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 Heming's Motor News, the
monthly Bible of the Old Far Hobby from Bennington, Vermont, 1-800-CR-H-E-R-E.
The furthermore Foundation and the David and Lucille Packard Foundation for the coverage
of Ocean Science and Fisheries Issues.
Our host is former Environmental Conservation Commissioner for the State of New York and
former President of the National Audubon Society, Peter Burley.
Thanks Thomas.
Coming up on this week's Environment Show, the Florida Everglades are in bad shape, but
a $200 million effort aims to restore what's left of them.
We'll sniff the air in the nation's schools.
One report says that air quality is unsatisfactory in one out of five of our school buildings.
We'll speak with a scientist who studies elephant seals in Patagonia and says we need
to be proactive about preserving our oceans.
And our Earth calendar will introduce you to a threat to your car you probably never
considered.
Marmocks.
These stories and more coming up this week on the Environment Show.
The Everglades are the lifeblood of South Florida.
All of the regions water flow through them and humans and beasts alike depend of them,
but the Everglades are in bad shape.
Development, population growth, misguided engineering projects and pollution are destroying
this fragile ecosystem.
A massive restoration effort hopes to reverse the trend.
$200 million federal dollars plus state and local money is going towards the Everglades
restoration project.
It's the most ambitious project of its kind ever.
Thomas Lally recently visited the Everglades and sends this report.
Driving west from the parking lot shopping malls and housing developments of South Florida,
one hits a seemingly endless prairie of tall grass.
This is the dry season down here and the sea of grass is nearly tan.
The grass hides what the Everglades are really about and that's water.
Today much of the water is dike, diverted and oftentimes polluted, so much so that South
Florida is heading towards a potential disaster.
If they don't preserve this ecosystem, there won't be any South Florida to have it at.
People just won't.
It won't be a reasonable place to live.
I mean, you just can't pave over all of this.
It's our water supply.
It makes our weather.
Ron Jones is a biology professor at Florida International University and a leading expert
on the Everglades.
He says much of the water in the Everglades has been drained or diverted for so long that
the system just can't handle it anymore.
But the Everglades are the only source of drinking water South Florida has and with the
degradation of the ecosystem, clean water for drinking and tourism is getting scarce.
Jones says the impact on wildlife has been even harder.
The system, Everglades system in itself is not a very highly productive system from
the standpoint that there aren't a lot of fish per square inch or square meter, but
there's a lot of square meters.
And so the birds and the organisms that would thrive in this type of thing, they're not
able to thrive in a very small and disconnected system.
They need the broader system where they can go on and have large foraging areas and they
just can't take the fragmentation.
Fixing the Everglades will take a massive effort costing hundreds of millions of dollars.
This year's Farm Bill includes $200 million for Everglades restoration and more is likely
to follow.
One of the biggest obstacles, literally, is the elaborate network of canals and dikes
which keep developed areas dry.
But the Everglades is basically a really wide river and the system depends on a fresh
and constant supply of water.
Colonel Rock Salt is the executive director of the South Florida ecosystem restoration
task force.
He says while we once believed we could tame the environment, this project will aim to
work with nature.
People have been trying to drain the wetlands of South Florida for over 100 years and they've
succeeded.
They've succeeded and we now have 5 and a half million people in South Florida living
and drained wetlands.
A very important agricultural industry but the prices we're now seeing in the remaining
parts of the natural system.
So it's the realization that what we've done to drain the system is creating problems
in the remainder that we can't live with.
The impacts of a failing Everglades includes a $300 million hit to the region's tourism
and commercial fishing industry and the losses will only get worse as the ecosystem
declines further.
Add to this a tripling of the population in the next 50 years and a restoration project
of this magnitude begins to take on global implications.
Colonel Terry Rice is the district engineer for the Army Corps of Engineers in Jacksonville,
Florida.
He says Everglades restoration marks a turning point in how we think about managing our
environment.
So I think that we've got a test bed down here.
Can you hear Charles Lee say that I say all the time that Everglades is a test as you
pass, we may get to keep the planet.
Well that's true because if we can meet these challenges the doubling the population and
tripling the population by 2050 and ensure that we can live in harmony with the environment
and all these other things that have to happen, that sets a blueprint for how we do it in
other parts of the world which are going to have these same pressures in many places
they already do.
It's just coming to a crescendo down here in Florida and so if we do it right then it's
very important for our future of all of us on this planet.
While the politics of Everglades restoration goes on, the ecosystem prepares for a return
to us close to normal as it is known for a long time.
It is not as if the Everglades are altered any more than any other ecosystem in an urban
area but the Everglades are a lot more delicate.
Under this stretch about 30 miles west of Miami a levee jets out about 20 miles.
Exotic cat tails have moved in, lowered by the overabundance of nutrients from fertilizers
and are crowding out native sawgrass.
Under the restoration plan this levee and many more like it will be levelled, water will
once again flow uninterrupted through most of the system.
The impact on humans will also be severe, land will be purchased and converted back to
Everglades.
A group called the Governor's Commission on a Sustainable South Florida will lay out
development plans which will likely curb growth.
Professor Ron Jones says the Everglades is pushing us to define what sustainability really
means.
The idea right now I think behind the environment and man, you know people living in the environment
or man living in the environment can't be done.
You know you have to draw this little line between two, here's urban and here's man and
here's the environment.
And I think the whole thing that we can win down here, the biggest thing that we can
win is demonstrating that man can be a fuzzy interface between environment in other words
we can coexist together.
And if we can do it in the Everglades I think we can do it anywhere.
I mean this is, I just can't imagine another environmental situation that's more complex
than what we have down down here.
This summer the restoration project will begin in earnest.
Professor Jones says most of the money will be spent on land acquisition and construction
projects.
He warns that results will not be immediate and may take 50 years before the project is
complete and by then South Florida will have grown three times what it is today, making
this project all the more urgent.
For the Environment Show I'm Thomas Lally.
You're listening to the Environment Show.
Share your environmental concerns with us via email at ENVSHOWATOL.com.
That's ENVSHOWATOL.com.
Or hear us anytime via the internet on your home computer through our webpage www.wanc.org-env.
39 million people in America are forced to go to work each day in places that have at
least one unsatisfactory environmental condition.
The assessment was made by people who are in charge of the workplace buildings themselves.
In this case the workers are school children and the environment is found in the school buildings
they go to.
The United States General Accounting Office or GAO has been conducting ongoing surveys of
the condition of the environment in our nation schools.
Without prescribing specific standards they ask 10,000 school superintendents to characterize
the conditions in their buildings.
But a third of our students nationwide are in schools with multiple unsatisfactory conditions.
Eleanor Johnson is the assistant director for education issues at the U.S. General Accounting
Office.
In addition to expected conditions of concerns such as asbestos and lead there was another
big one.
In our national survey of school officials 19% of them reported that they had unsatisfactory
indoor air quality conditions.
In New York State a citizens coalition of parents and educators called Healthy Schools
Network has been wrestling with environmental issues in schools.
Its director Claire Barnett sums up the situation as she sees it.
Nationally there are about 80,000 school houses, 15,000 different school districts and 42
million students.
And for us that seems really desperately unfair.
We compel children to go to school.
Children are required to attend schools.
Schools are their compulsory workplaces.
But yet we really don't have environmental health and safety policies which are centered
on protecting children's health while they're in those buildings.
Bob Thompson an environmental engineer at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has
been wrestling with a problem of indoor air pollution in schools.
He finds that indoor air pollution has two primary causes.
On the ventilation system side most schools in the country that we've been to have had
some form of problem in their ventilation systems that has prevented a proper amount
of outdoor air from entering the school building.
From the sources side oftentimes there are mistakes made in bringing inappropriate pollutant
sources into the school building or using things like cleaning materials inappropriately
that can cause indoor air problems.
Recognizing that the $100 billion necessary to put all of the nation schools in top shape
or not forthcoming.
EPA has developed a kit for communities providing no cost low cost solutions to school air
problems.
To get the kit Thompson advises calling the indoor air information clearinghouse at 1-800-438-4318.
That's 1-800-438-4318.
I'm Peter Burley.
You're listening to the Environment Show.
The Ocean Off the Coast of Argentina in South America is one of the most biologically productive
areas of the world.
But Jason to Patagonium, the sea is host to a wide variety of species that are still abundant.
According to the Ocean Off the Coast is a shelf of rock which drops suddenly a few
hundred miles from land.
The shelf is where fish and many other animals congregate.
Humans too know about this area and fish it extensively.
Dr. Claudio Compagnia, a biologist who is also a medical doctor, works with a wildlife
conservation society studying marine mammals and especially elephant seals.
He's concerned about the seals because increasingly they're competing for food with fishing boats.
He says the creatures need a great deal of food to survive.
They are capable for example to fast for periods of two or three months.
They only get food at sea so when they are on land reproducing for example a male could
spend two or three months without getting any food.
And once they are at sea they are really very sophisticated diving machines I would call
them.
They dive day and night they dive for periods of many months, many consecutive months without
stopping.
And although most of the time they are not going deeper than twelve hundred feet most of
the time they could reach really depth of forty five hundred feet.
Elephant seals are enormous a mature male can weigh as much as six thousand pounds and
measure fifteen feet in length.
In comparison females are much smaller and can be ten times lighter than their male counterparts.
Although they are mammals they spend ninety percent of their time underwater and can go
without breathing for two hours.
Dr. Compania says I consider myself to be very fortunate, very lucky to be able to work
with Elephant seals because these animals are very interesting from all biological perspectives.
Their social behavior for example is particularly interested to me while they are on land.
They have to reproduce and that means that males fight for a social hierarchy.
These are our dominant have a harem and for the southern Elephant seals some harems could
be quite large more than a hundred females sometimes.
And to keep a harem of a hundred females controlled from other males that want to approach
those females is a very difficult issue.
And they do that very efficiently because Elephant seals don't tend to move too much they tend
to think a lot and then just do a few movements that solves lots of problems at the same time.
Dr. Compania studies a colony of four thousand Elephant seals he's found that the seals feed
in many of the same places fishing fleets are harvesting a situation that may endanger
the seals and many other animals.
Dr. Compania believes that certain parts of the ocean should be preserved the same way
we protect land.
Parts should not be conceived only as places to protect land wildlife.
They should also be conceived as places to protect animals at sea particularly in the open
ocean.
What my Elephant seals show is that unless we protect the sources where these animals are
finding their food.
We are not really doing enough to protect these species.
Dr. Compania says Elephant seals are doing well today but warns that if we don't protect
their food sources they could become threatened in a very short period of time.
He says by protecting the most productive areas of the oceans we'll secure a plentiful supply
of food for both animals and humans.
We all have places that are special to us.
It could be a city block or a place deep in the wilderness.
While summer approaches and people head for the outdoors author Anne Zwinger recalls the
desolateness of winter.
Her most recent book is Down Canyon.
She lives in Colorado near the four corners area and presents this portrait of the Grand
Canyon in winter.
For Christmas my eldest daughter Susan and I give each other a hike from Rim to River in
the Grand Canyon.
Down the bright angel trail and back up the South Kai Bab trail.
In winter solstice the rounding of the year when sun prepares to leave his winter house.
We start down knowing a major snow is coming in that we face scathing winds and a ten
below chill factor.
That night winter flaunts all its chill and bleakness full of vindictive winds and treachery.
Two mornings later still afflicted with truckulent skies and clanging cold.
We start up the South Kai Bab trail.
At Cedar Ridge a mile and a half from the top a demonic wind explodes unleashing razor
blades of ice ready to flash freeze of face on the instant.
I jockey on a windbreaker over my down jacket.
At the top when I take it off a quarter inch of frost coats it inside like a frozen
fleece lining the temperature is a sobering six degrees Fahrenheit.
I drop my pack and step to the edge of the canyon for one last look down into a shrouded
silence.
This guy dims early and the landscape shimmers with tender pinks and blues and whites.
A stately pivon of snow showers thread among the far buttes.
I want only to make contact with the river just one more time.
The preter natural silence is so unlike the river and with the river out of sight is
this act of faith to believe that it even exists.
Yet I know it is there curling into backeddies that chase upstream nibbling at sandbars
and rearranging beaches dancing with raindrops, multiplying the sun and its ripples, pounding
and pulsing with life that vitalizes anyone who runs it, an intensity of being that flows
with the river.
The canyon has to do with loving life and accepting death and a magnificent, unforgiving
and irrevocable river.
Some of the things I know about the river are undefined like the ragged pound of a rapid
that matches no known rhythm but lodges in the head like an old familiar song, the sheer
joy of the river's refrain.
But other things are defined and clear as the terrible life-dependent clarity on one
atom of oxygen hooked to two of hydrogen that ties us as humans to the only world we know.
This winger is an author living in Colorado, her most recent book is Down Canyon.
And now it's time for the Earth Calendar.
We continue to speculate about what roles certain organisms play in the ecosystem.
This week, the Earth Calendar celebrates how humans provide gastronomic ecstasy to
Mormonts who inhabit the Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in California.
It turns out that these foot and a half long Alpine squirrels have a particular craving
for pieces of autoboebeels which they consume with gusto.
Harold Werner is a fish and wildlife biologist at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park
who probably does not share our view of the integral role the American motorist plays
in enhancing the Mormonts quality of life.
Basically, what we have is a problem with the Mormonts eating car parts during a small
portion of the spring and summer.
The problem begins about as quickly as the snow melts and as soon as the road opens up,
the cars can get into the area.
Mormonts come down from various areas on the mountain side.
They come to the parking lot, go up under the hood to the cars.
They chew through radiator hoses.
They remove insulation from the compartment around the engine.
They chew through electrical wires.
Once in a rare while they'll chew through the brake supply lines causing brake failure
potentially.
Sometimes they'll chew up the face of the radiator.
It looks almost like a lawnmower is going across it when they're finished with all
little flat pieces of metal kind of chewed up and laid over.
Some cars are completely disabled by the problem.
What drives this Mormont compulsion?
Do the irresistible urges of sex and status and materialism that Madison Avenue tries
to stimulate in us as Detroit starts each new model year affect the Mormont too?
Warner doesn't think so.
We think that the initial cause of the problem or what instigates behavior is probably a natural
sodium deficiency.
We've noticed that these marmos often go after cars that come from ocean areas, possibly
looking for any kind of sea salt or something that may be on the cars.
We notice that older cars seem to be attacked more often than newer cars.
For us, older cars often have a mineral deposits around their hoses.
It's mostly females, it's mostly young females.
So they're still growing.
They need resources both for their own growth and they need resources for their young.
Cars are not only a preferred source of solid food.
Eflin glycol, the chemical that's in antifreeze, is a special treat.
As it pulls on the ground after radiators and hoses are pierced, marmots will gather
in groups to save it.
Leafle to most critters, the marmots only seem to get an antifreeze high.
Perhaps that's because their metabolism is so tough, researchers say they need to use
more sedatives to tranquilize a marmot than a bear.
Nature is just amazing, considering how specialized ecological niches develop.
Under the homo sapiens, who designs and builds the marmot delicacy thousands of miles away,
seasons it in the salt air and by impulse drives this special food to the only population
of marmots that will eat it.
Humans do this just when the marmot mothers are nursing their young and have their greatest
need for wholesome sustenance.
Who says humans are not part of the ecosystem?
Thanks for being with us on this week's Environment Show.
I'm Peter Burley.
For cassette copy of the program, call 1-800-323-9262 and ask for program number 334.
The Environment Show is a presentation of national productions which is solely responsible
for its content.
Thomas Lally is the producer, Stephanie Goyceman provided additional production support,
and Dr. Alan Shartuck is the executive producer.
The Environment Show is made possible by Hemings Motor News, the monthly Bible of the Old
Car Hobby 1-800-CAR-HRE.
The further more foundation and by the David and Lucille Packard Foundation for the Support
of Ocean Science and Fisheries Issues, so long and join us next week for the Environment
Show.
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