Echo

The Great Lakes underground milk market

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Way to go Whole Foods, you’ve pissed off the foodies. There is currently a swirl of controversy on discussion groups, listservs and news articles, and probably grocery store aisles surrounding Whole Foods’ recent decision to discontinue offering raw milk in four states. Raw milk is milk that has not been pasteurized or homogenized, and to many, it is considered a much healthier alternative to processed dairy. The natural and organic grocery store that was once a haven or heaven for the regular purchasers of wheat germ, kale, and organic dog food, has stopped selling the product in California, Florida, Washington, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. The Miami New Times Food Blog cites an interview with Whole Foods, who responded that the decision was simply a regional, business decision, and could not get into the details.

Echo

Great Lakes Restoration Initiative helping groups preserve land

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The first Great Lakes Restoration Initiative-backed grants are lining up. Michigan and Ohio announced their plans to use $2.9 million to buy 1,600 acres of Great Lakes coastal wetlands, sand dunes, forests and beaches. That $2.9 million comes from $4.75 million in GLRI funding funneled through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal and Estuarine Land Conservation Program. The other $1.8 million will go to Wisconsin for land acquisitions in Houghton Falls and Mashek Creek. Here’s the breakdown:

Bete Grise Wetlands Acquisition, Michigan: $1.7 million
Houghton Falls, Wisconsin: $1.4 million
Kelleys Island Monagan Road Preserve, Ohio: $476,750
Mashek Creek Acquisition, Wisconsin: $398,000
Lake Erie Bluff Preservation Project, Ohio: $732,600

The grants require a 1:1 state match.

Echo

VIDEO: Six-pack trout

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A University of Rhode Island scientist may have developed a way to solve the impending Asian carp crisis in the Great Lakes: Pump up the natives. Check out this University of Rhode Island video. Read more here.

Echo

Logging off: Breaking and rebuilding desk jockeys

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The rules were explicit: “There will be no women or whining, blogging or Tweeting. “There will be whiskey, blood, rocks, fires, snot rockets, swearing, heavily peppered meats, and probably a night or two of freezing our tails off,” the e-mail read. Can four well-domesticated, NPR- listening, chair-swiveling journalists, pushed until they bust like cheap jump drives, turn into steel filing cabinets? It took two planning sessions at local dive bars, dozens of e-mail conversations and online chats before we set out to see. We did it under the auspices of the newly formed Northwoods Organization for Maintaining Authentic Allegiance with Michigan – NOMAAM – and with a plan to hike the 20-mile Manistee River Trail in the Manistee- Huron National Forest.

Echo

Lake politics: Obama to ban fishing?

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The Internet rumor mill was working overtime this week, with stories, columns and tweets flying around that the Obama administration was going to ban recreational fishing in the Great Lakes. It all began with a column on ESPN.com by Robert Montgomery that baldly stated: “The Obama administration has ended public input for a federal strategy that could prohibit U.S. citizens from fishing some of the nation’s oceans, coastal areas, Great Lakes, and even inland waters.”
He cites “industry experts”  — the industry being sport fishing — as warning that NOAA’s Ocean Policy Task Force is under the influence of environmental groups pushing to end sport fishing. The expert, a spokesman from fishing equipment manufacturer Shimano, said President Obama will issue an executive order for “marine spatial planning” which he believes will impact sport and recreational fishing, as well as commercial fishing, on inland lakes and rivers along with the coasts. The leap from fact to supposition was so great that ESPN.com added an editor’s note to the column after receiving more than 400 comments to the column. Executive Editor Steve Bowman wrote“… this particular column was not properly balanced and failed to represent contrary points of view.

Echo

Animating the Lake Huron ice bridge breakup

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A huge mass of ice at the southern tip of Lake Huron has the Canadian Coast Guard worried, according to the London Free Press and Port Huron Times Herald. Ice builds up there every year, but a warm spell could break up the mass into chunks too big to flow through the St. Clair River. That happened in 1984 and caused big problems.

The Times Herald has a cool interactive panoramic photo of the ice from the Blue Water Bridge. But suckers for satellite imagery should check out NOAA’s Great Lakes Coast Watch for a bird’s-eye view.

Echo
Karessa Weir

The other Great Lakes

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Ever Google “Great Lakes”? As part of my job as links hunter for Great Lakes Echo, I will run searches for Great Lakes stories through Google News to catch some of the more obscure publications that I don’t normally check. Google has been great about sending me some interesting reads. But occasionally it also sends me half way around the world. The Great Lakes of Africa are a system of seven lakes spread through three river basins.  It is dominated by Lake Victoria, which is the continent’s largest lake and the third largest freshwater lake in the world (following lakes Michigan and Huron, which actually constitute one water system but two lakes).