Arts & Entertainment

Flint through different lenses

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By DAVID POULSON
Capital News Service
LANSING — I got to know Scott Atkinson in a Land Rover rattling through the Australian Outback. That was in 2004 when he was a student in my study abroad class.  I figured him for Hemingway-like aspirations. Within days of our arrival, he bought a kangaroo-hide hat that rocked an Indiana Jones vibe. He wrote about our Aboriginal guide, a man who sought his ancient roots – connections that had been severed by a government policy that produced what is now called Australia’s Stolen Generation.

Environment

Private land finds home in Qualified Forest Program

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By DAVID POULSON
Capital News Service
LANSING — A state program that more than tripled the private land managed for forestry in just three years earns unusual praise from both forest products producers and environmentalists. If there is one thing the two groups agree on, it’s that both of their preferred uses “are better than subdivisions,” said Marvin Roberson, a forest ecologist with the Michigan chapter of the Sierra Club. “If you got 160 acres and your only choice is to sell to a subdivision because you can’t afford the taxes, this keeps it in forested land.”
The Qualified Forest Program gives tax breaks to landowners who agree to manage their forests under a plan developed by a state-certified forester. The plans help them harvest their land sustainably, but they also can consider how to better provide for wildlife or keep invasive species from overtaking the land. Industry officials agree it’s been a success.

Environment

Dead birds spur cleanup of longstanding DDT contamination

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By DAVID POULSON
Capital News Service
LANSING — When residents of St. Louis described the death of birds in their small mid-Michigan community, Matt Zwiernik recalled studies by another Michigan State University scientist more than 50 years earlier. “It was exactly as George Wallace described it,” said Zwiernik, director of the university’s Wildlife Toxicology Laboratory. “They had tremors and seizures and they were fluttering on the ground as if they had a broken wing or were taking a dust bath.”

And they soon died. Wallace was the MSU ornithologist whose research into how the insecticide DDT killed birds was cited by Rachel Carson in her landmark book Silent Spring.