Environmentalists are hoping people’s Christmas trees end up in parks or gardens after the holidays, rather than the dump. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
Transcript
Environmentalists are hoping peoples’ Christmas trees end up in parks or
gardens after the holidays, rather than the dump. The Great Lakes Radio
Consortium’s Erin Toner reports:
According to the National Christmas Tree Association, between 25 and
30 million real Christmas trees are sold in the U.S. every year, and the
majority of those trees are recycled after the holidays.
Jim Corliss is with the National Christmas Tree Association. He says the
group made a big recycling push about 15 years ago.
“We gave a recycling award each year to a municipality or entity which
did a good job of recycling Christmas trees, and according to our surveys
that we did as the years went by we raised the number of recycled trees
in this country from somewhere in the 30 to up to the 70 percentile.”
Corliss says municipalities use wood chips from Christmas trees on park
pathways, in planters or sell the chips as compost.
A new book says that much of the space covered by parking lots is only designed for use for the holiday rush, and is unused for the rest of the year. (Photo by Lars Sundström)
A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this second report in a two-part series:
Transcript
A growing number of city planners say we’re building more parking than we really need. They say the fact that nearly all parking is free, makes the situation worse. Their ideas are turning nearly fifty years of urban planning on its head. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Shawn Allee has this report:
If you had to pay for a parking space, would you think twice before making a frivolous trip, say, to a convenience store for a candy bar?
City planning researcher Donald Shoup bets you would stay home if you had to pay, or maybe you’d walk instead. That’s a point he makes in his recent book, The High Cost of Free Parking. In it, he tries to show that free parking entices us to waste gas. He says paved lots also compete for better uses of land, like parks or housing. Shoup says the problem’s very real – but to see it, you need to step out of your automobile.
“Any view of suburbia from the air will show you a lot of parking lots and a lot of these parking lots will have empty parking spaces.”
I decided to take a look at what’s Shoup’s talking about in Lincolnwood Illinois, a Chicago suburb. I cheated by skipping the air fare, though. Some new Internet sites can provide satellite photos of your area. I joined two of Lincolnwood’s city planners, Tim Clarke and John Lebeque, in their office to get a birds-eye view of their home turf.
Clarke: “The plus is closer.”
Allee: “Right, and go ahead and see if you can find… There it is. Lincolnwood.”
Clarke: “Wow.”
Lebeque: “Whoa.”
Allee: “So find a retail strip.”
Turns out, Donald Shoup was right. Within a minute, we find a popular grocery store, with a huge parking lot. Tim Clarke recognizes it.
“It’s probably one-third filled. I’m not sure when this aerial was taken. I’ve never seen the parking lot full.”
So why should a busy store’s parking lot be two-thirds empty most of the time? Shoup says it’s the cities’ fault. Cities make the rules. They say how many spaces each new business, house, and apartment building must provide.
By his estimation, city government does a poor job at guessing how much parking we really need. Shoup says governments force businesses to provide enough spaces to meet peak demand, such as the day after Thanksgiving, the busiest shopping day of the year.
“Everyone understands the advice, don’t build your church for Easter Sunday, but we build our parking for the week before Christmas.”
In other words, cities tell stores to build parking for the year’s busiest two weeks, even if most of the spaces are empty the rest of the time. He says, without city pressure, a lot of businesses would create smaller lots or they’d sell off parking space they don’t need.
Tim Clarke, the Lincolnwood planner, says suburbs do err on the side of too much parking, but they’re often planning for future growth. He gives an example of a small Lincolnwood dental practice that had 7 examination rooms, but only used three of them. The dentist wanted to build fewer parking spaces than the village required, because it was small and family-run.
“But one could imagine that that family at some time in life would sell that business and someone would come in and want to use all 6 or 7 examining rooms at one time.”
So city planners have to look at the long term use of a building.
Many of Lincolnwood’s largest retailers actually build more than they need to. Bob Johnson runs a Lowe’s Home Improvement store built in late 2003. He says stores like his don’t gamble with having too few spaces.
“I think customers are going to shop, again, where they feel most comfortable and what’s convenient for them. The key word there being convenience. If they’re inconvenienced, they might drive another couple blocks down the road.”
Shoup says that’s a calculation that businesses have to make. He says market forces can help decide how many spaces should be built, but government should not force retailers to have too many spaces. Nor should it force them to offer only free parking.
In fact, Professor Shoup says cities, especially suburban cities, could use land more efficiently if businesses controlled demand for parking like they control everything else: by setting the right price.
“I’m just saying that cities should not force anyone to provide more parking than drivers are willing to pay for.”
Killing our appetite for cheap, abundant parking could be difficult, but Shoup says pressure’s building for change. He says, as suburbs grow, space gets tight. And that raises prices for all land uses.
“I think most people now are focused on the high cost of housing. I think we’ve got our priorities wrong if housing is expensive and the parking is free.”
In his battle against too much parking, Shoup says the most effective weapon might be a little comparison shopping. Free parking might not seem so cheap once it’s compared to the cost of other needs.
One airport in the region is considering turning some of its unused land into a playground for dogs and their owners. (Photo by Kat Shurtz)
Large expanses of open land often surround airport buildings and runways as noise buffers. Now, at one airport in the region, there’s a plan to put that land to use. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:
Transcript
Large expanses of open land often surround airport buildings and runways as noise buffers. Now, at one airport in the region, there’s a plan to put that land to use. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:
When Ryan Mccue was a city official in Milwaukee, he says he took call after call from residents complaining that animals were running loose in area parks. The problem was dog owners weren’t keeping their pets on leashes. Now Mccue thinks he’s come up with a solution: set up a dog exercise area on land unlikely to be used for anything else.
“The airport has a lot of land that’s vacant. And it’s a great spot for it. There aren’t very many neighbors around the airport so the dogs barking won’t disturb any neighbors.”
If aproved, the exercise area would be established on land owned by Mitchell International Airport near Milwaukee. He says the 27 acres would be fenced in and kept separate from the airport
facilities. Mccue says, so far, the airport and the FAA are supportive of the plan. And if it’s approved, he says it could be used as an example of how other airports can make use of their open space.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Christina Shockley.
Largeflower bellwort (Uvularia grandiflora) is one of the wildflowers declining at many of the sites studied by University of Wisconsin researchers. (Photo courtesy of Dave Rogers, UW Herbarium)
Don Reiter manages wildlife at the Menominee Tribal Forest in northeastern Wisconsin. The forest retains a healthy diversity of plant life, and has a low deer population. (MPR photo/Stephanie Hemphill)
University of Wisconsin researcher Tom Rooney says forest and wildlife managers should try to maintain a diversity of forest types, and not favor deer or any other particular species. (Photo courtesy of Tom Rooney)
Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports:
Transcript
Most of us think of the white-tailed deer as a graceful and cherished
part of the natural scene. But it turns out when there are too many
deer, it’s bad for some of the plants in the forest. New research
suggests deer may be a prime culprit in a worrisome loss of rare
plants in the woods. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie
Hemphill reports:
Gardeners in many suburbs and rural areas know deer are good at
mowing down hosta, tulips and other favorite plants. In the woods,
deer munch on the small plants that live on the forest floor… plants
such as orchids, lilies, and other wildflowers.
Fifty years ago, researchers at the University of Wisconsin surveyed
hundreds of acres in the state, and made careful records of the plants
on those sites. In those days, the deer population was a lot lower
than it is now. In the last couple of years, two biologists went back to
many of those same sites and counted the plants living there now.
Tom Rooney says at most sites they found fewer different kinds of
plants.
“It tends to be the same species occurring over and again on the site.
You’re losing the rare species and picking up more and more
common species.”
He says they tried to link the decline in rare species to the fact that
the forest is getting older. But they found no evidence for that.
Instead, lead researcher Don Waller says the evidence points to
deer, which have increased dramatically over the last fifty years.
“The worst changes we’ve seen, ironically were in a couple of state
parks and a protected natural area, that showed losses of half or
more of species in 50 years. However, in these sites there was no
deer hunting, implying high densities of deer may be causing a lot of
the effects we see in the woods.”
Plants that rely on insects for pollination declined more than other
types of plants. Waller thinks it might be because the insect-
pollinated plants have showy flowers, which could catch the eye of a
wandering deer. As the flowering plants decline, the insects and
birds that rely on them for food could decline as well – bees, moths,
butterflies, and hummingbirds.
Waller says it’s worrisome because scientists don’t know how
particular insects and plants work together to support each other.
“As we’re losing parts of the ecosystem, we’re really not sure what
their full function is, they might play some crucial role we’re not aware
of and only too late might we become aware of the fact that this loss
led to an unraveling or threats to other species.”
Waller says the only places they studied that still have a healthy
diversity of plants are on Indian reservations. The Menominee Tribal
Forest in northeastern Wisconsin is pretty much like it used to be fifty
years ago.
(forest sounds under)
In this forest, there are only about ten deer per square mile. That’s
about as low as the deer population gets in Wisconsin. It’s not that
the tribe is hunting more deer; it’s the way the forest is grown.
Deer find lots to eat in young aspen woods; there’s less for them to
eat where pines and oaks and maples grow. Don Reiter is the wildlife
manager here. He says in the 360 square miles of the Menominee
forest, there’s really four different types of woods.
“We have pulpwood, we have northern hardwoods, white pine, red
pine, and again, the forest ecosystem as a whole, there’s plenty of
food out there for the deer.”
And because there aren’t too many deer, young pines and hemlocks
– and orchids and lilies – have a chance to grow.
In the upper Great Lakes states, wildlife officials have been trying to
thin the deer herd for several years. That’s because state officials
have been aware deer were causing problems by eating too many
plants. The recent study provides dramatic evidence.
In Minnesota, for instance, hunters are shooting four times the
number of deer they shot fifty years ago.
Steve Merchant is forest wildlife program consultant for the
Minnesota DNR. Merchant says the agency has liberalized its rules,
to encourage hunters to kill even more deer. But the number of
hunters hasn’t gone up in recent years. And lots of private
landowners post no-hunting signs.
“We need to have some help from people, people still need to get out
and hunt deer, and landowners need to provide that access for
people to harvest deer.”
Merchant says Minnesota is gradually trying to restore pine forests,
which were cut down for lumber and replaced with fast-growing
aspen. More pine forests could cut down on the deer population…
“But as long as we still have the strong demand for the aspen
markets that we do, and we manage those aspen forests in a
productive manner for wood fiber, we’re going to create a lot of good
white-tailed deer habitat.”
Merchant says it would take decades to change the woods enough to
reduce the deer population. And in the meantime, we’re losing more
and more of the rare flowers.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Farms that had been left to deteriorate are now being restored. (Photo courtesy of National Park Service)
The National Park Service not only protects scenic natural areas, it also preserves historic places. Occasionally those two missions compete. Right now the Park Service is trying to find a balance between managing a beautiful stretch of Great Lakes shoreline and restoring the remnants of a once thriving farm community that illustrates a rarely seen view of early agricultural life in this country. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:
Transcript
The National Park Service not only protects scenic natural areas, it also preserves historic places.
Occasionally those two missions compete. Right now the Park Service is trying to find a balance between
managing a beautiful stretch of Great Lakes shoreline and restoring the remnants of a once thriving farm
community that illustrates a rarely seen view of early agricultural life in this country. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Sally Eisele reports:
Millions of tourists visit the white sand beaches of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National lakeshore in northern
Michigan. Most of them pass right by Port Oneida. There are no tourist signs for the old farming
community along the scenic lakeshore highway. Really the first thing you notice is the graveyard.
(sound of cemetery gate)
The headstones display the faded names of the German and Bohemian immigrants who settled Port Oneida
in the 19th century. From the cemetery the remains of their farmsteads can be found along the narrow park
roads that weave their way toward Lake Michigan.
“Let’s see the lake over here.” (sound fades under)
On a bluff overlooking the lake, local historian Kathryn Eckert is strolling the grounds of one of the old
family farms. She’s with a group called Preserve Historic Sleeping Bear. It’s working with the Park
Service to save these farms.
“What is important is not just the houses and the buildings but the landscape as well. You see the
spirea, the raspberries… the open fields. Over here to the east the privy…”
The remnants of the farm are everywhere. The old rose bushes have grown wild. The daylilies now peak
from behind tall field grasses. But, the original footprint of the farmstead is clearly there.
“When I was growing up there, everybody had these little farms.”
Martin Basch is the great grandson of one of the first settlers. The original family farm, not far from the
cemetery, is now in ruins.
“When the park service took over the Martin Basch farm there was a barn there, a grainery a
blacksmith shop…and these buildings just collapsed.”
For many years that was what the park service wanted. When the national lakeshore was created in the
1970’s, park managers intended to let Port Oneida return to its original forested state. Park historian Kim
Mann says it took years for preservationists to convince them the rickety old buildings were as valuable as
the land.
“Trying to preserve the beauty the scenery, also the threatened and endangered species–things like
that were really easy. It was really difficult to come in and say this corncrib is significant? This
privy? That has still been a learning curve to help people understand that you don’t just save just
the one representational privy. You want to save the collection because it tells the whole story.”
Now, the 20 farmsteads of Port Oneida are on the National Register of Historic Places. Little by little, the
Park Service is working to restore them.
(sound of hammer, chisel, and saw)
It’s a job that often involves volunteers. On this day, a group of park employees is working with
community members to save an old log cabin down the road from Port Oneida–They’re sawing a huge
beam to help shore up the building.
“This is a sill log or one of the bottom logs made of white oak. Primarily because it stands up to
weather and water better. We don’t want the bottom of the building to rot out again. At least any
time soon.”
Many of the old buildings in the park have been temporarily stabilized. But the long term plan is much less
clear. The Park Service hopes to find private sector partners who can restore the buildings and find ways to
use them.
(sound of field)
One of the first such partners is the Shielding Tree Nature Center, which renovated an old farmstead and
turned the hayfields into a nature preserve. Director Mary Rupert is hoping to sign a 60-year lease
agreement but worries as other partners come in, the character of the area may change.
“Our priority is the land. The buildings are second to that. If every farmstead had a partner it
would be too much.”
At this point though, the balancing act is to find enough partners with the money to renovate the buildings
and preserve the integrity of the land. Without the private sector, park managers say the farmsteads of Port
Oneida are at risk and with each harsh northern winter another piece of history is lost.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Sally Eisele.
If you’re thinking of visiting a National Park this summer, you might notice there aren’t as many naturalist programs as usual, or you might notice some trail closings. Critics say the National Parks are woefully under funded, and they say the problem is getting worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Stephanie Hemphill reports that park officials around the region are looking for ways to cut costs:
Transcript
If you’re thinking of visiting a National Park this summer, you might notice
there aren’t as many naturalist programs as usual, or you might notice some
trail closings. Critics say the National Parks are woefully under funded. And
they say the problem is getting worse. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Stephanie Hemphill reports that park officials around the region are looking for
ways to cut costs:
When he was running for president, George W. Bush promised to restore the
National Park System. But four years later, parks continue to deteriorate, and
some observers estimate it would cost $4 billion to make them healthy again.
Ron Tipton is with the National Parks Conservation Association, an advocacy
group. He says park managers are having to make tough choices.
“Are they going to have fewer law enforcement people, backcountry rangers,
interpretive programs, shorter hours, or even some days where the visitor
center’s not open – all of the above in some cases.”
Tipton says Congress mandates salary increases for park workers, but doesn’t
provide money to pay for them. That diverts money that should be used for
maintenance, hiring staff, and other programs; and when the nation goes to
Orange Alert, parks have to pay for the extra security.
Tipton says most parks in this region have less money now than they did two
years ago.
The Grand Portage National Monument is near the Canadian border with Minnesota.
Superintendent Tim Cochrane says the monument has been limping along without a
visitor center for nearly 50 years.
“That ought to tell you a little bit about funding levels and ability to provide
for fairly basic services at a National Park unit. There’s been under funding
for awhile; it certainly is more chronic now.”
Cochrane says as he loses staff, he relies more on volunteers to run the park
and explain the history to visitors.
At Voyageurs National Park, also along the Canadian border, officials are
working on a plan to manage the park on reduced funding for the next five years.
Deputy superintendent Kate Miller says they’ll use retirements to reduce staff
levels.
“It’s no secret I guess that those of us who are baby boomers are approaching
retirement age and that there will be some opportunities, service -wide, to find
some efficiencies and do some reorganization.”
Next year’s National Park Service budget won’t be decided until fall.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Stephanie Hemphill.
Centaurea diffusa a.k.a. Spotted knapweed. Introduced in the late 1800's, knapweed can reduce diversity in the region's prairies. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Myriophyllum spicatum L. a.k.a. Eurasian watermilfoil. Introduced in the 1940's, dense mats of watermilfoil can rob water of oxygen, provide good habitat for mosquitoes, and impair swimming and boating. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Phragmites australis a.k.a. the common reed. A European strain was imported in the 1900's. It can quickly inhabit wet soils and create monocultures. Monocultures as big as 7000 acres have been documented. This plant also likes salty water, which is why it's often found in roadside ditches, where road salt accumulates. (Photo courtesy of Invasives.org )
Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but if they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests, lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series, “Your Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Gardeners have been ordering new plants and digging in the dirt this spring, but, if
they’re not careful, they could be introducing plants that can cause havoc with forests,
lakes, and other natural areas. Gardeners can’t count on their suppliers to warn them
about plants that can damage the local ecosystems. In another report in the series “Your
Choice; Your Planet,” the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Gardening, especially flower gardening, seems to get more popular all the time. Maybe
it’s because the baby-boomers have all reached that age where they’re beginning to
appreciate stopping for a moment to smell the roses.
That’s fine. In fact if gardeners plant the right kinds of plants… it can be great for
wildlife. There are all kinds of guides for backyard natural areas.
But… in some cases… gardeners can unleash plant pests on the environment.
Katherine Kennedy is with the Center for Plant Conservation. She says almost all of the
problem plants that damage the native ecosystems were planted with good intentions…
“I don’t believe that any invasive species has ever been introduced into the United States
on purpose by someone who willingly said, ‘Oh yeah, this is going to be a problem, but I
don’t care.’ They’ve almost all been inadvertent problems that were introduced by
someone who thought they were doing something good or who thought they were
bringing in something beautiful.”
English ivy, a decorative ground cover, is now killing forests in the Pacific Northwest…
kudzu is doing the same in the southeast… and in the Great Lakes region and the
Midwest… pretty flowering plants such as purple loosestrife and water plants such as
Eurasian watermilfoil are causing damage to wetlands, crowding out native plants and
disturbing the habitat that many wildlife species need to survive.
Bob Wilson works in the Michigan Senate Majority policy office. Like many other
states, Michigan is looking at legislation to ban certain problem plants. Wilson agrees
that these plant pests are generally not intentional… but they do show that people seem to
unaware of the problems that they’re causing…
“The two most common vectors for bringing in these kinds of plants are typically
landscapers, who bring it in as a way of decorating yards and lawns, and then aquarium
dumpers, people who inadvertently dump their aquarium, thinking that there’s no
consequence to that. Before you know it, something that was contained is now spread.”
But stopping the import of pest plants is a lot harder than just passing laws that ban them.
With mail order and Internet orders from large nurseries so common, the plants can get
shipped to a local nursery, landscaper or local gardener without the government ever
knowing about it.
Recently, botanists, garden clubs, and plant nursery industry groups put together some
codes of conducts. Called the St. Louis Protocol or the St. Louis Declaration… the
document set out voluntary guidelines for the industry and gardeners to follow to avoid
sending plants to areas where they can cause damage.
Sarah Reichard is a botanist with the University of Washington. She helped put the St.
Louis Protocol together. She says if a nursery signs on to the protocol, it will help stop
invasive plant species from being shipped to the wrong places….
“And it’s up to each of the nursery owners, particularly those who sell mail order or
Internet, to go and find out which species are banned in each state.” LG: And is that
happening? “Uh, I think most nursery people are pretty responsible and are trying to
do the best that they can. I’m sure that they’re very frustrated and understandably so
because the tools aren’t really out there for them and it is very difficult to find the
information. So, it’s a frustrating situation for them.”
But in preparing this report, we found that some of the biggest mail-order nurseries had
never heard of the St. Louis protocol. And many of the smaller nurseries don’t have the
staff or resources to check out the potential damage of newly imported plants… or even
to check out each state to make sure that banned plants aren’t being sent inadvertently.
Sarah Reichard says that means gardeners… you… need to do some homework before
ordering that pretty flowering vine. Is it banned in your state? Is it a nuisance that could
cause damage? Reichard says if enough gardeners care, they can make a difference…
“You know, gardeners have tremendous power. We, you know, the people that are
buying the plants at the nurseries – that’s what it’s all about. I mean, the nurseries are
there to provide a service to provide plants to those people and if those people have
certain tastes and demands such as not wanting to buy and plant invasive species, the
nurseries are going to respond to it. So, we’re all part of one team.”
Reichard and others concerned about the problem say although agencies are working on
it… the federal government has not yet done enough to effectively stop invasives from
being imported and shipped to the wrong areas. They say it’s up to the nurseries, the
botanists, and the gardeners to stop them. If not, we’ll all pay in tax money as
government agencies react to invasives with expensive eradication programs to try to get
rid of the plants invading parks, preserves, and other natural areas.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Centaurea diffusa a.k.a. Spotted knapweed. Introduced in the late 1800's, knapweed can reduce diversity in the region's prairies. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Myriophyllum spicatum L. a.k.a. Eurasian watermilfoil. Introduced in the 1940's, dense mats of watermilfoil can rob water of oxygen, provide good habitat for mosquitoes, and impair swimming and boating. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
Phragmites australis a.k.a. the common reed. A European strain was imported in the 1900's. It can quickly inhabit wet soils and create monocultures. Monocultures as big as 7000 acres have been documented. This plant also likes salty water, which is why it's often found in roadside ditches, where road salt accumulates. (Photo courtesy of )
Gardeners are being asked to be careful about what they plant. Invasive species that cause damage to natural areas often start as a pretty plant in someone’s yard. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Transcript
Gardeners are being asked to be careful about what they plant. Invasive species that
cause damage to natural areas often start as a pretty plant in someone’s yard. The Great
Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham reports:
Botanists, plant nurseries and gardeners are all being asked to do a little more homework
before importing, selling, or planting new kinds of plants. Katherine Kennedy is with the
Center for Plant Conservation. She says some of the plants you mail order from the
nursery can end up being invasive kinds of plants that damage the local ecosystem…
“We are actually at a point where these invasions crowd out the native community, not
just a species or two, but the entire community. And the wildlife value falls and the
native plants are displaced. And, so, the destructive potential for a species that becomes
truly invasive is more immense than I think many people realize.”
Kennedy says you can’t count on the nursery to warn you when you order plants. She
says gardeners have to make sure the plants they’re ordering won’t hurt the surrounding
landscape.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, this is Lester Graham.
Giant Canada Geese, Belle Isle, Detroit. (Photo by Celeste Headlee)
In just thirty years, the Giant Canada Goose has gone from near extinction to a now-thriving population. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of geese gather on golf courses and in state parks, often causing problems for their human neighbors. As the Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Celeste Headlee reports, some property owners have found a unique solution to the problem:
Transcript
In just thirty years, the Giant Canada Goose has gone from near
extinction to a now thriving population. Hundreds, sometimes thousands, of geese
gather on golf courses and in state parks, often causing problems for
their human neighbors. As the Great Lake Radio Consortium’s Celeste
Headlee reports, some property owners have found a unique solution to the
problem:
A year ago, dozens of families flocked to Pier Park in the Detroit suburb
of
Grosse Pointe Woods for an annual Easter egg hunt. Children rushed
onto the
grass with their brightly colored baskets and then stopped abruptly when
they found themselves surrounded by Giant Canada geese and their
droppings.
Park manager Michelle Balke says local residents decided
the geese had to go.
“They left droppings everywhere. You couldn’t walk on the grass. They’re
aggressive. If kids start going up to them, they start hissing back and it
got really annoying. They were everywhere.”
It hasn’t always been like that. The Giant Canada goose was so rare 30
years ago that many scientists thought it was extinct. But a few of the
large birds were spotted in the 1960s. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources began
an aggressive recovery program and there are now three and a half million Canada geese in the
U.S.
Conservation agencies say the birds cause hundreds of thousands of
dollars in damage every year because of accumulated droppings, overgrazing,
attacks against people and threats to aircraft.
(sound of geese)
Tom Schneider is the curator of birds at the Detroit Zoo. He trades
glares with a large male bird that has taken up residence on a lawn at the zoo. The
big black and grey goose honks at Schneider, warning him to stay away
from his chosen territory. Schneider says one aggressive bird can be a bit of
a problem, but a large crowd of them is unacceptable.
“People tend to like them until they get to be a certain number where they
become a nuisance, and when they become a nuisance, they don’t want
any geese. So, you might have a lake that has five pairs on there and that’s
great, but if you have 50 pairs of geese on there, it’s not so good
anymore.”
Schneider is a member of the Canada Goose Coalition. The group
includes representatives from the government, hunters, scientists and animal
welfare organizations. The coalition deals with the large population of Canada
Geese in the Great Lakes region. Schneider says one of the problems
with the birds is that they eat grass. Most birds don’t.
“The problem is they don’t have very efficient digestive systems. So they
have to eat a lot of food to get their nutrients, so as a result they
produce a lot of fecal material.”
Schneider says property owners have struggled to deal with large
groups of geese and the droppings they leave behind. One adult goose produces
about a pound and a half of droppings every day. When there are a hundred
birds on a piece of property… well… you can imagine. But the birds are federally
protected. So there’s not a lot that you can do.
(sound of geese)
But…one guy got an idea and called Barbara Ray. Ray had for years
been training border collies to drive sheep when she got a call from a man
looking for a dog to herd birds.
“I had a golf course superintendent who just had an idea about trying to
use these dogs to herd the geese… not chase them because the dog
needed to be under control. We certainly can’t have a dog that catches the geese
and shreds them like other breeds would be prone to do. But one that is
simply jazzed by staring down and moving birds in a specific direction.”
Ray says it was easy for the dogs to learn how to drive geese and one
dog can cover several hundred acres. She says border collies naturally
intimidate prey without barking or attacking, so they’re perfect for this
kind of work.
“What they’re using is a ‘let’s make my day’ kind of approach where the
stock believes if they don’t move as the dog quietly approaches, staring at
them in this intimidating fashion, that they’re probably going to follow up and
do something more demonstrative.”
Ray has built a business around training goose dogs and has so far
sold more than 500 of the dogs. One of those border collies ended up at Pier Park
in suburban Detroit. Manager Michelle Balke says it’s been a year since
the dog, Kate, arrived and there is no longer a problem with geese at the
park.
“She had just gotten rid of them, whether they sense her being here or
what, but they just stopped coming around. They were going next door, they
were hanging out on Lakeshore Road out there, but they just weren’t coming
into the park.”
(ambient sound of geese fade in)
Tom Schneider says goose dogs are an effective, humane way to deal
with Canada geese on private property, but it’s not a permanent solution to
the problem of overpopulation.
“The problem with that program… in many ways, it shifts those problem
geese to a different location, so maybe they may no longer be a problem on
this golf course but now they’re a problem on that golf course. While that
does provide some remedy for the people in those situations, it doesn’t really
solve the bigger, overall picture.”
Schneider has led a goose management program for over a decade at
the Detroit Zoo that involves destroying eggs. That program has cut the
number of geese on zoo grounds from between 500 and a thousand to 50.
This year, Schneider’s team will travel to other places to destroy eggs
and encourage thousands of geese to move on. But you have to have a
permit to do that which is not that easy to do. Schneider thinks goose dogs might
be the best alternative for private landowners.
(ambient sound out)
Goose dogs have become so popular that more than a dozen
companies around the U.S. now train and sell border collies to chase the Giant Canada
Goose.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Celeste Headlee.
A young climber makes her way up the sandstone
cliffs at the popular Oak Park in Grand Ledge, MI. Climbers are struggling to balance the love of their sport with their love of the park. They're coming up with different answers to the question - when can nature and climbing coexist? (Photo by Rebecca Williams)
Michael Hood runs Vertical Ventures, a rock climbing and wilderness guide service. He has been teaching classes at the Ledges for 19 years... but he has decided he can't keep bringing people to climb at the park. He says the plants and animals at the park need time to recover from decades of climbing. (Photo by Rebecca
Williams)
Oak Park is a city park, and there are several regulations posted at the entrance. Some climbers say while many people do follow the rules, not everyone pays attention to them. (Photo by Rebecca
Williams)
Rock climbing has been considered a sport since the early twentieth century. And it’s becoming more mainstream in the U.S. and Canada. As rock climbers visit parks in growing numbers, some people are beginning to wonder… can nature and climbing always coexist? The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams reports… one climbing guide thinks a Midwest park has reached its breaking point, and he’s giving up income to prove it:
Transcript
Rock climbing has been considered a sport since the early twentieth century.
And it’s becoming more mainstream in the U.S. and Canada. As rock climbers
visit parks in growing numbers, some people are beginning to wonder… can
nature and climbing always coexist? The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Rebecca Williams reports… one climbing guide thinks a Midwest park has
reached its breaking point, and he’s giving up income to prove it:
(clinking, rope sound) “You guys stretched out real good? Let’s get
climbing! Grab a helmet and let’s get climbing…”
Michael Hood’s climbing class is gearing up to scale the sandstone cliffs at
Oak Park… nicknamed the Ledges. It’s a popular seven-acre park in Grand
Ledge, Michigan.
Most of these kids have climbed here many times, and they get started
quickly.
“Let’s get you up here. Bug, you coming up here? Let’s do our commands..
“On belay?” “Belay on.” “Whoa, gotta feel the fish first, watch that break
hand…”
This class is special. It’s probably the last good day of the season. It
also might be the last time they’ll ever climb here.
Michael Hood has been coaching climbers at the Ledges for 19 years. He gets
most of his income from teaching here. And you can tell he loves his work.
But he says, after today, he won’t teach another class here.
“These sandstone, fragile sandstone cliffs, and all the plants and animals
that live on them, cannot share the rock with climbing. Because we
interfere with all the life processes that go on up there, no matter how
sensitive we are.”
Hood says over the past few years, he began to realize the impact decades of
climbing were having on the Ledges. He’s seen cliff swallow nests pushed
out to make way for better handholds. He says climbers have worn away the
topsoil at the cliff’s edge. And even the rock is vulnerable.
“You can do decades worth of damage in just one day very easily.”
Hood says the problem is that the Ledges are small, 150 yards long and 40
feet high. And there are lots of climbers. Visitor surveys show that
thousands of people climb at the park every year. It’s the only place to
climb outdoors in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. So climbers come from places
as far away as Detroit, Ohio and Indiana.
Michael Hood says there are some rules in place, but there’s no one to
enforce them. Hood recently asked the city’s parks and recreation
commission to consider banning climbing at the park.
That’s stirring up the climbing community.
At first, Hood says he got a lot of angry phone calls. Now, a group of
local climbers is asking the city to keep the park open.
Judy McGarry has been climbing at the Ledges for two years. She says if the
park closes, she’d have to drive to Kentucky or Canada to climb outdoors.
“It’d be really sad if they did close it. I know with a lot of people
coming down here there’s erosion. But if you think about it, who really
cares about this rock more than climbers? We want it here so we can climb
it.”
Climbers are fighting to keep parks open across the country. Shawn Tierney
is with the Access Fund, a non-profit group that advocates for climbers. He
says climbers called him when they heard about Michael Hood’s efforts to
close the park.
“I think his concerns are probably valid, he’s concerned about resource
impacts at the area, and instead of closing the area, which to me seems to
be a very extreme measure, there needs to be some management of the area.
And recruit climbers in the process of helping to take care of the area.”
But Michael Hood isn’t sure anything short of a permanent closure will work.
“Climbers want to believe they could put a few regulations in place and save
this place. But the problem is climbers are notoriously an unruly bunch,
myself included. We don’t like to be told what to do, how to do it, when to
do it.”
Experts say conflicts between rock climbers and park managers are fairly
common. Peter Kelly studies cliff ecology and climbing at the University of
Guelph in Ontario. He says one problem in these situations is that not much
is known about cliff ecosystems because they’re hard to get to.
“Obviously people have observed that damage has taken place. But what has
been lost there that people didn’t even know about?”
And that’s the big question. Michael Hood says he’s asked geologists and
botanists to take a look at the park. But he doesn’t want to cause more
damage while he waits to see if the scientists publish or the city makes a
decision. He’s convinced he can’t keep bringing people to climb at the
Ledges.
He says it’s the right thing to do for the park, even though it’s not a
decision he came to easily.
“I’m losing a lot. I’ve lost a lot of lifelong friends over this, I’m
losing most of my income, and my livelihood. And the love I have for
guiding and working with these young people. It’s really powerful for me to
be out here. I live and breathe this, and to give this up and walk away
from it is… I can’t even articulate what a sacrifice this is for me.”
(sound up of climbers packing up equipment, ropes being put into piles, etc)
The sun is setting, and it’s getting chilly. Hood and his staff take the
ropes down and pack the helmets into bags.
Hood gathers the kids in a circle.
“That we could share this last day together here, I will never ever forget
it. And we’ll climb together some more, in other places. But every time I
come here I’ll think of this last day with you guys and never, ever forget
it. It’s just wonderful.”
Michael Hood hopes his class will walk away understanding why he’s giving up
climbing in a place he loves.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
