Echo
Mercury vote highlights need for a new Great Lakes mindset
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This falls in the category of things that are so bizarre that you can’t make them up: Last week nearly one-third of Great Lakes senators voted against protecting citizens from the effects of mercury pollution.
Echo
To fight childhood obesity, treat boys and girls differently
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Childhood obesity has tripled in the last decades, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Programs to curb childhood obesity would be more effective if they were gender-specific, researchers say.
Echo
What’s your favorite Canadian adventure in the Great Lakes basin?
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Only one of the top 10 Canadian Adventures recently identified by Outside Magazine falls within the Great Lakes basin. It’s a cool adventure – mountain biking near Quebec. But I have to admit that what really appeals to me about this one is the description of enjoying a beer in view of the St. Lawrence River at a ride’s end. Ontario picked up another nomination with the paddling of the Missinaibi River.
Nearshore
Beach grooming likely no longer regulated by Michigan; Federal rules still apply
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Michigan lakefront property owners who want to weed their Great Lakes beaches with mechanical devices may soon have one less hurdle to jump.
Echo
Great Lakes inspire pizza maker; The Lake Ontario has Canadian bacon
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Every time someone orders from the Great Lakes Pizza Collection at Buddy’s, the Detroit restaurant will donate a dollar to the Alliance for the Great Lakes, an environmental organization.
Echo
Citizen scientists monitor stream quality with iPhone app
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Creekwatch is a new iPhone app that allows citizens to become water monitoring scientists. Take a picture of a waterway and answer three quick questions; IBM records the information.
How are Anglo-Nubian goats like Asian carp?
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To answer that riddle you need to first review Monday’s Catch of the Day. It describes how communities in Texas and elsewhere still import Asian carp to clear an invasive plant out of vegetation-choked waterways. The carp are sterile to avoid substituting one invasive headache for another. (The carp threatening the Great Lakes are definitely not sterile and the longterm concern is that they will proliferate and dramatically change the native ecosystem.)
Where do the goats fit in? A reader notes a similar land-based phenomenon on New York’s Staten Island.
Echo
WhadayaKnow? Where does your water come from?
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This week Echo reporters asked the public and an expert where their water comes from.
Echo
Carp: Shunned in Great Lakes, welcome in Texas
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While resource managers and other conservationists worry about keeping Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, in Austin they’re giving them a real Texas welcome. In fact, just last week city officials dumped 3,000 of the fish into Lake Austin, according to the Austin-American Statesman. That’s on top of 10,000 they already put in the lake to control hydrilla, an aggressive plant that clogs the lake, fouls propellers and overtakes native plants. The grass carp is one of the species of Asian carp that wildlife experts fear could bypass an electric barrier at the Chicago River and eventually get into Lake Michigan. The concern is that the voracious eaters will thrive, disrupt the ecosystem and threaten the survival of native species.