Archive for February 2010
Cash-strapped government officials have struck a deal with a state workers union to allow volunteers to groom Michigan ski trails.
In December the agency announced that only eight state forest ski trails would be groomed, and mostly by volunteer organizations.
Grooming involves removing debris, adding or removing snow and creating a level amount of snow, to improve skiing.
The eastern massasauga, Michigan’s only venomous snake, has candidate status on the federal endangered species list.
The rayed bean, a freshwater mussel, has similar status.
As executive director of the Ohio River Sanitation Commission, Alan Vicory knows well the relentless march of the Asian carp up the Mississippi River and their invasion into his own domain.
At a meeting of journalists in Louisville Friday he noted a similar but personal battle with moles, an aggressive invader of his own yard. The advice he was given about that problem? “Name them and make them part of the family.”
Vicory mused aloud about what he views as the inevitable result of the carp now knocking on the door of …
For weeks now, the media and politicians have been holding an intense spotlight on the Chicago locks as both the cause of and the cure for invasive species. Close the locks = Asian carp go away. Keep the locks open = Great Lakes are invaded.
But this week, we are reminded that the invasive species battle has several fronts. And we’re not just talking about Echo’s carp bombs.
Eric Sharp, outdoor writer for the Detroit Free Press is urging the powers that be not to forget the problems of ship ballast in …
In 2008, a Michigan postal worker went to the emergency room for trouble breathing after a custodian sprayed ants with an insecticide near her feet.
She lost three weeks of work. Events like this are not unique.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Sunday released its final version of the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative Action Plan. The plan spells out the agency’s goals and benchmarks for fixing up the world’s largest freshwater system through 2014.
The document updates a draft of the plan that was released in December and was open to public comment until Jan. 8. The EPA pulled the old version from its Web site, but since I had a copy sitting on my hard drive, I though I’d take a look at what’s changed.
The final …
The League of Conservation Voters released its 2009 National Environmental Scorecard today, grading the 111th Congress’s votes on issues such as clean energy, public lands, water quality, forest management and chemical security. The political advocacy group has measured Congress’s eco-friendliness since 1970.
Jonathan Oosting, over at MLive.com, examined the scores of Michigan politicos and found that Democrats earned higher marks than did Republicans in the first session.
I asked a related question in a blog post on Feb. 15: “Which party do you think does the better job as an environmental protector?”
Check …
The voracious and invasive Asian carp is on its way into the Great Lakes, pitting governments, environmental groups, shippers, boaters and anglers against each other over what ought to be done to stop it.
In an attempt to inject some levity into a potential environmental catastrophe, Echo presents: the carp bomb.
When I joined the Great Lakes Echo reporting staff as a recent Michigan transplant, my coworkers commonly derided me for a number of regional faux pas that were a product of my casual Great Plains parlance. They ranged from adding an “ACK” to Mackinac Island to pronouncing “Sault Ste. Marie” as something you may eat for dinner.
But my ignorance of Gordon Lightfoot’s classic, “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald” — a song about the actual shipwreck in 1975 that left 29 bodies missing in Lake Superior — just made these …
