Michigan’s lost prairies: Grassland restoration fights wildlife decline
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By Ruth Thornton
Gary Groff fondly remembers hunting all day on his grandfather’s land as a boy. “For my dad’s life he could not believe that I could go out there before daylight and come back after dark,” he said.
Now retired for many years, he still hunts the central Michigan property with friends. The parcel is partially wooded and partially farmed, but the farmland is poor. “The soil is sandier than heck,” Groff said, and the farmer who rented it did not make much money from the crops.
So, a few years ago, they enrolled the parcel in a government set-aside program and seeded it with native grasses and wildflowers.
Transportation
Transit agencies to test thermal cameras to beef up traffic safety
By Anna Rossow
Capital News Service
Federal grant money will help Michigan’s Department of Transportation implement increased safety measures for public transit drivers and pedestrians. MDOT will receive over $500,000 in funding to install thermal imaging cameras on public transit vehicles to help prevent collisions with people and animals in a variety of weather and light conditions. According to MDOT, the cameras will be installed on up to 60 vehicles at four rural and urban transit agencies: the Blue Water Transit Area in Port Huron, the city of Alma, the Community Action Agency of South Central Michigan based in Battle Creek and the Regional Transit Authority of Southeast Michigan.
The Buzz
West Michigan timber fraud earns prison term
By Eric Freedman
Capital News Service
The former owner of a West Michigan timber harvesting business has been sentenced to 41 months in federal prison for cheating investors of more than $2 million. Authorities said Trent Witteveen of Montague ran a Ponzi scheme involving phony documents and misusing some investors’ money to repay others.
U.S. Judge Robert Jonker also ordered Witteveen, who pleaded guilty to wire fraud, to pay $844,282 in restitution. The grand jury’s indictment laid out the background this way, saying Witteveen “earned his living in the timber harvesting business, initially as a subcontractor or independent contractor to sawmills:
He registered a company called Tall Timber and ran the fraud scheme from June 2018 to January 2021, the indictment charged.
It described how Witteveen approached landowners whose property had hardwood and softwood trees for purchase by the lumber industry and sawmills, mostly around Pentwater and elsewhere in Northwest Michigan
“Had he operated his business in a lawful manner, Witteveen would have used the investment capital to pay the landowners and harvest timber, including by subcontracting the cutting of the timber,” the indictment said.
Wildlife
Robins may be a predictor of dangerous lead levels in soil, study finds
By Eric Freedman
Capital News Service
Remember the canary in the coal mine? If the caged canary died, that was an urgent early warning for miners that the air was too dangerous to breathe and to get above-ground as quickly as possible. Now there’s evidence from Southeast Michigan that the American robin can provide an early warning about dangerous lead levels in the soil.