We've been catching up with our gardening-- in a year in which we covered plants from a late May freeze and now struggle with dry heat in the 90s.
Fortunately, we got out of the sun to read interesting stories and social media. Here's a digest for readers.
Duluth News Tribune: Wood turtles declining in Minnesota
We've been covering the effort to ban commercial turtle harvests in Minnesota, a good policy measure since turtles are very slow to reach maturity and reproduce. One turtle that's not harvested? The wood turtle.
At the Duluth News Tribune, John Myers reports in Wood turtles declining in Minnesota:
The news for wood turtles in Minnesota is not good.
According to the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources’ Wood Turtle Habitat Conservation Plan, finalized in 2020, declining population trends for the reptile are cause for concern and they are in danger of disappearing from the region entirely.
“Some populations are dominated by older adult turtles with little evidence of juvenile recruitment,’’ the plan notes. “Overall, populations are generally small, isolated and at risk for extirpation.”
And it’s not just a Minnesota problem. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature has classified wood turtles as endangered across their range — the Northeastern U.S. and eastern Canada — since 2010.
Wood turtles were once common in most of eastern Minnesota, from St. Louis County in the north to the Iowa border. They thrived in areas with sandy shorelines along rivers with plenty of forest nearby.
But wood turtles spend more time on land than most other Minnesota turtles, and that makes them more vulnerable to humans — namely vehicles on roads and habitat loss from waterfront development. Adult female wood turtles spend a good portion of their summer and fall on land eating berries, worms, mushrooms and insects, sometimes miles from their favorite river.
Not only are there fewer undeveloped sandy shoreline places to lay their eggs, but nests that are made are more often being destroyed by predators like fox, raccoons, skunks and coyotes. In one study by researchers at UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute virtually every wood turtle nest egg was dug up and eaten.
And not only are there fewer wood turtles making it to adulthood but more adult turtles are dying, and researchers aren’t sure why. Surveys conducted from 2016 to 2018 found a “substantial decrease in the number of individuals at eight monitoring sites coinciding with a large number of dead turtles of unknown cause found at the same sites.”
The estimated number of wood turtles at those eight sights in eastern Minnesota plummeted from 247 in 2016 to just 88 by 2018.
The good news is that turtle experts from the DNR and NRRI continue studying wood turtles thanks to a big federal wildlife grant. ...
Learn more at the New Tribune.
The Guardian: Mega Dairies
Two articles in the Guardian have come to our attention. In 2019, we posted about the Arizona Republic's reporting about mega-dairies tapping into the southwestern state's aquifers in Riverview Dairy drawing down Arizona's aquifers.
On Wednesday, Tony Davis reported for the Guardian in Mega-dairies, disappearing wells, and Arizona’s deepening water crisis:
The Sunizona community, in the south-western US state of Arizona, is just a speck on the map. A few hundred homes dot the landscape along dirt roads and for a few miles along a state highway that leads to the foot of the Chiricahua mountains near the New Mexico border.
Cynthia Beltran moved to Sunizona with her seven-year-old son last autumn even though the area lacks functional drinking water wells, because it was all she could afford. She cannot afford the $15,000 (£10,000) cost of deepening her well, which dried up last year, and had been paying for a local firm to deliver water in a tanker. But at $100 a week it became too expensive, so now she will be relying on a friend to help her fetch water from her mother’s well.
“I have no place to go. I don’t have a job. I can’t afford to pay rent,” she says.Beltran’s water woes are far from unique in the Willcox basin, an area of close to 2,000 sq miles (5,200 sq km) in Arizona’s south-east corner. Nearly 20 wells in Sunizona alone were deepened between 2015 and 2019, after they dried up. Seventy-five wells were deepened in that time across the Willcox basin, Arizona Department of Water Resources (ADWR) records show.
Estimates put the number of dried-up wells at more than 100. A number of houses in Sunizona have been abandoned by owners who could not afford to deepen existing wells or dig new ones. But if you have the money to drill deep, there is no limit to how much water you can extract.
While pinning a well’s decline on one source is virtually impossible, the sinking of the area’s aquifer accelerated after the Minnesota-based Riverview LLP bought and expanded a dairy 10 miles north of Sunizona in January 2015. Riverview has now drilled nearly 80 new wells, most at least 300 metres (1,000ft) deep, and three close to 800 metres deep.
It is not the only new well-driller encroaching on the basin. The notices of intent filed with the state to drill new or modify existing wells in the basin increased to 898 from 1 January 2015 to mid-November 2020, compared with 494 in the previous five years. But Riverview has drilled more new wells, and deepened existing ones, by far than any other organisation in the basin.
Kevin Wulf, a Riverview spokesman, does not dispute that the dairy is one factor in the decline of Arizona’s wells, but says it is hardly the only one.
“I get it – we’re the big target,” Wulf said on a tour of the dairy last year. “The rumour is, ‘you’re here to suck the valley dry and then you’re going to leave.’ We don’t want to do that.”
What is not disputed is that Riverview has transformed the look and economics of the Willcox basin in just a few years. . . .
Learn why Wulf's playing the victim card might not be as tastefu as he imagines. In a companion article, Debbie Weingarten reported in ‘There are ghosts in the land’: how US mega-dairies are killing off small farms:
In late January last year, dairy farmers filled a pub in the tiny town of Greenwald, Minnesota (population 238). Organisers from the Land Stewardship Project – a sustainable agriculture nonprofit – expected 50 people to attend, but 130 showed up from all corners of the state.
Dr Richard Levins, professor emeritus of applied economics at the University of Minnesota, addressed the event, which served as part elegy for the thousands of small family-owned dairies lost in recent years and part rallying cry for those remaining, despite the odds.
Across the US, dairy farmers have struggled beneath the weight of an industry-wide economic crisis. The cause is the massive overproduction of milk by large dairy operations, which has saturated the market, driving prices down well below the cost of production.
Proponents of mega-dairies cite efficiency and economies of scale, arguing that the model is simply the next logical step in dairying. But opponents, including Levins, say such operations do incalculable damage to the environment and rural communities, and capture bigger slices of a finite milk and cheese market – to the detriment of smaller dairies barely hanging on. . . .
Read the entire piece at the Guardian.
Minnesota Deerhunters Association letter to Senator Ingebrigtsen & Hansen
We've been reporting on the concerning spread on Chronic Wasting Disease in Minnesota's deer population in posts like MN DNR temporarily bans movement of farmed whitetails in state to protect wild deer health and Are deer farmers posing against MN DNR rule pausing movement of captive whitetails?
In a recent letter to Environment and Natural Resources conference committee chairs, the Minnesota Deer Hunters spoke to items of policy they want and don't want in the final proposal.
Deephaven DFLers Kelly Morrison tweeted
Forever chemicals in "biosolids" fertilizerMinnesota’s deer hunters understand that our #CWD crisis requires immediate changes to protect our wild deer. Thanks to the Minnesota Deer Hunters Association for sounding the alarm. #ForAHealthyThrivingMinnesota pic.twitter.com/1fNCa282SX
— Kelly Morrison (@Morrison4MN) June 4, 2021
An alert reader sent us another concerning story from the Guardian, Tom Perkins' ‘Forever chemicals’ found in home fertilizer made from sewage sludge:
Sewage sludge that wastewater treatment districts across America package and sell as home fertilizer contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS, also known as “forever chemicals”, a new report has revealed.
Sludge, which is lightly treated and marketed as “biosolids”, is used by consumers to fertilize home gardens, and the PFAS levels raise concerns that the chemicals are contaminating vegetables and harming those who eat them.
“Spreading biosolids or sewage sludge where we grow food means some PFAS will get in the soil, some will be taken up by plants, and if the plants are eaten, then that’s a direct route into the body,” said Gillian Miller, a co-author and senior scientist with the Michigan-based Ecology Center.
The testing, conducted with Sierra Club, found the chemicals in each of nine brands of biosolids it checked, and at levels that exceed standards set for two common types of PFAS. The biosolid brands are sold at stores like Home Depot, Lowes, Menards and Ace Hardware.
PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, are a class of about 9,000 compounds that are used across dozens of industries to make products water, stain and grease resistant. They’re also linked to a range of serious health problems like cancer, birth defects, endocrine disruption, and liver disease. They are known as forever chemicals due to their longevity in the environment once introduced.
Industries that use or produce PFAS often discharge the chemicals into public sewer systems where they travel to wastewater treatment plants, along with other industrial and human waste. Water is extracted from the waste, treated and released back into waterways. What remains in the treatment plants is a semi-solid mass of sludge that’s expensive for water treatment facilities to dispose of in landfills.
Sludge holds nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients that help crops grow, so with increasing frequency in recent years it’s treated and sold as home fertilizer, or given away to farmers. In 2019, about 60% of sewage sludge produced by treatment facilities was spread on farmland and gardens, as well as schoolyards and lawns. . . .
Read the rest at the Guardian. One of the classic books about public relations and pollution is John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton's Toxic Sludge is Good For You.
It certainly doesn't seem to be getting any better.
Have a chill weekend if you are able.
Photo: A wood turtle carries a transmitter that allows researchers from UMD's Natural Resources Research Insitute to track its movements. (Steve Kuchera / 2016 / News Tribune).
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