Great Lakes Echo (https://greatlakesecho.org/author/guest-contributor/page/20/)
Native Americans once bent saplings to grow into directional markers. They signaled such things as where to cross a river and where to enter and exit trails. There are likely only a few hundred original trail trees left in the Great Lakes area. Some are over 200 years old.
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in June approved a plan to make the state age-friendly. It focuses on communication and information, respect and social inclusion, health services and community support, social participation and transportation.
A new University of Michigan study aims to understand how environmental exposures contribute to cancer. The Michigan Cancer and Environmental Research Study, or MI-CARES, is largely motivated by Michigan’s history of toxic environmental exposures and environmental injustice.
As Michigan enters peak color season, local officials across the state have nominated the best roads for motorists to enjoy the changing foliage.
An Ottawa County, Michigan, electroplating company and two of its top officers have pleaded guilty to violating the federal Clean Water Act by discharging wastewater with excessive amounts of zinc.
How we name things affects how we think about them. We name fields, and forests, and marshes, and streams as separate things, so we tend to think of them as separate things. But separating these habitats in our vocabulary and in our minds obscures the innumerable connections that bind these habitats into a single working landscape.
A federal grand jury has indicted a Minnesota farmer for allegedly cheating buyers of more than $46 million by falsely labeling non-GMO soybeans and corn as organic.
Bison are on the upswing again as ranchers and government officials aim to increase their populations across the United States. And that could have implications for other livestock operations.
For the past 10 years or so, entomologists have been looking for a way to control the population of spotted wing drosophila, a fruit fly that feeds on healthy cherries and blueberries. They say they may have found their answer in releasing the samba wasp, which kills fruit flies by laying its eggs inside them.
In July, the International Union for Conservation of Nature listed the monarch butterfly as endangered for the first time in history. Potter Park Zoo in Lansing, Michigan, first installed a pollinator garden in 2018. With the recent news of the monarch’s decline, the zoo is encouraging people to build wildlife habitats of their own.