Solutions
Dingell talks environmental priorities in election year
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When U.S. Rep.-to-be Debbie Dingell was growing up in St. Clair, she’d get in an inner tube and ride in the wake of freighters passing on the St. Clair River.
She fished there too.
Wildlife
New names slated for birds, including Michigan’s Kirtland’s warbler
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The Kirtland’s warbler has an expansive conservation program, draws tourists from across the globe and even has an annual festival in Roscommon, Michigan.
Yet what is perhaps Michigan’s most well-known endangered bird is slated to lose its name.
Land
Corn farmers again reject assessment bump amid “bad timing” for industry
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Michigan’s corn farmers rejected a recent proposed assessment increase amid low prices, blocking additional funds for research and lobbying.
The proposal would have raised the assessment from 1 cent per bushel to 2 cents.
Solutions
Liaison office would be first to connect tribes and Legislature
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While the House and Senate have never had a direct, official connection to tribal governments throughout Michigan, new legislation could change that.
A bill would make Michigan the first state with a formal legislative connection with its tribal governments,
Solutions
Study offers new insights into farming-related injuries
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A tractor falls on you. A horse kicks you. A cow pins you against the side of a barn. Your hand gets caught in a corn shucker.
These are just some of the accidents Michigan State University researcher Laurel Morano documented in her recent study of agriculture-related injuries – and only among the most dramatic examples of the dangers farmers face every day on the job.
Art
New book explores a lifetime of Great Lakes resilience
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Jane Elder once escorted a live cormorant to a Congressional hearing.
Elder, then a Sierra Club lobbyist, and James Ludwig, a Great Lakes ecologist, in 1989 drove the bird named Cosmos from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula to Washington D.C.
Solutions
Challenges, reduced public trust confront local health agencies
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Steve Hall used to call public health “the invisible profession.”
“Previously, when we did our jobs well, people didn’t know about us,” said Hall, who for 10 years has been the health officer for the Central Michigan District Health Department.
Solutions
Scrutiny builds as Michigan awaits first ‘chemical recycling’ facility
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When Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed off on expansive recycling reforms in December 2022, she also approved a last-minute amendment allowing chemical recycling — a process decried by many environmentalists — to be classified as a legal manufacturing process.
Chemical recycling, specifically the commonly used plastic pyrolysis process, turns plastic into fuel.
Solutions
Advocates call for more protection of migrant farmworkers
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The number of farmhands in Michigan working on H-2A visas — which allow farms that are struggling to hire U.S. workers to bring in temporary laborers from other countries—increased from 277 in 2010 to over 15,000 in 2023, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.
Water
High levels of toxic forever chemicals in Michigan fish alarm scientists
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Every fish studied recently in two southeast Michigan watersheds contained at least one of a family of toxic and persistent health-threatening chemicals.
The chemicals – collectively known as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances or PFAS – are found in some rivers, lakes, soils, drinking water, fish, cattle and crops.