Environment

Tribal communities strive to protect water quality

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By KELLY vanFRANKENHUYZEN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Water warriors from tribes across the Great Lakes region are preserving an important relative. It’s water – a resource so important that tribes refer to it in such personal terms.
“Water is a living resource, and we share an interdependent relationship with it,” said Daugherty Johnson III, environmental services manager at the Little Traverse Bay Bands of Odawa Indians, in Harbor Springs. Native Americans in the U.S. and First Nations in Canada believe water plays an important role historically, economically, politically, geographically and culturally. Tribal and non-tribal governments in Canada and the U.S. share responsibility for preserving the Great Lakes through various agreements. A major one, the Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement, is a binational understanding of roles they contribute to Great Lakes protection.

Agriculture

Should tourism support environmental protection?

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By KELLY vanFRANKHUYZEN
Capital News Service
LANSING — It’s too early to know if national and international attention on Flint’s municipal water crisis may tarnish the Great Lakes region’s image of pure water. But there is a tie between the perceived quality of water and its value, experts say. “I hope that the tourist industry gives back funding for protection and remediation,” said Joan Rose, Homer Nowlin Endowed Chair of Water Research at Michigan State University. That’s a worldwide approach “we have to do in the future,” she said. For example, there should be a tie between tourism and Peru’s challenges with sewage treatment and water reclamation at Machu Picchu.

Agriculture

Outdoor chickens stronger, healthier, small farmers say

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By KELLY VANFRANKENHUYZEN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Poultry farmers increasingly raise chickens, turkeys, ducks and geese in environmentally greener and healthier habitats, according to the American Pastured Poultry Producers Association. “The concept is to provide good pastured poultry practices,” said Roy Ballard, a Purdue University Extension educator. Pastured poultry is raised in open fields rather than indoors. Corinne Carpenter, a small poultry farmer in Webberville, said, “As birds are raised outside, they are stronger and have less need to be medicated than birds indoors, which can be overcrowded and stressed.”

Carpenter, owner of Break O’Day Farm, raises both pastured and free range poultry. With pastured poultry, hens roam without fences, she said.

Agriculture

City bees pollinate urban education

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By KELLY vanFRANKENHUYZEN
Capital News Service
LANSING — Urban beekeeping is an increasingly popular teaching tool that also provides support for the threatened pollinators. “Rooftops and balconies are great places for beehives in the city because the bees will fly above everyone,” said Meghan Milbrath, the coordinator of the Michigan Pollinator Initiative Project. Her program at Michigan State University addresses bee health and pollination across the state. Milbrath coordinates the care of beehives at the Student Organic Farm and the Bailey Greenhouse and Urban Farm at the university. Two hives were installed on a dorm balcony last spring.