Tag: lake superior

Anglers Competing With Cormorants

  • The cormorant population is booming in the region, and some anglers say they're competing too hard with the birds for fish. (Photo courtesy of Steve Mortensen, Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe)

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to catch the big one. But they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters. Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many cormorants now. And they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control cormorants:

Transcript

Anglers around the Great Lakes are eager for a summer of fishing. Everyone wants to
catch the big one, but they’re getting some competition. It comes in the form of the
double-crested cormorant. The big black birds with long necks are fish eaters.
Cormorants were nearly wiped out by the now-banned pesticide, DDT, in the 1970’s. But
now cormorants are back in big numbers. Some anglers feel there are too many
cormorants now, and they say the birds are eating too many fish. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports on one experimental effort to control
cormorants:


(sound of waves)


Robin Whaley often fishes here on Knife River. It’s the biggest spawning ground for
rainbow trout on the north shore of Lake Superior. But today she’s watching the
cormorants on Knife Island, a quarter-mile offshore.


The cormorant population is booming. About a hundred cormorants lived on the island
last year.


“I guess they’re just coming up into this area in the last few years and becoming a
problem, for degrading habitat and for eating little fish.”


Cormorants are native to this area, but they haven’t been around much in the last few
decades, because of poisoning from the pesticide DDT.


The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources stocks rainbow trout here. This year
they put 40,000 young fish into the river. Anglers like Robin Whaley hope the little fish
will grow big enough for them to catch someday.


The little fish face a lot of predators and hazards and the cormorants are one more threat.
Some people would like to reduce that threat. It’s illegal to kill cormorants. They’re
protected by law because they’re a migratory bird.


But a new federal rule says if they’re threatening a resource, people can fight back in a
different way.


Bill Paul runs the Agriculture Department’s Wildlife Services Program in Minnesota. He
sent workers onto Knife Island to try to keep the cormorants from nesting. Their methods
are experimental – but they’re pretty basic.


“We put up some flapping tarps in wind, a couple of yellow raincoat scarecrows, we also
put up ten flashing highway barricade lights, we also have a light siren device out there
that goes during the night.”


The workers also used special firecrackers shot by guns at passing birds to scare them
away.


They did this for two weeks during the cormorants’ nesting season. Bill Paul says even
with all that noise and commotion it wasn’t easy to scare them away.


“They seem to be fairly smart birds and real persistent at coming back to Knife Island.
So we’re uncertain yet whether our activities are actually going to keep them off there
long-term.”


As part of their study, researchers had permission to kill 25 cormorants to find out what
they’d been eating. They wanted to see how much of a threat the birds were to game fish
like the rainbow trout.


They found fish in the cormorants’ stomachs all right. But not the kind most people like
to catch and eat.


Don Schreiner supervises the Lake Superior fishery for the Minnesota DNR. He says
he’d need more than just a few samples to really know what the birds are eating.


“My guess is that cormorants are opportunists and if there’s a small silver fish out there
and he’s just hanging out and the cormorant has that available to eat, he’ll eat it. The
question becomes, is this a significant part of the population that they’re consuming, or
isn’t it?”


Despite the concerns of some anglers, researchers have been studying cormorants for
years, and so far they haven’t been able to prove the birds are harming wild fish
populations.


John Pastor is an ecologist at the University of Minnesota Duluth. He says the study at
Knife River won’t prove anything useful either.


He says it ignores the bigger picture. Pastor says you can’t just look at one predator and
come to any firm conclusions. There could be lots of reasons why there aren’t many
steelhead, or rainbow trout.


“Changes in land use. All the adult steelhead out there eating the young of the year
steelhead. Maybe it’s some pollutant in the lake. You never know. But it’s easy to fix on
the predator as the problem, because people see a cormorant dive down and come up with
a fish, and they say to themselves, I could have caught that fish.”


Pastor says even if the cormorants are eating lots of young rainbow trout, it doesn’t
necessarily mean the birds are hurting the overall trout population.


And even for an angler like Robin Whaley, the concern about the trout is mixed with a
feeling of respect for the cormorant.


“I admire the bird very much, but human beings, we’re in the business of controlling
habitats and populations, and this is just another case of that.”


For many anglers, the ultimate question in this competition between predators is simple.
It’s about who gets the trout – cormorants or humans.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Sport of Kings Saving Birds

  • The Goshawk named Buffy is screeching in defense of her master. Goshawks are considered some of the most difficult birds to train for falconry. They're feisty and fast, but that also means they can hunt for more advanced game like duck and pheasant. (Photo by Corbin Sullivan)

Falconry was once called the “sport of kings.” Royals trained hawks and falcons to hunt for smaller birds and animals. Birds of prey were revered by the ruling class, and the birds were protected from hunters. Some say it was the beginning of wildlife conservation. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports on some falconers who are keeping the sport and its conservation heritage alive:

Transcript

Falconry was once called the “sport of kings.” Royals trained hawks and falcons to hunt for
smaller birds and animals. Birds of prey were revered by the ruling class, and the birds were
protected from hunters. Some say it was the beginning of wildlife conservation. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Corbin Sullivan reports on some falconers who are keeping the sport and its
conservation heritage alive:


That’s Buffy. She’s a full-grown Goshawk and she’s angry because I’m a little too close to her
master.


Buffy’s named after a television character who slays vampires. She’s one of two Goshawks that
Dave Hogan uses for hunting near his Southeast Michigan home.


Buffy is tall — about 17 inches high — and thick, with feathers ruffled in the stiff winter wind.
The bells on her feet jingle when she stirs.


It’s too blustery for her to hunt today. But when she does hunt, she perches on Hogan’s fist,
waiting for a rabbit or pheasant to flush.


When game does appear, Buffy springs from Hogan’s leather glove. After she’s killed her prey,
she brings it back to him.


But Hogan’s quick to point out that he’s not the only one who gets something out of the hunt.


“It’s a partnership. They know that you’re out there helping them catch game. They rely on you.
You’re the dog for them and you’re the setup man for them. And they understand that.”


Dave Hogan has been practicing falconry since he was 15 years old. He’s 52 now. That’s 37
years. He uses birds of prey to hunt, he rehabilitates them and he breeds them. With all that
experience, he’s reached the highest level of falconry – a master falconer.


Hogan says some falconers keep the meat that the birds catch for themselves, but he has a lot of
mouths to feed.


The game that Buffy and her mate, Spike, catch helps to feed the birds that Hogan rehabilitates.


Right now he’s got an endangered Merlin and a Red-tailed Hawk. The Merlin broke its wing and
the hawk dislocated its shoulder.


He doesn’t want to get attached to the birds, so he hasn’t given them names. But Hogan will feed
and exercise the birds until they can return to nature.


Hogan says besides tending to injured birds, falconers also have a big role in conserving the birds
they train. Often a master falconer will capture a bird in its first year, train it and then let it go.


Hogan says it’s common to let the bird go only a year later. They’re left to their own devices.
But he says after a year, they’re fully grown and better able to fend for themselves.


Hogan says taking young birds lightens the burden on a crowded nest. And he says a lot of birds
can use that help.


“Eighty percent of all the hawks, eagles, falcons that are born die in the first year. It is that hard
for them to make a living. They get kicked out of the nest when they’re young. There’s
anywhere from, depending on the species, from one to four young in the nest. And the nest sits
way up high in a real tall tree, and very often one of them gets knocked out of the nest.”


So, by using the young birds, falconers say their sport is important in helping birds of prey
survive.


In central Wisconsin, another hunter, Kurt Reed, is about to apply for master falconer status. It
takes seven years to reach this level.


Reed is training his second Red-tailed hawk in a forest behind his home. He says he’s learned a
lot about falconry in the past seven years.


“In taking care of or training a Red-tailed Hawk. It’s all about weight control and
responsiveness. So for example, today my hawk is a little on the heavy side. He’s about 1340
grams and that’s about two ounces more than I would like him to be if I was going to go hunting
with him today.”


It’s beautiful outside, and sunny. Reed says days like this can be bad days to hunt, especially
when the bird is packing some extra ounces.


“If you take your hawk out when they’re way overweight, they’re going to go sit up in a tree and
sun themselves, and you’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.”


And that’s just what happened a few minutes later. He let his bird – Bucky – go for a test flight.


So he let the bird go about half an hour ago and it’s still up there – just looking around. It’s
changed trees quite a few times but it doesn’t seem to want to come down any time soon.


Bucky never did come down while I was there. Reed says Bucky does this all the time. He says
he’s learned that patience is the most important skill in falconry.


And Reed says the hard work gives falconers a deep appreciation for the birds they train.


That appreciation might be the reason many of these falconers go beyond daily hunting to help
birds of prey in need.


In fact, falconers have been credited for helping to bring the Peregrine Falcon back from the brink
of extinction.


Back in Michigan, one organization was instrumental in bringing Peregrines back to that state.


The Michigan Hawking Club helped save the endangered bird of prey in urban environments.
One of them is Zug Island in the Detroit River.


Zug’s Barren. It has no trees, just a giant steel mill. Still, Peregrines nest in the mill’s steel
girders just like they’re big tree branches.


Dave Hogan is the president of the Hawking Club. He says young birds would die if falconers
didn’t help them.


“Since 1991, out of the 70 young the wild Peregrines in Detroit have produced, we have had
hands on help on over 31 of them, where we’ve rescued them from certain things and put ’em
back in the nest or raised ’em and put ’em back in a family situation where the parents can take care of
them.”


Hogan says it’s not just about using the birds to hunt. He says the best part about falconry is
seeing the birds live to fly free, whether they come back or not.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Corbin Sullivan.

Related Links

Great Lakes State Lags Behind in Water Regulations

  • Harry Randolph lives above a shallow aquifer in southeast Michigan. His dad taught him the vanishing rural folk practice of well witching (locating underground streams). His dad used a cherry branch. Harry uses bent metal rods. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

States around the Great Lakes regulate large-scale water withdrawals with one exception. Michigan – the state surrounded by the Great Lakes – does not restrict withdrawals. Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm says it’s “shameful” that Michigan is the last of the Great Lakes states to require permits before pumping large amounts of water. But the businesses and farmers who use the water don’t see a need for regulation in a state that’s surrounded by the world’s largest freshwater supply. We have more from the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett:

Transcript

States around the Great Lakes regulate large scale water withdrawals with one exception.
Michigan – the state surrounded by the Great Lakes – does not restrict withdrawals. Michigan
Governor Jennifer Granholm says it’s “shameful” that Michigan is the last of the Great Lakes
states to require permits before pumping large amounts of water. But the businesses and farmers
who use the water don’t see a need for regulation in a state that’s surrounded by the world’s
largest freshwater supply. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:


“This is a restoration on a Model A. ’29. That’s a ’31.”


Harry Randolph runs an auto body shop in the southeast part of Michigan. He needs water to
help prep the cars for sanding and spray painting. He also needs water for his home next door. In
2000 his well went dry … like hundreds of other wells in the area. He dug deeper for water.
That worked for a while. But in 2002, his well went dry again.


He collected rainwater to wash the cars in his body shop, and had drinking water delivered to his
house. Randolph and his neighbors blame a nearby mining operation that was pumping millions
of gallons of water to get to the sand and gravel underground.


They believe that theory was proven when water came back a few weeks after the quarry stopped
pumping in early 2003.


“It’s all pretty clean. You’ll hear the pump come on in a minute. It’s come up faster than it ever
has.”


In his corner of the state, homes and businesses sit above a shallow aquifer. And Randolph says
it should be the state’s job to make sure that the big kid on the block isn’t draining too much from
a sensitive water supply.


“I mean, pump the water, sure go ahead and pump the water. But when you’re hurting a whole
community because they haven’t got the water on account of it, they should be stopped pumping
that water. Or regulated.”


But Michigan doesn’t regulate water withdrawals. It’s the only Great Lakes state that doesn’t.
There’s so much water around Michigan, not much thought’s been given to limiting use… except
when that use was simply exporting the water.


Six years ago, officials in Ontario, Canada agreed to let a company called the Nova Group ship
about 150 million gallons of Lake Superior water to Asia every year. There was an immediate
and loud protest. People didn’t like the idea of shipping Great Lakes water to other countries.


The uproar over the plan forced the provincial government to rescind that permit. But it was
enough to worry Great Lakes leaders. And later that year, they started work on a regional plan to
prevent similar threats to Great Lakes water from other parts of the world.


What came out of the governors’ and premiers’ efforts was a regional agreement called Annex
2001, an amendment to an agreement between the U.S. and Canada. It commits the states and
provinces to come up with standards to protect Great Lakes water and to regulate large
withdrawals by this year. The Annex 2001 calls for two things:


One was to require users to register withdrawals of more than 100-thousand gallons a day. The
eight states and two provinces surrounding the Great Lakes have done that. But Michigan never
met the second requirement: that states regulate withdrawals of more than two million gallons a
day. Dennis Schornack chairs the U.S. sector of the International Joint Commission which works
to prevent and resolve water disputes between the U.S. and Canada.


To this point in time today, Michigan is the only state that has not complied with that piece of the
puzzle. And it’s sort of the price of admission to participate in consultations about withdrawals.
And Michigan so far hasn’t met that price of admission.


Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to pony up her state’s admission price with a
new plan to regulate large water withdrawals. It calls for new farms and businesses that pump
100-thousand gallons a day to apply for a state permit by the end of the decade.


But the state’s agriculture and business lobby has resisted similar plans in the past.


Scott Piggott is with the Michigan Farm Bureau.


“The farmers in Michigan, what’s really hard to get across to them: why. What is the benefit of a
full-blown, water use, comprehensive, regulation system on an area that doesn’t see scarcity of
the resource, that agriculture is an excellent steward of the resource. I think they’d feel it’d be a
regulation not worth having.”


But for people in a few pockets of Michigan, water has been scarce. Just ask autobody shop
owner Harry Randolph. And he’s not the only one. In rural central Michigan, people say their
wells go dry in the summertime when large-scale farms pump groundwater to irrigate their crops.


But those aren’t the withdrawals people worry about.


For much of the Great Lakes region, fears about water diversion usually involve arid southwest
states, or shipping freshwater in tanker ships to other parts of the world as the Nova Group
planned to do.


But Dennis Schornack of the IJC says the real problem of water diversion is not so far away. It’s
dealing the demand for water by the growing communities just outside the Great Lakes basin.


“And the people living just on the other side of the divide can’t use the water. They can see it,
they can smell it, they can swim in it, they can boat in it, fish in it. But they sure as heck can’t
use it for drinking water, or for industrial purposes.”


And advocates for water withdrawal regulations say unless Michigan gets its own house in order,
it’s going to be hard to say no to thirsty communities – whether they’re just outside the Great
Lakes basin, or on the other side of the globe.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

GREAT LAKES STATE LAGS BEHIND IN WATER REGULATIONS (Short Version)

  • Harry Randolph lives above a shallow aquifer in southeast Michigan. His dad taught him the vanishing rural folk practice of well witching (locating underground streams). His dad used a cherry branch. Harry uses bent metal rods. (Photo by Sarah Hulett)

Michigan is the only Great Lakes state that does not regulate large-scale water withdrawals. But the state’s Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to change that. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:

Transcript

Michigan is the only Great Lakes state that does not regulate large-scale water withdrawals. But
the state’s Governor Jennifer Granholm is hoping to change that. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Sarah Hulett reports:


Michigan sits right in the middle of the world’s largest fresh water supply. And Governor
Granholm says unless the state starts to regulate the water use of its own farms, golf courses, and
power companies, Michigan won’t have the political clout to say no to other interests outside the
state.


“I do not want to see other states coming into this region and dipping their straw into the Great
Lakes and pulling it out. If we don’t have a law to prevent that, that’s what’s going to happen.”


The Democratic Governor’s proposal calls for new farms and businesses that pump more than a
hundred-thousand gallons a day to apply for a state permit by the end of the decade.


But Republicans control the state Legislature. And some of them worry that new permit
requirements would burden already struggling farms and businesses.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sarah Hulett.

Related Links

City’s Growth Tied to Superfund Site

  • This beach and its surrounding area is one of 409 contaminated sites on the EPA's National Priorities List in the eight Great Lakes states. The sign tells people to wash their skin immediately if they come into contact with the tars and oils washing up on shore. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Ashland, Wisconsin is a small city along the coast of western Lake Superior. It was once a town that thrived on an industrial economy. Today the town is living with a legacy of pollution, and people are fighting over how to clean it up. Ashland’s mayor says he’s not giving up on the city’s future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:

Transcript

Ashland, Wisconsin is a small city along the coast of western Lake Superior. It was once a town
that thrived on an industrial economy. Today the town is living with a legacy of pollution, and
people are fighting over how to clean it up. Ashland’s mayor says he’s not giving up on the city’s
future. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill has more:


Ashland, Wisconsin, sits on Chequamegon Bay. It’s a wide curve of gently sloping land on the
south shore of Lake Superior. There used to be a busy port here. Ships moved in and out, loaded
with iron ore, lumber, and coal.


But those ships are gone. Ashland’s industry is gone, and the town is trying to create an economy
based on tourism.


But the bay is polluted. The waves lapping gently on the shore carry a thin film of oily scum.
Bright yellow signs warn people not to wade in the water or run their boats in the bay. A year ago,
the EPA named this part of the bay a Superfund site.


It’s not the kind of place that’s likely to attract tourists. But that’s exactly what Ashland’s mayor
wants to do.


“This lakefront is really underdeveloped. And in a service-based economy like we’re at, we could
really be turning some money for our community here.”


Fred Schnook wants to double the size of the city marina. He wants to turn the old sewage
treatment plant into a museum.


“There could be retail shops, there could be a marine repair shop, to have all these boats that we
have here fixed.”


Ashland is within a short day’s drive of Chicago, Milwaukee, and other major Midwestern cities.
The tourism potential is huge.


But a gas plant polluted the bay years ago, and there’s no money to clean it up.


For seventy years, a company made gas to heat and light Ashland’s homes. Most cities had gas
plants like this. The raw material was coal or petroleum. By-products were tars and oils in
various thicknesses. Some of the waste was as solid as roofing tar, some was as runny as used
engine oil. The gas company sold some of the by-products to other industries. It dumped the rest
into Chequamegon Bay. The plant closed years ago.


“So we have the legacy of history.”


Jerry Winslow is an engineer with Xcel Energy, formerly called NSP. NSP bought the
manufactured gas plant in 1976. Now it’s used as a place to repair equipment.


Winslow says other industries along the bay, including a city landfill, added their own pollution
over the years.


“Manufactured gas plant being one issue. Wood treating being another issue with the same kind of
coal tar products. Landfill, which gets a little bit of everything.”


Because it owns the manufactured gas plant, Xcel will probably have to pay a big chunk of the
eventual clean-up cost. But Xcel says if the old city dump is part of the problem, Ashland itself
should bear some of the cost.


Eight years ago the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources began studying the pollution
problems here. The tars and oils can cause cancer. And animal studies suggest they might cause
infertility.


Xcel and the DNR worked together to cover places on land where the pollutants were bubbling to
the surface. And Xcel is slowly pumping the tars out of the deep aquifer that runs under the old
coal plant and into the bay.


The problem right now is the bay itself. The pollutants have settled on the bottom, and whenever
there’s a northeast wind, they get churned up and rise to the surface.


Since the bay is listed as a Superfund site, the EPA is in charge. The federal agency says Xcel will
have to pay for most of the cleanup. So the EPA wants Xcel to figure out how the pollution should
be cleaned up.


Ashland’s mayor, Fred Schnook, doesn’t like that idea. He says Xcel is looking for the cheapest
way to clean up the site.


“Xcel’s fighting any kind of dredging that has to take place. Some of the options include capping
and other remediation that would be a heck of a lot cheaper than dredging. And again, it’s
understandable what Xcel is doing, they have a profit motive at stake here.”


Schnook says he’s looking out for Ashland. He says Xcel doesn’t have the same motivation to
move quickly and do a thorough cleanup.


But pollution cleanups only get more expensive as time goes by. Jerry Winslow has worked on
several other manufactured gas sites. He says they weren’t so complicated to clean up, because
they weren’t sitting next to a lake.


“You don’t have to worry about the fish, the terns, the birds, the whole ecosystem, the worms, etc.
etc. Here we need to worry about that.”


Winslow says Xcel won’t have plans for a clean-up for at least two more years.


But Ashland mayor Fred Schnook says he’ll push the company to move faster. And he’ll be
keeping a close eye on its work. He says Ashland’s future depends on a clean Chequamegon Bay.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

New Lock for Great Lakes Shipping?

Port directors are trying to gather steam to have a new large lock built at Sault Saint Marie, Michigan. They say without the improvement, ports on Lakes Michigan and Superior will lose the ability to be major players in shipping. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson reports:

Transcript

Port directors are trying to gather steam to have a new large lock built at Sault Saint Marie,
Michigan. They say without the improvement, ports on Lakes Michigan and Superior will lose
the ability to be major players in shipping. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Mike Simonson
reports:


The Soo Locks have been around since 1855… with the largest of the locks built around 1970.
That’s the “Poe Lock,” the only one that super-carriers, so-called “thousand footers,” can use to
get from the lower Great Lakes to Lake Superior.


Duluth Port Authority’s Captain Ray Skelton says the Poe Lock isn’t enough.


“Should something happen to, bear in mind the lock opened in 1970, 65% of our carrying
capacity would be held up. So the concept of that second, larger lock does two things: Number
one, gives us the capacity to get away from these traffic jams that occur at the Poe, and in
addition to that if they had to de-water the Poe sometime during the season, we’d still have access
for our wide beam ships.”


Skelton says 65% of the lock would be built with federal money. The rest will come from the
eight Great Lakes states. The total is expected to be $225 million. Michigan, New York and
Pennsylvania have committed money to the new lock.


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

Related Links

Lake Levels Low Despite Rain

Even though it’s been a rainy summer, the shipping industry, boaters and beachgoers are still dealing with low water levels on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports:

Transcript

Even though it’s been a rainy summer, the shipping industry, boaters and beachgoers
are still
dealing with low water levels on the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Rebecca
Williams reports:


All the rain this season has raised hope for an end to low water levels. But Lakes
Michigan,
Huron and Superior continue to be much lower than average for the fourth year in a row.


Frank Quinn is a hydrologist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration. He
says rain is not the only factor affecting lake levels. Temperatures and
evaporation also affect
them. Quinn says the recent rain has helped, but more rain is needed.


“We’ve averaged for the last year about 90% of our normal precipitation…we still
haven’t had
enough continuing rainfall to bring the levels back up to what their long-term
averages would
be.”


Rain has helped raise the lower lakes, Ontario and Erie, but NOAA’s 6-month outlook
shows low
levels continuing on the upper lakes through early spring.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.

Forests for Lumber or Wildlife?

  • Loggers and environmentalists fight continually over the use of national forests. Managers at many national forests around the country are developing new long-range plans. (Photo by Stephanie Hemphill)

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:

Transcript

Loggers and environmentalists are in a continual fight over the use of
national forests. One of their battlegrounds is the long-range
planning process. Every ten to fifteen years, the U.S. Forest Service
designs a new plan for each national forest. Right now, several
forests in the Northwoods are getting new plans. The Forest Service
says it’s paying more attention to biodiversity, and wants to encourage
more old growth forests. Critics on the environmental side say the
new plans are just business as usual. Loggers say they still
can’t cut enough trees. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:


(sound of car door closing, footsteps in woods)


Jerry Birchem is a logger. He’s visiting one of his harvest sites on
land owned by St. Louis County, in northeastern Minnesota. The highest
quality wood will be turned into wooden dowels… other logs will go to a
lumber mill… the poorest quality will be turned into paper.


Birchem tries to get the highest possible value from each tree. He says in the last ten
years, the price of trees has tripled.


“We have to pay more for timber and the mills want to pay less, and we’re caught in the
middle of trying to survive in this business climate.”


Birchem likes buying timber from the county, like at this logging site. He hardly ever
cuts trees from the national forest anymore. He’d like to, but the Forest Service doesn’t
make much of its land available for logging. The agency says it doesn’t have enough staff
to do the environmental studies required before trees can be cut on federal land.


Jerry Birchem says loggers need the Forest Service to change that.


“You know there needs to be processes set in place so you know, it doesn’t take
so long to set up these timber sales. I mean, they’ve got to go through so
many analyses and so many appeals processes.”


Birchem says it should be harder for environmental groups to get in the way of timber
sales. But not everybody agrees with Birchem.


Clyde Hanson lives in Grand Marais, on the edge of Lake Superior. He’s an active
member of the Sierra Club.


He says it’s true loggers are taking less timber off federal lands in recent
years. But he says the Forest Service still isn’t protecting the truly special
places that deserve to be saved.


He says a place like Hog Creek should be designated a wilderness area, where no trees
can be cut.


(sound of creek, birds)


“Very unique mixture, we must be right at the transition between two types of forest.”


Red pine thrive here, along with jackpine and tamarack. It’s rough and swampy country,
far from roads. So far, loggers have left these trees alone.


But with the value of trees skyrocketing, Hanson says the place will be logged eventually.


Forest Service planners made note of the fact that the Hog Creek area is relatively
untouched by humans. They could have protected it, but they decided not to.


“And we think that’s a mistake, because this is our last chance to protect wilderness and
provide more wilderness for future generations. If we don’t do it now, eventually there’ll
be enough roads or enough logging going on in these places that by the next forest plan
it’ll be too late.”


But the Forest Service says it is moving to create more diversity in the
woods. It wants a forest more like what nature would produce if left
to her own devices.


The agency says it will reduce the amount of aspen in the forest. Aspen has been
encouraged, because it grows fast. When it’s cut, it grows back quickly, so loggers and
paper companies can make more money.


The trouble is, an aspen forest only offers habitat for some kinds of animals,
such as deer and grouse. Other animals, especially songbirds, need older trees to
live in.


So the Forest Service wants to create more variety in the woods, with more old trees than
there are now. But how to get the forest from here to there, is the problem.
Duane Lula is one of the Forest Service planners. He says fires and windstorms are nature’s way of producing
diverse forests. They sweep the woods periodically, killing big stands of older trees, and
preparing the soil for pines and other conifers. Jackpines, for instance, used to be more
common in the northwoods. Lula says the only practical way for man to mimic nature is
by cutting trees down.


“We can’t have those fires anymore just because people live here, there are private
homes here. There’s no way that we could replicate those fires. Timber management is one way of regenerating those jackpine stands in
lieu of having major fires.”


But Lula says the main purpose of timber cutting in the new plan is to move the forest
toward the diversity the agency wants, not to produce wood. And he says that shows the
Forest Service is looking at the woods in a new way.


“The previous plan tended to be very focused on how many acres you were going to
clearcut, how much timber you were going to produce, how much wildlife habitat you
were going to produce, and this one is trying to say, if we have this kind of desired
condition on the ground that we’re shooting for, then these other things will come from
that.”


As it does in the planning process in other national forests around the Great Lakes, the
Forest Service will adjust the plan after hearing from the public. Loggers,
environmentalists, and everyone else will have a chance to have their say. A final version
will be submitted to the Regional Forester in Milwaukee early next year. It could then
face a challenge in court.


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.

Related Links

Some Relief for Low Lake Levels

The soggy spring has helped raise water levels in the Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is above average, but the upper lakes could still use more rain. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein explains:

Transcript

The soggy spring and summer so far has helped raise water levels in the
Great Lakes. Lake Ontario is above average, but the upper lakes could still
use more rain. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s David Sommerstein
reports.

A few years of drastically low water levels have stranded boats and docks
and forced shippers to light their loads throughout the Great Lakes, but
Chuck O’Neill, of New York Sea Grant, says spring rains have come to the
rescue. Precipitation was 30% higher than normal in May region wide, 60%
higher than normal in Lakes Erie and Ontario:


“And when you put that much water into a basin that responds quickly like
the Lake Ontario basin, that’s reflected in the lake level quite dramatically.”


Lake Ontario is up more than 30 inches from March and is now four inches
above average. O’Neill says the rain has helped the upper lakes some, but
they’re still low, especially Lake Superior.


“That is such a huge lake even when they do have above average
precipitation, it takes an awful lot more above average precipitation to
push that lake up anything significantly.”


The rise and fall of the lakes is natural over time, but many experts worry
climate change is lowering the watermark for the long term.

For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m David Sommerstein.

Artist Fishes for Inspiration

  • Return of the Sturgeon, by Ladislav Hanka.

The salmon, bass, and other species of fish that swim in the lakes, rivers, and streams of the Great Lakes region provide food for all kinds of creatures, including people. And for the many recreational fishermen, they’re sport. But the life that fish lead is also inspiration for artists. In cooperation with Public Radio International’s program Studio 360, the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Tamar Charney paid a visit to artist Ladislav Hanka. His etchings explore cycles of life, death, and regeneration in nature and more often than not, depict fish:

Transcript

The salmon, bass, and other species of fish that swim in the lakes, rivers, and streams of the Great
Lakes region provide food for all kinds of creatures, including people. And for the many
recreational fisherman, they’re sport. But the life that fish lead is also inspiration for artists. In
cooperation with Public Radio International’s program Studio 360, The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Tamar Charney paid a visit to artist Ladislav Hanka. His etchings explore cycles of
life, death, and regeneration in nature and more often than not, depict fish:


Ladislav Hanka asks people to take a look at life from a different angle. He does this in his art,
and he does this in real life as I found out when I asked him how old he was when he started
drawing.


“I’ll show you. (footsteps) We’re going to make a little expedition under my kitchen table. So
get on your back, slide under the table with me here, and look up, and there you see some of the
first drawings I ever did. They’re nothing. They are just chicken scratch, but it’s kind of neat.”


Now that he’s an adult, the kitchen is the only room in his house in that isn’t an art studio.


Ladislav Hanka works where you’d expect the living room to be. But there’s no sofa here. Just
lots of counter space, storage drawers, and the press he uses to print his etchings. The corner
where he sketches is cluttered with cans of colored pencils, sheets of paper, and stuff you sure
won’t find at an art supply store.


“Now here is a vat of pickled fish.”


There’s trout, pickerel, a goldfish and other slimy brown creatures in a smelly preservative. He’ll
draw them and at times even dissect them. But when the lakes and streams aren’t frozen, he puts
the bucket away and heads outside for inspiration. He spends a lot of his time hanging out along
rivers fly fishing and sketching.


“I’ll sometimes put on waders, the fishing gear, and take a sketchbook out and just wade around up
to my chest in the water and sit in the lilies on the edge with a sketchbook.”


He uses the sketches as the basis for etchings. They’re inspired by what he observes outside and
from what he learned in school when he studied zoology. Ladislav Hanka’s etchings are very
detailed, but they’re not what you’d see if you just looked outside. There’s very little, if any color,
just warm tones of black ink on creamy paper. Some are landscapes with tangles of tree roots,
dirt, and rocks. Others are underground or underwater scenes with fish, birds, and bugs,
sometimes in various stages of decay.


“It’s a 14-by-18 plate size – it’s an etching. And there’s a moon, a full moon, shining in a very dark
background, very organic sorts of textures with a feeling of some sticks and roots and unclear
exactly what it is.”


At the bottom of the image lurking in the dark quiet shadows are fish called burbots.


“There’s a skeletal element to this burbot. The head is more defined than the rest of the body. And
it’s obviously moving among the sticks and up the light source and through various little bones
and skeletons. The intent is it is something inevitable, that it has to go up to the moon. And the
interesting thing with the burbots are that they do, indeed, spawn at night. They spawn in the
middle of winter. So there’s something I find very compelling about this drama, this ancient
drama, that keeps recurring and happening every year under the ice, in the cold, and under the
moonlit night. There’s a romance about it. I keep going back to spawning cycles.”


Watching salmon spawn has become his yearly ritual. Every fall he sits on the bank of a nearby
creek to watch Great Lakes salmon spawn. Salmon return to the place where they were born to
create the next generation in the moments before they die.


“It’s a forgotten little place that I think once used to be an industrial waste sight almost. A bunch
of 55 gallon drums and tires and poison ivy and all kinds of stuff. There are the salmon coming
up stream, among the logs, and the tires, and spawning. It’s this grotesque and beautiful things all
at once. It’s a spectacle, a ballet, death dancing lightly among them and picking over them, and
there they are, trying to spawn before they die, before the energy seeps out of their system.
Eternal cycles, I guess that’s what it’s about. We’re so used to thinking as in human terms, of a
linear way of thought – you evolve, society evolves, everything goes forward in one direction.
And yet the fact is every one of us lives life much more cyclically than we really admit to
ourselves, and we are disgustingly like our parents and like their parents, and like our great-
grandparents and you repeat the stupid things you can’t stomach in your parents, and there you are
repeating the same things years later. There’s something cyclical about it, but it is also beautiful.”


But why you keep coming back to fish?


“Why do I keep coming back to fish? Well, maybe there is something in all of us that wants to
migrate upstream and return to the source – the going home business, whatever home might ever
have been.”


For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Tamar Charney.