Echo

Corrosive Canadian oil raises pipeline concerns in Great Lakes region

By |

Plans to increase the import of a raw form of oil piped from Canada through the Midwest are worrying environment groups that say the trend could pose health and environmental dangers in the Great Lakes Basin.

A new report highlights what the groups say are escalating risks of major pipeline spills of the oil.

Echo

Bringing nature into the classroom

By |

The curator of natural history at Mackinac State Parks uses bones and jumps around like a kid to excite schoolchildren about natural history.

“What would be the point of preserving a forest or a bird or a watershed, if it’s something I wouldn’t care or know about?” asks Jeff Dykehouse.

The Water, Woods and Wildlife program reaches about 8,000 Michigan students a year.

Echo

State pushes for more young farmers

By |

As the state’s agricultural sector continues to grow, so does the need for young farmers, according to the Michigan Farm Bureau.

While the average age of the state’s farmers was about 54 in 2007, the Department of Agriculture believes that number is currently higher.

Echo

Growers smell trouble in stink bug invasion

By |

The name of the new invader is enough to make people laugh, but its potential peril is serious enough to make fruit growers weep.

The brown marmorated stink bug, which is notorious for wiping out horticultural crops, has been discovered in Southwest and central Michigan.

In 2010, growers in Pennsylvania lost an estimated 40 to 50 percent of their peach crop to the stink bug, according to Penn State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences.

Echo

Great Lakes SmackDown! Part II; Join us in the draft for terrestrial invaders

By |

By Alice Rossignol and Rachael Gleason

Let’s get ready to rumbleeeee! Last year we introduced the Great Lakes SmackDown!, an interactive feature that pitted eight aquatic invasive species against each other in science-based “lake fights” to determine the region’s most destructive invader. Experts and readers weighed in on which species they thought was the worst for the lakes. In the end, the quagga mussel prevailed with a nasty filter-feeding addiction and a problem with hoarding toxins. But this time around we’re going terrestrial: birds, mammals, insects and all sorts of plants.