum Hotline is Patti Roman. She volunteers in Michigan. She has a basement full of baby possums.

“Mom has 13 babies so if you get a weekend where two or three moms are hit I’ll get a lot of babies in a few days.”

She says possums get hit by cars a lot. They love to eat roadkill, and they’ll just sit there in the middle of the road, staring at your headlights.

Possums are marsupials like kangaroos. Except they don’t hop out of the way. They keep their babies in their pouches. When a mom gets hit, a lot of times the babies will survive. Someone will find the babies and call the Possum Hotline.

Patti Roman says she’s had up to a hundred baby possums in her basement at one time.

She puts gloves on before she pulls a possum out of its terrarium. I don’t know if you know possums, but they look like a huge hairy rat on its worst day. But this baby possum is kinda cute. He’s giving us a sharp-toothed little grin. It’s a I’ll-rip-your-hand off kind of grin.

“He’s doing the alligator gape right now. But he’s not biting me, but he is trying to scare me.”

That mouth full of sharp teeth is your first clue that possums just want to be left alone. If your dog chases after one, the possum might play dead. Then it’ll get up and waddle off when you’re not looking.

Patti Roman takes care of the possums until they’re a few months old. Then she takes them into the woods and lets them go. She says wildlife is always better off in the wild. But she says she does get criticized for interfering with nature.

“A possum who gets hit by a car is not supposed to die. It has nothing to do with natural selection. And if we can help I think we should.”

But some scientists debate that. Jim Harding is a wildlife specialist at Michigan State University.

“I think the majority of rehabilitation efforts is often just based on a human need to care for things. It isn’t really related to conservation unless you’re dealing with a very rare species.”

Harding says rehabbing some types of common animals can actually make things worse. For example – he says there are so many raccoons that they can wipe out a lot of birds because they eat their eggs.

But Patti Roman says she really feels like she’s doing the right thing. She spent 18 years at the Humane Society rescuing dogs and cats. But she never knew for sure those animals would be placed in good homes.

“When you call to check on the animal a year later – it’s been given away or run away or accidentally been killed. It was breaking my heart. And after awhile I thought, you know, I enjoy doing the wild animals because when they’re ready to go I’m not dependent on people anymore. It feeds my soul. It really does. I do this and I feel very, very good every morning that I can save a life.”

She says when she lets the possums go they don’t look back. They just take off into the woods. And even if that little possum ends up getting eaten by a fox, Roman says that’s okay, because at least that’s natural.

For The Environment Report, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Related Links

U.S. Gets an ‘Eco-Checkup’

  • Wetlands, such as these in Michigan, have decreased, according to a report on the country's ecosystems (Photo by David Kenyon of the Michigan Department of Natural Resources)

A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:

Transcript

A new report about the state of the nation’s ecosystems was recently released. And the results are so-so. Jennifer Guerra has the details:

Think of the report as the environmental equivalent of an annual physical exam.

Here are the results: the number of wetlands in the country is down and virtually every stream contains contaminants. On the plus side, it looks like soil erosion has decreased. And farmers are able to produce more food on less land.

Robin O’Malley plans to take those results to federal lawmakers. O’Malley is with the Heinz Center. It’s the non-partisan think tank responsible for the report.

“In the same way the chairmen of the federal reserve comes up and reports to congress about how our nation’s economy is doing, we think we need to do that kind of thing at a national scale for the environment.”

In addition to the report, the Heinz Center also included a little roadmap of sorts to help the lawmakers along.

For The Environment Report, I’m Jennifer Guerra.

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

Report: Renewable Energy Can Kickstart Job Growth

  • Turbines like these not only could help produce energy from a renewable and seemingly infinite resource, but could also create thousands of new jobs, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.

A new report says a national renewable energy policy could create thousands of new jobs in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:

Transcript

A new report says a national renewable energy policy could create thousands of new
jobs in the Midwest. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:


The report by the Union of Concerned Scientists urges Congress to adopt a policy
requiring 20 percent of the nation’s energy to be produced using renewable sources
by the year 2020. Those sources could be wind, solar, or geothermal energy. The report
says such a policy could create thousands of new jobs in manufacturing, construction and
maintenance.


Jeff Deyette is an energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. He says
rural communities – especially farmers – could be the biggest winners under the proposal.


“Farmers that were chosen to have wind power facilities sited on their land could get up
to as much as $4,000 per turbine to lease on their property.”


Deyette says a national renewable energy standard could save consumers nearly 50 billion
dollars by 2020. He says that’s because increased competition from renewables would help
lower the demand and the price of natural gas.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Erin Toner.

Related Links