By Andy Balaskovitz, abalaskovitz@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 30, 2009
Environmental education changes how kids learn. And educators integrating it into other subjects say it’s worth the effort.
A nationwide study – Closing the Achievement Gap: Using the Environment as an Integrating Context for Learning – found environmental education raises standardized test scores and reduces discipline and classroom management problems.
The economic downturn makes it tough for such programs to flourish in Michigan and elsewhere. But there are hopeful signs. Recent legislation diverts some civil fines into a

A look at the benefits, barriers and solutions to an environmental curriculum in public schools.

Click for descriptions of environmental education efforts. Larger map.
By Andy Balaskovitz,
abalaskovitz@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 29, 2009
Randy Showerman leads his boy scout troop out his back door and into the dark and silence.
There are no lanterns or campfires, no knot-tying or shelter-building lessons. Silence is key. He tells the scouts to stare at the sky and listen. It’s usually best between 10 p.m. and 11 p.m.
“Environmental education needs to begin with the kids having an understanding of their surroundings,” he said. “That means getting them outdoors.”

(MI) Bay City Times – Downtown Midland will become a Farmers Market from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. Monday evenings in July and August.

(NY) The New York Times -
Desperate to halt the erosion of Louisiana’s coast, officials there are talking about breaking Mississippi River levees south of New Orleans to restore the nourishing flow of muddy water into the state’s marshes.

(NY) The New York Times – For the first time since territorial days, rain will be free for the catching here, as more and more thirsty states part ways with one of the most entrenched codes of the West.

By Jeff Gillies, jeffgillies@gmail.com
Great Lakes Echo
June 26, 2009
A bizarre salamander and the endangered, clam-like mussel that relies on it got good news recently from Canadian scientists.
Federal researchers found an apparently stable population of mudpuppies in Ontario’s Sydenham River. The research is published in the June issue of the Journal of Great Lakes Research.
Mudpuppies are native to the Great Lakes and have beady eyes, slimy skin and feathery gills sticking out of their necks.

(MI) The Grand Rapids Press – More than 60 Cascade residents, mostly neighbors of a proposed 80-acre park, convinced township officials Wednesday to slow down development plans for the park to be located on the former Leslie E. Tassell estate.
Residents who successfully fought a condominium development on the same property last year complained Wednesday at a public input session on a draft plan for the park that they hadn’t been included in the park’s development process.

By Jeff Gillies
Great Lakes Echo
June 25, 2009
Here are couple of recent and on-going series on Great Lakes topics.
Dave Spratt of Great Northern Outdoors has written a good three-part series that tells the story of shifting food webs in lakes Huron and Michigan. Parts one and two look at the collapse of Chinook salmon and the rise of walleye in Lake Huron — changes driven by the impact of zebra and quagga mussels on the once abundant alewives.
Part three heads to Lake Michigan, where alewives are down but haven’t disappeared, …

By Andrew McGlashen
Environmental Health News
Straddling the brawny sweep of the St. Lawrence River, where New York, Quebec and Ontario meet, the territory called Akwesasne has long provided fish that feed the 12,000 members of the Mohawk Nation there.
But the junction of their ancestral legacy with their region’s industrial legacy has exposed the Mohawk to high levels of polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs.
Now research suggests that the human health risk and gender-bending potential of these widespread and long-lasting pollutants are greater than previously recognized, and the Mohawk aren’t the only ones who …