Outdoors Maryland; 1803

Tourist Marilyn dismayed by the NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you. Coming up follow along as we explore the hidden street. Fly with pink rings in Maryland on their journey. And. A look. Back at the struggle to save lives by. Next. Door's metal that is produced in cooperation with the Maryland Department of Natural Resources. Dno are inspired by nature guided by science. Good thing.

There's a hidden world flowing beneath the surface in our neighborhoods. Farms. And woods. Most of us live oblivious to the life of streams. But the streams know us well. Unable to refuse they accept our thoughtless run off. And careless cast offs. Now a growing core of volunteers is determined to befriend their streams and test their local waters. My GP had. A simple. ACA for people like that. Stream waiter's has been a great success was started in 2000 and we've trained about

700 people since we began to sample streams all over the state. And today we have about two thousand eight hundred sampling sites sampled by stream leaders volunteers. Daniel Boulud is Assistant Program chief of the ecological Assessment Program at the Department of Natural Resources. Well every year we're amazed at the number of people that we get interested in the program. I think their love for the outdoors and their willingness to help the natural resources with our stream monitoring efforts just is very rewarding to many of these folks. So that the first section the stream really works or not it goes from about that bridge a hundred feet and that will take us to about round this. Then. You're going to. Go. Scott strength helps train volunteers from local watershed organizations to find and collect benthic macro invertebrates that look better known as weather buffs.

Alright so I'm putting the roots in the net and then I'm again I'm going to be aggressive about this I'm not going to be timid about it. Shake it around pretty hard to dislodge the bugs. Sampling procedures are uniform across the state and schedule for the bugs early underwater larval stage before they sprout wings and fly away. Right right. Absence or relative abundance of certain bugs gives researchers a snapshot of the streams water quality. The data these volunteers will collect in their own neighborhoods later this spring and will supplement findings by scientists with the Maryland biological stream survey. Part of the beauty of stream writers is we are able to connect people with their local environment. We provide them with all the information and equipment that they need to basically find out the help of their local watershed. It is really up here in March and April the volunteers set out to sample local streams following guidelines. Roger Fitzgerald located his backyard stream by G

p.s. when we sample a stream we record the date and time. And that's important because external events like a big flood could really change what we find in the stream for daughter Natalie. The stream will forever flow through childhood memory. Living the dream does well feel closer to nature because it's just like there in front of you. At first glance this stream seems rural and pristine but Roger is by trade an engineer and an active member of the pretty boy watershed alliance. He understands his stream is part of a complex watershed system that feeds into pretty boy a reservoir. One of Baltimore's main sources of drinking water. What's happening on the scene upstream impacts water quality here. Lived here for 22 years and during that time and seen a lot of changes in history Airstream was about half its width. Years ago and since then we've had increased channelization a lot of debris has washed down the stream and big bags of silt and gravel. Upstream we have acres and

acres of developed land pavement. And there's a big golf course and lots of areas where the water isn't held during a flood so it will be three or four feet deep in this Stream and coming over the banks just royalties the muddy water looks like a small river. It's the size of the gunpowder during a flood. What we sample at each stream is a variety of habitat in proportion to what it where the sound in the stream. And this stream we did 14 riffles. 300 cut banks. In three submerged logs and sticks. From that. Habitat we find a variety of creatures. Looks like I found a stone fly. Larvae here on our banks amply. They generally have two tails you may have them stuck together. The stone flies sound

in good quality streams moderate quality stream so would not be sound in a poor quality streams. Some of our streams have had buckets with just crawling with stone flies just popping out of the sea out of the bucket. This one is more of a moderate quality and it has some stone flies and some crane flies but not a abundance of invertebrates. Miles away near downtown Baltimore. Hearty volunteers with the Jones phones watershed Association are teaching their daughters some raw truths about urban living. Without the help of such volunteers as Ellen Schmidt restoration coordinator. The survey of streams in this area could never be accomplished. The Jones Hall's watershed is about 58 square miles and there's roughly about 200 stream Miles. Part of our watershed is in Baltimore County and part of our watershed is in Baltimore City so there's a definite difference between the streams that you find in Baltimore

County and the streams that you can behave more city due to urbanization and the amount of impervious surface you do get directly what the water's gathering on the street running into the stream so as you may notice there is a lot of trash but there are also other hazards in the stream. For instance the runoff of chemicals pesticides fertilizers are all eventually going to run to the stream as well which will affect the quality of the stream. You do you see anything that you can tell is living in there. Was right here. With some things that really you know maybe Allegiant something that. I'm going to look like a little warmer. Carole Howard is a science writer who lives near the stream. I would see all the trash and just the breaks my heart. It's a sweet lovely little stream and yet there's just. So much so much. Trash. Thrown in through woods and the soapy water coming in the outfalls of what we want to clean up the basis of the food. The place to start to is in the hole the water that goes into the basin and.

So. Needed to feel like I can do something. Gives me some sense of. It to make some progress. This. Hope. To get other people involved as well to. Do their part. It. Is a. Big night yes. Many of. The bugs that we've been seeing today and that were typical of what we've sampled last year aren't very high quality as they're usually tolerant of pollution which is typical of the stream. In spite of recent budget cuts the string Withers program continues with the vital help of volunteers. I think it's great that Marilyn has such. Forethought is. Not only. Trying to learn more about their streams but giving citizens the opportunity to do that for themselves as well. One of the most unusual migrations to grace the skies of North America.

Begins in a national wildlife refuge in central Wisconsin. In October an ultralight aircraft takes off from the refuge. Trailed by a group of young whooping cranes. The cranes have been trained to think of the plane as their mother. And over the next several weeks the plane will lead the birds on an incredible twelve hundred mile journey to a refuge along Florida's Gulf Coast. This human assisted migration is part of an ambitious effort to save the whooping crane. One of the world's most severely endangered birds. The goal is to establish a new migratory flock in the eastern United States geographically separated from the last remaining wild flock which migrates between Canada and Texas. John French's research manager for the USGS Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Laurel Maryland. The problem with introducing a new flock of whooping cranes is there were no workers here is there currently to teach them how to migrate. A couple of different routes have been

working with ultralight aircraft and teaching birds how to fly. The migration was one. So we thought this might be a way to develop a new migratory flock in the eastern part of the United States. And so far this revolutionary experiment. Seems to be working. In 2001 we took our first class of whooping cranes down. To Florida from Wisconsin. They got down there in fine shape and the amazing part is. They migrate back on their own without having any aircraft to lead them in. The Patuxent Wildlife Research Center is playing a pivotal role in this project. Raising and providing initial training to all the chicks involved in the migration experiment. Most of the chicks come from eggs produced by captive cranes housed at the center. To encourage the rare breeding cranes to produce more eggs each season new laid eggs are removed from the nest and are incubated by foster parents or in machines and even in the debate or

the unborn chicks get some preparation for the destiny that lies ahead. Jennifer Green is a biological technician. While they're still in the egg we'll put a tape recorder in that has a call of a mother the way that a mother would Per to the checks. Also it has an engine noise so that way once it hatches it's not afraid of the noise of the engine. Kathleen O'Malley works closely with the young chicks birds imprint on what they see that moves when they hatch. And so the concept behind the costume was that all the humans that were working with them would have this figure disguising shroud over them and they would be working with. Well being Crane looking puppet. And that's really the most important part of the concert I'm the chick doesn't pay with so much attention to the face mask and all this because they think mom is that prop that we use the puppet in as natural a way as we can to emulate a real crane behavior.

So you know we use the puppet to show the chick what the food is and to hand the chick the food the way it's pan and then within two or three days the chick learns what to eat and that he can eat it without waiting for the puppet he can to steal it on his own. Technicians also check the chicks frequently for health problems. We're checking hydration and we're checking the weight and the vent. This gives us an excellent monitor of how the check is progressing. This caring concern of course stem from the fact that so much is riding on each new crane. The fact is as you never forget how few of them there are. There's only 400 of them something in the world in the whole world. So each one of them has so much potential. They're like little diamond and you can't lose them. Almost as soon as the chicks can walk they go outside for exercise.

Learning to follow a costume technician around the centers builds in marshes. And when there are only about a week old. They begin getting acclimated to an ultralight that has been modified for use and it around. Then Spragg is one of the machines operate. When we're doing our Also light training we use a large mechanical puppet that dispenses the meal worms. And that way the ticks when they begin following the airplane get a reward for doing that. They instinctually will follow us because we had this parent sick relationship. And what happens is you take the birds out with the airplane and it's like they're going forward with their parents. Once they're a little older then they get kind of big for that small circle where we're training them. And will bring them out to a to a larger field. Once the birds have learned to reliably follow the plane they're ready for the next stage of their training at about five weeks of age before they can fly. They're packed in

individual crates and sent to Wisconsin's in the CTL National Wildlife Refuge in Wisconsin. They'll begin to get airborne and they'll start fine with the plane it's just the progress of the training that we do here except we use an airplane that's equipped to fly. We easily begin our migration in October. With that twelve hundred fifty miles to go to get to Florida. By the time. Get the four day. It's a little bit bittersweet because you've been with the birds every day and all said you have to. Say goodbye to him. And that part's. That. But that parting is also the start of a promising future for this endangered species. John French Each year since that first migrating flock of seven birds there were more and more train to migration each year so we're up to about I mean order of 18 each year that we take down to Florida. What we hope is eventually these birds will start to breed they're a little too young to breed now but that really is our

ultimate goal to have a self-sustaining population that migrate in the east. At the dawn of the 1960s water men plied the Chesapeake as they had done for over a century and a half with one flood of different harvests were declined. None of the new ones. But most afraid it could be to the various species who are in the downside. Environmental Science still in its infancy. Also begin to. Wonder why. Researchers Drew simply luminary conclusions. And in 1962 by Rachel Carson a biologist turned author living in Silver Spring Maryland Silent Spring a

seminal book that links scientific conclusions and activism. Respond the environmental news was born. Bill I should by now working for the World Wildlife Fund. And Swanson now working for the Chesapeake Bay commission and Kent mom for an environmental historian were active during the early years of this movement in Maryland. This was an interesting time because we were right on the cusp of the first Earth Day Population Bomb Clean Water Act. Well these things that seem to offer so much hope for both environmental preservation and restoration. There was a real sense that we could do this and that if we said we were going to reduce nitrogen phosphorus by 40 percent or if we were going to restore 2000 and 10 miles of stream with forested buffers by 2010 then we would do it.

There began to be a folk songs written about the bag a schooner fair. I did some songs. And others Tom Wharton's writing was making an impact. We had politicians who were all for the best. I mean it wasn't a Republican or Democratic issue. It was simply a bay country issue. Scientists were concerned about heat exchange problems of power facilities like chalk point on the Patuxent River in the 1960s. Their studies and monitoring efforts intensified when BGT proposed incited a nuclear power facility at Calvert Cliffs in southern Maryland. About one thousand seventy. Three. We had a visit. And the man came to all the laboratories in the bay we had a visit from Charles Mathias who was then a Republican senator from Maryland and he came and asked each one of us one of the time in interviews what do you think's going on in Chesapeake Bay. How

important you think salt marshes are. What do you think about nutrients. And he triggered a year twenty seven million dollar study of one of the principal conclusions of the report was the impact of nutrients and their role of nitrogen and phosphorous. We thought at first that it would be all toxic to his awful chemicals that we were throwing into the estuary or even temperature change and chlorine and all the things that come out of the industrial plants in the basin we thought that those things would really be dominant. But it turned out that while they were important and while they had a serious role the dominant thing was nutrients nitrogen and phosphorus coming out of wastewater plants coming out of farmland in the basin. And of course coming out of developed areas. Scientific studies conducted on the Chesapeake now begin to fuel the fires of activism politicians and policy followed in 1980 newly elected Maryland governor Harry Hughes put cleanup of the

bay near the top of his political agenda. We said to the scientists All right we want you to do something you've never done before. We want you to go a little bit beyond the traditional scientific method. And do some integrated thinking about the problems of the bag. So we got them to think more integrated. And then at the same time we took the key Cabinet secretaries myself from the Health Department the secretary of natural resources the secretary of agriculture secretary of state planning. We met regularly almost on a weekly basis for about six or eight months. The depart of natural resources the soul of the whole while and it was called the Wye meetings and we really hammered out the program that was going to be the state's program for responding to this. And scientific analysis about the issues of the bag. And then. Part of that process was to build the public. Interest beyond what it already was but to get it focused on auction.

And so the citizens Cockburn's that was held in December of 83 was a very important part of having the citizens think about what they thought the issues were. And of course this was the state of Maryland trying to leave Pennsylvania and Virginia in the District of Columbia all to come together to have a coherent program. The newly formed Chesapeake Bay commission sponsored the event. The time for study is now over. It's time to begin acting. Governor you said later that Maryland has also committed the money necessary to spend in the cleanup. We've been. Looking at 10 to 15 million dollars a year in operating expenses for the next five years. So what happened was they came together and find the very first pay agreement. And those were the early years of an amazing array of legislation. But now we take for granted sediment and erosion control. Fisheries man and met him a lot of the fisheries management the critical areas

land preservation and agricultural preservation. Only one piece of environmental legislation put forward by the Suzi administration failed to pass in the 1904 legislative session. A phosphate detergent bath in the 1905 session Paul Hollander co-sponsored a phosphate detergent bath. And I will never forget on the floor of the house when they were negotiating it that she had a very large pile of books probably this big on her desk and the next thing I knew this marvelous little lady just so and was sitting on top of the stack of books and she said I am sitting on scientific evidence that the phosphate detergent band is defendable with science as a driving force. The phosphate detergent ban bill became law and the

science drove policy again in 1907 when a second big agreement was signed. Maryland Virginia Pennsylvania the District of Columbia and the EPA pledged to reduce nitrogen and phosphorus by 40 percent in the bay by the year 2000. Right. On Earth Day 1990 Environmental activists saw nothing but blue skies into the far distant future. Science the weapon they had wielded and popular support had seemingly won the day. What. Was their optimism justified. In the future. Drop into our website at W W W dog MP t dog o r g

to send us your comments and suggestions. Learn more about Maryland's diverse natural beauty on our website. And in our magazine. Dno are inspired by nature guided by science outdoors Maryland is made by NPT to serve all of our diverse communities and is made possible by the generous support of our members. Thank you.