Welcome to the Environment Show, exploring issues and events of the planet, I'm Thomas
Lalley.
The Environment Show is a national production made possible by the W. Walton Jones Foundation.
The Packard Foundation for Coverage of Fisheries Issues, the furthermore division of the
Kaplan Fund and Hemings Motornews, the Bible of the Collector Carhavi, 1-800-CAR-H-E-R-E.
Your host is Peter Burley.
Thanks, Thomas, coming up on this week's Environment Show.
Interior Secretary Bruce Babitt brings rivers back to life.
The Land Trust movement is expanding and finding new ways to preserve open space.
We learn how butterflies touch children to walk.
How you can eat shrimp without killing turtles, and finally we nest with eagles as they
return to Louisiana.
These stories and more coming up on the Environment Show.
Through much of American history we've spent time and treasure attempted to conquer our
rivers.
We've dammed them and diverted them all for seemingly noble purposes.
We wanted to protect communities from floods.
We wanted water for irrigation or thirsty cities.
We wanted hydro power to fuel our factories and light our homes.
We ignored the fact that rivers had lives of their own, vegetation on their backs, wildlife
in their repairing and carters and fish of all kinds.
And over the years the conquered rivers and the lands along them have lost a lot of
the life which we didn't think about when the dams were built.
Bruce Babitt, United States Secretary of the Interior, is changing the policies under
which the vast array of dams under his jurisdiction are being used to control when and how much
water is released downstream.
We asked him about new regulations he has just put into effect for the Glen Canyon Dam
which controls water going through the Grand Canyon in Arizona.
The new regulations obviously are designed to make certain that from now on when the water
is released from Glen Canyon Dam upstream, it will be done in a way that mimics the original
flow of the river and that will help us maintain the beaches in the Grand Canyon and that
will allow periodically maybe once every maybe five, six, seven years for a major flood
of mimicking historic floods on the river to keep the settlement up on the beaches and
to mimic the natural beach building process.
Secretary Babitt explains that in order to generate maximum electricity the Glen Canyon
Dam was being opened and closed on schedules which produced tremendous unnatural variations
in the river.
Well, what had happened across the years is that Glen Canyon Dam which is you know immediately
upstream of the Grand Canyon had been administered primarily to produce what is known as
peaking power.
That hydro power that comes through those turbines is a very valuable commodity and they
tended to run the water exactly when they needed peaking power off in Los Angeles or Phoenix
or wherever.
You could almost think of Glen Canyon, a dam as kind of a giant toilet tank and you'd
flush it whenever you needed power and that was being done absolutely at the expense of
the beaches which have been built up over the centuries from a more regular natural kind
of flow.
River management which destroys natural systems has not been confined to the Glen Canyon
Dam and the Colorado.
Babitt would like to see that all our rivers are managed so that their flows are closer
to that which they were before the dams were built in the first place.
There are a lot of other places where you see the deleterious effects of over-managing
rivers.
The Mississippi River is an interesting example.
The Mississippi River Delta is sinking and the reason is that the river has been managed
in a way that sends the natural sediment that used to build those wetlands clear out over
the continental shelf and I think that we're going to need to think about how we model the
management of that river to keep the sediment doing what it's always done historically which
is sort of spreading around right at the mouth of the river.
Bruce Babitt is the United States Secretary of the Interior.
You're listening to the Environment Show and I'm Peter Burley.
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In the 1980s land prices in many parts of the country went through the roof.
As developers raised to build houses and shopping malls, farms and forests disappeared.
In response organizations called land trusts were created to preserve land.
A decade later and after a crash in the real estate market land trusts are finding new ways
to keep land open.
Environment Show producer Thomas Lalley has this report.
Land trusts have seen tremendous growth in the past two decades and are today a force
in local and state politics.
But the road ahead may not be as smooth.
In coming years, properties preserved by land trusts will likely face increasing pressures
to develop.
As land trusts use more and more conservation easements to protect land, where they don't
own the land, but they do have a legal agreement and right to protect the land.
Those easements are going to be challenged.
Eventually someone will own that land who wishes they could do something, could build
the Walmart or build the shopping mall and subdivide it.
And the land will be restricted and the land and these will be challenged because we
worth someone's time to do that.
We have to be sure we're ready for that.
There will be lawsuits.
Gene Hocker is the executive director of the Land Trust Alliance, which recently held
its annual meeting in Burlington, Vermont.
Hocker says land trusts are today focus on their long term viability.
The most important part of this is making sure conservation easements are maintained.
They work when a land owner sells or contributes the development rights to his or her land.
This means that the owner keeps the land, but legally promises that it will never be
developed.
In order to make sure the promises kept, Hocker says land trusts will have to remain flexible
and strong organizations.
What land trusts do well is to problem solve.
There's no cookie cutter solution to these problems.
You have to know what the family situation is.
You have to know what the values and the ecological values on that land are, the agricultural values
on that land, the opening, the scenic values on that land.
But a land trust will try to work out a solution that works for that property and that land
owner.
And it very often doesn't have to be a destructive subdivision.
Being flexible has meant diversifying into areas many people may not immediately associate
with land trusts.
Today land trusts are involved in fields like city planning, economic development and affordable
housing.
Brenda Torpen is with the community land trust in Burlington, Vermont.
Like many cities and towns, Burlington has a lot of old housing that has slowly fallen
into disrepair.
Torpen says land trusts keep development out of the suburbs by investing in urban areas
where private money often refuses to go.
In the extent that we can preserve and restore and reuse the built environment that we've
have already, then the more land there is to conserve.
That's absolutely the goal of community development is to go where private money can
uncle and it doesn't make sense and then to create an environment where it's possible
for investment to come back.
A similar land trust project is underway on the island of Key West, Florida.
Unlike Vermont, Key West essentially has no more land to accommodate sprawl, so developers
are buying out mostly minority neighborhoods which have housed generations.
The new houses are expensive and out of the reach for many residents.
Norma Jean Sawyer works with the Trust for Public Land which has bought up whole neighborhoods
in Key West.
She says the project will preserve the culture of the island.
The land is what really costs the housing to be so expensive in Key West and if we can
remove that land from speculators and keep it in the control of the community, then it
will keep the cost of that land down and keep the affordability of the housing affordable.
But it's allowed to be sold, continued to be sold the way that it is to develop its
speculators, then it's going to go skyrocket out of the air and then everybody that was originally
born and raised, it will be squeezed out because they can't afford to live there.
Sawyer says land trusts are not necessarily opposed to development, but believe it's
more important to strengthen old communities rather than create new ones in the suburbs.
Jeff Roberts is with the Vermont Land Trust.
He says land trusts should be proud of their success, but need to make sure land under
their protection like farms and neighborhoods remain economically viable.
What happens?
10 to 20 years down the road when agriculture continues to evolve throughout America.
The land trusts community has to do more than just preserve land.
If we're not encouraging connections and relationships between the producer and their
markets, we're not going to keep farms alive.
We may have preserved land but no one working it.
Well, that doesn't serve us.
So I think that conservation is one of the many steps that all of our organizations are
good at today, but it needs to be part of a much larger array of things that we're able
to do.
One of the forces behind land trusts is the increasing intrinsic value of open space,
economists like Charles Fossold of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy study open space.
He's concluded that it is one of the critical elements which makes an area economically
successful.
The whole structure of our economy is changing.
It's no longer just cities and farmland.
Companies can now locate almost anywhere.
And so there are economic enterprises are becoming much more dispersed, which means that
areas which have done a good job in preserving their open space and therefore it can be argued
have a higher quality of life.
In fact, have a better chance of attracting new economic development.
In Fossold ads, there's no free lunch.
Preserve land will not pay taxes the same way as shopping mall will.
But people in the land trust movement believe some things like open space and functioning
communities are more important.
For the Environment Show, I'm Thomas Lalley.
Before we explained our world in scientific terms, cultures made sense of their environment
through myths.
Oftentimes natural elements, including plants, animals and weather were personified and
spoken of as friends or enemies.
These myths display a sense of wonder and respect for nature that is often lacking in
today's stories.
Gary Ferguson is the author of Spirits of the Wild, which contains about 60 myths from
all around the world.
He says nature myths are common in all cultures and are valuable as a way to reconnect us with
the world.
Well, first of all, I think it is comforting to realize that all of us have this tradition
in our background of weaving these stories to the natural world.
It isn't something that is only open to indigenous people.
But secondly, these stories, more than anything, celebrate our need and dependence on one
another and on the natural world to survive.
When Joseph Campbell was asked in his later years, what our next body of myths are going
to look like since we had apparently cast so many of them off, he would say more often
than not that the only thing that made sense to him was a body of myths linking us to
a new vision of the planet.
And in that sense, the myths of yesterday that link people to nature are very much valid
and may form a kind of underpinning through their ability to enchant us for whatever mythology
is yet to come.
One myth from Ferguson's book teaches how children learn to walk.
It's from the Ojibwa Indians of the northern plains.
The central figure is Nanabush, one of the four sons of the West Wind.
Each son was charged with bringing a gift to the Ojibwa's.
And Nanabush helped children learn one of the basic traits of survival.
It was a long time ago in the land of trees and spirit woman had given birth to human twins.
Every animal was fond of these twins, forever doting on them, each eager to do whatever
was needed to make them warm and safe and happy.
Dog for one never left their side.
Sometimes flies would come and pasture the children, and dog would snap at them to make them
fly away.
To amuse the children he nuzzled their bellies with his nose, or jumped into the air and
did all manner of wonderful tricks.
When the twins were hungry wolf and deer lent their milk, while bear warm them with his
marvelous coat of fur, the birds sang them to sleep at night and beaver washed them in
the lake.
But over time it began to dawn on the animals that something was not quite right.
We feed them and care for them like our own said bear.
Yet they do not stand, they do not run and play in the woods like our children do.
Nanabush will come soon.
We must ask his help.
A few days later when Nanabush son of West Wind arrived, the animals told him
their concerns.
Nanabush told the animals they had cared for the babies well.
Too well.
Children grow by reaching, striving for what they want, he said.
Not by having everything placed in their laps.
I will go and ask great spirit what to do.
So Nanabush left the woods and went high into the hills to the west seeking the help of
great spirit.
When great spirit heard the problem, he told Nanabush to scour the slopes of those high hills
for a certain kind of sparkling stone.
Gather as many as you can he instructed and place them in a pile on the highest hill.
Nanabush did just that until he had an enormous pile of the colored stones many times higher
than a man's head.
But what was he supposed to do next?
Hour after hour he sat there, hoping for some further instruction from great spirit, but
no word came.
Finally out of boredom, Nanabush began tossing the stones into the air, first wanted a time,
then big handfuls.
Once he tossed several high into the air and they did not come back down again.
Instead they changed into the most beautiful winged creatures, the very first butterflies.
When Nanabush returned to the children in the forest, he was surrounded by a flashing,
fluttering blanket of butterflies.
The twins were delighted, set about waving and stretching to catch one in their chubby
hands.
For a long time they crawled after them, then stood on their tiny feet and tottered, and
finally ran through the forest laughing all the while hoping to catch even one of those
beautiful flying creatures.
And that is how butterflies taught children to walk.
On a jibwai Indian tale read by Gary Ferguson, author of Spirits of the Wild published by Clarkson
Potter.
The survival of sea turtles, some of which are close to extinction, may depend on the way
some of the shrimp you eat is caught.
A new treaty has been negotiated, and it's designed to protect sea turtles in the western
hemisphere and to require changes in shrimp nets to spare turtles.
The treaty will be ready for signing in December and becomes effective when eight nations
have ratified it, probably sometime in 1997.
Six of the seven species of sea turtles are now in danger of extinction, so more effective
international protection is essential if they are to survive.
David Bolton, attorney in the office of the legal advisor of the U.S. Department of State,
describes the effort.
The treaty takes a holistic approach to protecting turtles which have been becoming endangered
for a variety of reasons and not only because they get caught in shrimp-fram nets, the treaty
recognizes that government's individuals, private parties must take a wide variety of steps
the sea turtles are to be adequately protected.
Among the things this treaty would do is to prohibit the intentional capture of sea turtles
and domestic trade in turtles, their eggs or parts.
It reinforces existing international obligations prohibiting the international trade in sea turtles.
It requires states to protect and conserve sea turtle habitat, nesting areas, it requires
a promotion of scientific research relating to sea turtles and perhaps not importantly,
it requires states to reduce and minimize sea turtle mortality in all fishing operations.
On the domestic front, wild caught shrimp may not be imported into the United States unless
the exporting country is certified as practicing turtle-safe fishing techniques.
A recent decision of the U.S. International Court of Trade says this means foreign countries
must have laws requiring fishers to install a gadget in their shrimp nets called a turtle
excluder device or TED.
The TED is a steel grade, about three by four feet in size which stops the turtle from
being entrapped in the net while the fish is caught.
U.S. fishers have been required to use TEDs for some time.
Getting fishers to install in use TEDs has been a major struggle.
U.S. shrimpers were extremely hostile when the regulation was enacted here.
Todd Steiner, the director of the Earth Island Institute, which brought the lawsuit to bar
non-Ted caught shrimp from the American market, says the use of turtle-excluder devices
should be a win-win for everybody despite the initial opposition from shrimp fishers.
These TEDs not only save sea turtles, but they protect a wide variety of marine life
that would otherwise be caught in shrimp nets killed and discarded.
Shrimp fishing is the most wasteful fishery in the world.
Up to 14 pounds of fish and other animals are killed and discarded for every pound of
shrimp harvested.
And these TEDs let sea turtles escape, but they also let a lot of the other organisms
escape as well.
And so this could be a completely win-win situation if countries quickly come into compliance.
We could save the sea turtles.
We can reduce the negative impacts of shrimp fishing on the marine environment and actually
improve the quality of the catch for the shrimp fishermen.
But there is an easy way you can enjoy shrimp and save turtles as well.
The Earth Island Institute has started a turtle-save shrimp certification program and we are
working with shrimp fishers who actually allow us to monitor their operations and ensure
that the TEDs, these trapdoors are being used properly.
The shrimp leaves the docks with a turtle-save shrimp certification label on it and as you
probably know, most shrimp that we eat is kind of generic.
We eat at restaurants or you buy it at a seafood counter.
And so there are seafood counters that have the turtle-save shrimp label there and they're
letting their customers know that turtle-save shrimp is available and a number of restaurants
are doing the same.
Todd Steiner is the director of the Earth Island Institute Sea Turtle Restoration Project.
The logo which signifies certification by the institute is a picture of a turtle with
a life preserver around it.
On top are the words Earth Island certified and on the bottom it says Turtle-save Shrimp.
Steiner says eating Earth Island certified shrimp is the only sure way to protect the endangered
sea turtle.
A pair of bald eagles has returned to its nest site at the White Kitchen Preserve in Louisiana.
This is the Earth Calendar.
The White Kitchen site is supported a pair of eagles for over 80 years according to Richard
Martin of the Nature Conservancy.
In the early 70s the eagle once common in Louisiana was down to three or four pairs.
Now with the banning of DDT and nationwide eagle restoration efforts under the Endangered
Species Act the eagle is recovering.
Its status has been upgraded from endangered to threatened and there are about 125 pairs
nesting in Louisiana now.
Bald eagles are found in virtually every state in the country.
The subspecies called Southern Bald eagles are restricted to the southeastern United States
and it is rather unusual that it nests in the winter unlike eagles up in the northern
part of the U.S. that nest are in the summer.
Our eagles typically returned to Louisiana in mid-September.
They reformed their pairs and will nest through the winter with the young typically fledging
in April or so.
After that the young adults then migrate back north and apparently most of the eagles
in Louisiana spend the summer around the Great Lakes in southern Canada.
The nesting eagles don't stay in Louisiana all year long.
After fledging they migrate north to avoid the hot summer sun.
Martin says that's because the large birds who nest out of the open are particularly sensitive
to overheating.
Once the young leave they won't return to their nesting area for a couple of years.
Not really sure just where they go.
Some return to Louisiana others probably remain in the north.
Once they reach about four years of age they become sexually mature and then they return
back to their nesting area and form a pair if there's another one of the opposite sex
also present and they will typically try to nest fairly close to that area that they
were originally hatched from.
They live a long time, 20 or more years in the wild and they mate for life they pair and
unless one of the pair dies they'll maintain that pair bond throughout their life.
As nesting begins the monogamous eagle couple divides household chores on an equitable
basis.
Incubation tasks are shared, Mr. sits on the exit night, misses by day.
When the young are hatched both the male and female forage for their food.
They share responsibility for protecting their territory and the females which are larger
than the males are as aggressive as their mates.
In our society where so many couples are trying to figure out how to divide domestic chores
and responsibilities fairly it might be helpful to take a clue from the eagles.
They should start by setting up house on top of a pile of sticks on top of a tree in a
marsh in Louisiana.
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burling.
For cassette copy of the program call 1-800-323-9262 and ask for show number 356.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its contents.
Dr. Ellen Shartuck is the executive producer Thomas Lally is producer and Stephanie Goishman
is the associate producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by the W. Alton Jones Foundation.
The further more division of the Kaplan Fund the Packard Foundation for Coverage Fish
Reiss issues and Heming's Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old Car Hobby 1-800-CAR-HER.
So long and join us next week for the Environment Show.
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