Air Date: May 26, 1995

SEGMENTS

Sea Urchins: Maine's Delicate Delicacy / Andrea DeLeon

Andrea DeLeon of Maine Public Radio reports on the recent boom in sea urchin roe exports which now seems to be facing an equally rapid decline. The Maine fleet was quick to answer Japanese demand for the delicacy, but now some fishermen wish officials had acted sooner to limit takes and sustain the population. (05:20)

Putting Zebra Mussels to Work / Kevin Niedermeier

Normally a nuisance to native species in eastern US waters, the exotic Zebra mussel is now being employed by home aquarium owners as living filters. But what at first seemed like a good, low cost alternative to mechanized filters, has now proven to have its drawbacks. Kevin Niedermeier reports from Cleveland. (03:08)

Husbands and Wives for Alewives / Nancy Cohen

In Massachusetts, river herring have won a group of human protectors who see them as a critical link in the aquatic food chain. Members of Alewives Anonymous spend their free time clearing the way for the herrings' return from the ocean to their native streams for spawning. Nancy Cohen reports. (06:50)

Living on Earth Profile #5: Lisa Crawford...Citizen Turned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Waste Activist / Lorna Jordan

Once a quiet Ohio housewife, Lisa Crawford is credited with helping expose the lethal dangers created by the U.S. nuclear weapons complex, starting with her own neighborhood. Lorna Jordan met with Mrs. Crawford and spoke with her and some others who know her, in this Living on Earth Profile Series report. (05:05)

Show Credits and Funders

Show Transcript

Copyright c 1995 by World Media Foundation. No portion of this
transcript may be copied, sold, or transmitted without the
written authority of World Media Foundation.

HOST: Steve Curwood
NEWSCASTER: Jan Nunley
REPORTERS: Lisa Wolfington, Caroline Leary, Andrea DeLeon,
Kevin Niedermier, Nancy Cohen, Lorna Jordan

(Theme music intro)

CURWOOD: From National Public Radio, this is Living on Earth.

(Music up and under)

CURWOOD: I'm Steve Curwood.

Maine is faced with learning the age-old lesson of over-fishing, as a sudden boom in the harvesting of sea urchins is threatening to go bust.

BOLAND: Traditionally in the fisheries, the predominant attitude is that if I don't go out and get it, somebody else is going to. Somewhere along the line, somebody's going to have to put the hammer down and say this is it, this is all you're going to get, make the most of it.

CURWOOD: Also, one woman who's leading a crusade to clean up the mess left behind by the making of nuclear bombs.

CRAWFORD: For 40 years they built these weapons. They contaminated the land, the water, the air, everything. And they never used them. I feel like they were used on the American people.

CURWOOD: That and more this week on Living on Earth, right after this news.

Environmental News

NUNLEY: From Living on Earth, I'm Jan Nunley. Babies born to women who've eaten fish from the Great Lakes are at risk for serious health problems. A study by scientists at the State University of New York in Oswego shows the infants of mothers who consumed more than 40 pounds a year of certain fish while pregnant are more likely to have abnormal reflexes, tremors, and decreased attention spans. The researchers say their investigation is only preliminary, but the findings are similar to earlier studies.

Americans involved in cleaning up Russia's massive Usinsk oil spill are defending a Russian decision to set fire to 70 acres of land. Russian clean up workers reportedly set the fire to get rid of oil in time for a visit by senior government officials. Bill Stillings of Hartech, an American company hired by the Russians to help clean up the spill, says although Hartech wasn't notified of the fire until it was nearly over, it's a legitimate clean-up technique.

STILLINGS: There's a trade-off, of course. You're trading a ground pollution incident for a short-term air pollution incident.

NUNLEY: But a Greenpeace spokesman said the burning violates the terms of international aid for the clean-up. The World Bank advanced $125 million for the operation provided the Russians adhere to Western standards. The spill from the rusted pipeline happened last fall near the Arctic Circle. It's estimated to be 3 times the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster.

Environmental advocates have joined with conservative Republicans in both houses of Congress to end subsidies for sugar producers. From Washington, Lisa Wolfington explains.

WOLFINGTON: A bipartisan group of lawmakers has unveiled identical House and Senate bills to eliminate the Federal sugar program. They say it's too expensive and is damaging to the environment. Lawmakers and activists charge the domestic sugar subsidy has led to the ruin of the Florida Everglades because of pollution from the production of sugar cane. Government price supports have led to a doubling of sugar cane acreage over the past two decades. One of the bill's sponsors, Senator Judd Gregg, a New Hampshire Republican, says the program costs consumers nearly one-and-a-half billion dollars more than would be paid if the sugar program were left to the free market. But sugar producers dispute that figure and say it's much lower. The US price for sugar today is almost twice what people in the rest of the world pay, and now some major American food companies have resorted to importing less expensive sugar for their products. For the past 20 years, the sugar lobby has protected the subsidy.
This year, it may not get by budget-cutting Republicans. For Living on Earth, I'm Lisa Wolfington in Washington.

NUNLEY: A new report provides scientific support for the Endangered Species Act. The National Academy of Sciences says the 1973 law is scientifically sound and critical to preserve biological diversity. Congress is considering restrictions on the Act to ease its impact on landowners and businesses. The House has already approved a freeze on enforcing the law, and severe budget cuts would restrict the Interior Department's ability to administer it.

A family of endangered peregrine falcons is getting used to life in the big city, and giving their neighbors a chance to get to know them better. From KPLU in Seattle, Caroline Leary reports.

LEARY: A family of birds is getting special treatment from their landlord, the Washington Mutual Bank in Seattle. The bank says these tenants can stay on top of the building rent-free and with no interest for as long as they want. In all, 3 peregrine chicks hatched in their penthouse nest and are said to be in good health. Experts say they expect the young peregrine falcons to make their first flights from the top of the 55-story skyscraper in little over a month. Seeing this as a unique opportunity to study the falcons, scientists set up video cameras linked to color monitors in the building's lobby, and in the past year and a half nearly 5,000 bird enthusiasts have gathered around TVs to watch the falcons.

MAN: It's fascinating watching them taking the building as a nest and a tree. This is their concrete forest, I suppose.

LEARY: Scientists stress that these birds are in no more danger here nesting in a high-rise building than they would be in their natural habitat on a cliff or a tree in the wild. For Living on Earth, I'm Caroline Leary in Seattle.

NUNLEY: Modern research is shedding light on the pollution problems of ancient civilizations. French geologists digging in Arctic ice have found lead pollution from nearly 2,000 years ago. The pollution may have come from the ancient Romans, who smelted huge amounts of the metal to make roofing, pipes, and even cooking pots, even though surviving texts show some Romans knew about the dangers of lead.

On this continent, researchers speculate that clear-cutting of Central American rainforests contributed to the collapse of the Mayan civilization. UCLA archaeologist Richard Hansen says the Maya cleared and burned acres of trees to make stucco from limestone. The resulting soil erosion allowed sediment to fill swamps, covering the peat the Mayans used to fertilize their crops, and that could have led to widespread food shortages.

That's this week's Living on Earth news. I'm Jan Nunley.

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Sea Urchins: Maine's Delicate Delicacy

CURWOOD: This is Living on Earth. I'm Steve Curwood. If you think about seafood from Maine, lobster can't be very far from your mind. And indeed, with its big, fat claws and succulent meat, lobster is still the most important commercial catch from Down East Maine. But in recent years, the lobster's been getting a run for its money from a new creature on the marine auction block, the sea urchin. Now in the US we tend to think of sea urchins as curiosities to be avoided. Their bodies are small balls that bristle with sharp spikes, and if you step on one at the beach you won't soon forget it. But they are highly prized in Japan for their eggs. In fact, this year, Maine officials predict sales of sea urchins to Japan will top $50 million. But the big money may not last. Even though the urchin fishery is just getting started, it already appears to be in danger of collapse; and as Maine Public Radio's Andrea DeLeon reports, many harvesters are blaming the state.

DELEON: If you told a Maine lobsterman a decade ago that the lowly sea urchin would become Maine's second most valuable seafood product, you would have been laughed off the waterfront.

(A man speaks: "It is the bane of lobstermen, it has been the bane of lobstermen. It would fill their traps, eat the bait. In fact, even gnaw through the twine on the traps. And so in the beginning of this it was terrific: get rid of these urchins. And
then when it became...")

DELEON: Paul Blaise is the owner of Rowboat Enterprises in Booth Bay Harbor, a business that exports live sea urchins to Japan. On most winter days, his warehouse floor is stacked with trays of greenish-brown creatures that resemble nothing more than viciously-studded pin cushions. They may not look like much from the outside, but processed urchin roe sells for up to $50 a pound in Japanese markets. Blaise uses a special tool to crack a sampling of urchins and check the roe content. It is the end of the season; many urchins have begun to spawn, which makes the roe unmarketable. And this year, high quality urchins have been scarce all winter.

(Cracking sound)

BLAISE: This portends bad. I mean I, uh, OK, so you can see a difference there. That is a little off-color, it's a little towards the brown; what you're looking for is orangey or bright yellow.

DELEON: Blaise cracks half a dozen urchins before he finds one with roe sacks just the right orange-yellow color to please the discriminating Japanese palate and aesthetic. The results of this sample don't please him, but the rest of the load is packed into boxes with refrigerant. They'll be at a Boston airport tomorrow and delivered to a processor in Hokaido the day after.

(Voices calling to each other while loading)

DELEON: The Robbie and Daniel cruises into the rowboat wharf, her deck piled high with urchins. Captain Bobby Hallonen tends lobster traps in the warm weather and takes out an urchin crew in the winter. Over six years of harvesting urchins, Hallonen says a lot has changed.

HALLONEN: In our area there's, there's pretty much, it's been hit hard, really. And a matter of fact, today, we went, we took quite a ride, and the outer islands have pretty much been hit hard. And it's not like it used to be.

DELEON: But urchin harvesting is still an outstanding living by local standards. A good diver can make $200 to $500 a day, though rough winter weather often keeps boats in shore. The Robbie and Daniel is a sleek lobster boat only 2 years old. It's one of a lot of new boats in the water at Booth Bay Harbor, since the urchin money started flowing. That reputation for easy money may be why nearly 2,000 divers have taken to urchining, and why Hallonen and others now bring about a third of the urchins they once did on an average day. After several years of inaction, the state instituted a series of regulations. These include closing
the fishery during peak spawning, and requiring harvesters to have a license. But divers say the state isn't enforcing a moratorium on new licenses, and some people estimate that 25% of all the urchins harvested in Maine are taken illegally. Jim Boland of the Maine Urchin Harvesters' Association, says fishermen have always had trouble preserving the resources that support them.

BOLAND: Traditionally in the fisheries, the predominant attitude is that if I don't go out and get it, somebody else is going to. Somewhere along the line, somebody's going to have to put the hammer down and say this is it, this is all you're going to get, make the most of it.

DELEON: Though there is far from universal agreement on what additional measures, if any, should be taken to protect the urchin fishery, harvesters who are already licensed seem to agree that additional regulations could be needed. In addition to enforcing the moratorium on new licenses, many harvesters would like to see the state close areas of the coast where the marketable urchins have been cleaned out. Urchin refuges would be allowed to lie fallow. The idea intrigues Maine's new commissioner of marine resources. Robin Alden says no one knew anything about Maine's sea urchins when the fishery took off. But, she says, regulations must sometimes precede scientific studies of a resource. Alden believes Maine's sea urchin fishery can be brought to a maintenance level where landings are lower, but supply is steady. She says marine officials need to take a
lesson from the urchin experience and be ready to regulate the next new fishery as soon as it emerges. For Living on Earth, I'm Andrea DeLeon.

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Putting Zebra Mussels to Work

CURWOOD: Around the Great Lakes region, there's concern over a new use for the pesky zebra mussel. Folks are taking the tiny bivalves out of infested bodies of water and putting them to work in their homes. Kevin Niedermier of member station WKSU explains.

NIEDERMIER: Zebra mussels were introduced into the Great Lakes through ocean-going freighters coming from Europe. And since the late 1980s, the rapidly reproducing creatures have infested bodies of water throughout the Great Lakes region. One common way zebra mussels are spread is through the cooling systems of motor boats. Someone takes their boat out of infested waters and launches it into an uninfested lake or river, spreading the larvae left in the motor. The spread of the rapidly-reproducing creatures is a concern because they clog water intake pipes and smother fish spawning grounds. But each zebra mussel can also filter 2 quarts of water a day, and people have discovered that this ability makes them an ideal substitute for electric filters in home fish aquariums. The manager of this Cleveland-area pet shop says the practice is catching on.

MANAGER: You know, they are a particle feeder, so they feed off of small particulate matter in the water. So it helps clear up the water, keeps your water crystal clear. So it's just like any other clam or mussel would do.

NIEDERMIER: Is there any concern, yourself or among the people who use these in their aquariums, that this could help spread the zebra mussels to inland waterways and so forth?

MANAGER: Really, in a closed system it's not a big problem.

NIEDERMIER: But some wildlife officials fear that it could become a problem. Dave Kelch is a Lake Erie specialist with the Ohio Sea Grant Office near Cleveland.

KELCH: What are you going to do with the water that comes out of your aquarium when you want to change the water? Are you going to dump it down your sink? Or dump it out into the yard, or dump it into the stream, or what? You could have zebra mussel larvae there. When the zebra mussels get to the point where maybe you don't want them any more in the aquarium, or you have a large quantity that die off, what do you do? Throw them in the trash can where they're going to stink? A lot of people might take them and throw them into the creek or into the ditch alongside their house or out by the road. And now we're talking about spreading zebra mussels.

NIEDERMIER: While some states have laws that prohibit taking home exotic species like zebra mussels, Ohio does not. But Kelch says even though it's legal to take zebra mussels home in Ohio, he doesn't believe that makes it right.

KELCH: So an individual wanting to collect zebra mussels from Lake Erie to put in their home aquarium isn't breaking a law. Not a strict state law; they may be breaking an ethical or a moral law, because you always help encourage the spread of zebra mussels.

NIEDERMIER: According to Kelch, people need to educate themselves to the possible negative impact of moving any species of animal from one habitat to another. He says ignorance of the possible consequences, or just a lack of concern, leads to the spread of nuisance species like zebra mussels. So far, zebra mussels have made their way into nearly 100 locations in the eastern United States and Canada. For Living on Earth, I'm Kevin Niedermier in Cleveland.

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CURWOOD: Smell something fishy in your neighborhood that we should know about here at Living on Earth? Give us a call on our listener comment line. The number is 1-800-218-9988. That's 1-800-218-9988. Or you can write to us at Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. That's Living on Earth, Box 639, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02238. Our Internet address is LOE@NPR.ORG. That's LOE@NPR.ORG. Transcripts and tapes are $10.

Husbands and Wives for Alewives

CURWOOD: What can a community do to help protect a fish that's in danger of dying out? With a mixture of hard work and humor, some folks in southeastern Massachusetts are saving the alewife, a modest fish that lives in the ocean but breeds in fresh water. Nancy Cohen has the story.

COHEN: Most people who don't live near the coastal streams of the Atlantic haven't heard of river herring. Yet when spring comes and water temperatures rise, the rivers swell with thousands of these fish as they travel inland to spawn. Navigating over rocks and fallen trees, plowing through polluted and pristine waters, alewives and blueback herring, two species known together as river herring, find their way from the vast waters of the Atlantic to the fresh water of their birth. Instinct pulls the herring to the very stream their predecessors journeyed years ago.

(A running stream. Two men speak: "One wrong step and I'll be floating." "Yep.")

COHEN: Dressed in a red flannel shirt and waders, 47-year-old Dave Watling is up to his ribcage in the cold, rushing waters of the Sippican River not far from Cape Cod. Watling is installing an electronic device that counts fish.

(Watling: "Uh oh. Lose a screw?")

COHEN: Watling is vice-president of Alewives Anonymous, a group of mostly men that has a healthy addiction to alewives and blueback herring. The group's mission is to nurture these species that have little direct commercial value but a lot of ecological worth. Arthur Brenner is the group's president.

BRENNER: The herring are a food fish through the chain of all the fish. That's their purpose in life, is to be eaten. And they feed the game fish, the fish in the ponds, the fry, bass, pickeral - everything that's up in the pond will feed on them.

COHEN: River herring are also the basis for a small seasonal economy, as bait fish. Not to be confused with the more palatable sea herring, river herring are eaten by only a few New Englanders. Pickled or smoked, the bony fish is considered by some to be a regional delicacy.

WATLING: This will be the second year we've used the counter, the ladder's been here for several years. The adults probably won't come back here; but the fry that have spawned should come back to this river.

COHEN: Like other waterways supporting herring, the Sippican River is outfitted with a fish ladder, which slows the gushing water and helps the migrating fish up the river's steep incline, over the dam, and into the quiet spawning grounds of Leonard's Pond.

(Calling gulls)

COHEN: Four years ago, Massachusetts' anadromous fish program began to stock this pond with mature fish ready to spawn. It is their offspring that sniff out these particular waters and come home to reproduce every spring. Until the fish ladder was built, Watling recalls how he and his fellow alewifers helped the
fish get over the dam.

WATLING: Three years ago, we dipnetted 500 fish over. Every night after work we'd put the planks in and they'd go in these little pools and we'd dip them out, count them and throw them over in 5-gallon buckets. Took us about 3 weeks to do it.

COHEN: Even in late fall, long after the spawning adults and their offspring return to the ocean, the men of Alewives Anonymous are busy preparing for the following year. With chainsaws in hand, they canoe local rivers, clearing a path for next year's promenade of herring.

WATLING: Just take down blow-down trees and debris that's accumulated. A lot of it's normally discarded trash, sometimes tires, refrigerators, shopping carts or something. The hazards that the fish can't really negotiate that well.

COHEN: Watling says he takes care of these runs simply because he admires the results.

WATLING: I just like watching them; it's like watching a hawk fly, you see the herring come up every year. It's just nice to watch.

(Boys: "Whoa! There's a fish down there!" "Did you bring your fishing pole, Dad?" "Whoa, look at all those fish!")

COHEN: On Easter Sunday, in the nearby town of Middleborough, the Nemaskett River is full of river herring. Sea gulls peer down from above and people gather on the river's edge. Heads bowed, their eyes probing the water.

WOMAN: I just think it's amazing.

MAN: We came down, and all I could think of was you could literally walk across the pool down below there. It was so thick. I said Easter Sunday, walking across the water; here's where you could do it! (Laughs). Believe me, they were so thick.

CHILD: Yesterday, there were so many they were getting pushed up onto the shore. And then, like, they'd flop around for a while and manage to get back in.

COHEN: Erin and her friend Tammy, two 12-year-olds, lie belly-down at the edge of the river. Even though the Nemaskett's fish ladder eases the way for the migrating herring, the 2 girls are determined to literally give the fish a hand. They lean deep into the stream, their fingers plunged into the chilly water. The girls are skilled fishers. When they catch a fish, they run uphill and drop it into the water, just below the pond.

(ERIN OR TAMMY): My brother taught me how to do this with my hands, my older brother. And I think it's really funny 'cause they're only around for a few weeks. And then, like, it's totally dead around here. There's no fish at all, and no seagulls around or anything.

COHEN: Although it's hard to imagine even more fish in this river than there are today, historical records indicate otherwise. Both Native Americans and European settlers relied on the herring as a key source of food, and they were the subject of one of the first colonial laws to protect fish. Even in this century, observers have noticed a decrease in the number of river herring. Sixty-four-year-old Jim Gurney is a member of Alewives Anonymous. He remembers the experiences of an older cousin.

GURNEY: When he was a boy, one of his chores was to lead the farm horses down to the brook to water them, then they didn't have to haul water. During herring season, when the herring were running, he used to have to go into the brook and scare the fish away, but else the horses would not drink the water. There was just too many fish in it.

COHEN: Are there that many fish now?

GURNEY: No, nowhere near. Nothing of that nature. Nowhere near. Not even close.

COHEN: Today herring compete for water with local neighborhoods and nearby cranberry bogs. Some runs have disappeared entirely. But there is hope. Other runs are either steady or reviving, especially those where herring enthusiasts lend a hand.

(Men: "Does that look level to you?" "Yep. I'd say that's pretty close.")

COHEN: For Living on Earth, this is Nancy Cohen near Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts.

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Living on Earth Profile #5: Lisa Crawford...Citizen Turned Anti-Nuclear Weapons Waste Activist

CURWOOD: As part of our series on 25 people who have made a difference for the environment, today we meet Lisa Crawford. She says she was a quiet housewife in southwestern Ohio, when she discovered that a nuclear bomb factory in her neighborhood had poisoned her drinking water supply and perhaps her family. She joined a community group and began trying to find out just how much the making of nuclear weapons had contaminated her town. Today, thanks in part to her work, the Department of Energy now admits it may cost as much as a quarter of a trillion dollars to clean up the atomic mess left by the cold warriors in bomb making plants around the country. Lorna Jordan of member station WVXU in Cincinnati has our story.

JORDAN: Lisa Crawford decided to join the Fernald Residents for Environmental Safety and Health, or FRESH, after learning that the well which supplied her family's house with drinking water was contaminated from the Fernald uranium processing plant next door.

CRAWFORD: And I was just so horrified by that. I could not, I just couldn't fathom why something like this could happen, you know, to this Midwest American family who had never done anything wrong except pay their taxes and be good citizens.

JORDAN: Crawford says concern over the effect the radiation exposure may have had on her son led her to get involved. Fear of those effects also stopped her from having any additional children. Ten years ago, Crawford knew little about the bomb plant which stood near her tiny white clapboard farm house outside Cincinnati. In fact, she thought the checkerboard water tower meant they made dog food at the facility.

CRAWFORD: People laugh when I say this. I was this really quiet little housewife who went to work every day and took care of her child and, you know, cleaned my house every Saturday, and always came home and cooked dinner. And I never thought that I would testify before Congress. I never thought I'd fly in an airplane, and now I just fly all the time. I never thought I could stand up in front of a room, you know, with 3- or 4- or 500 people in it and speak. You know, if somebody would have told me, you know, 15 years ago that I was going to do this I would have told them they were a damn liar.

JORDAN: And today Crawford is serving on a committee established by the Department of Energy to monitor the clean-up. In those early years, Crawford was part of a burgeoning movement of people scattered across the country who'd become concerned about pollution at local nuclear weapons plants. Soon they realized the need for a national group, and Lisa Crawford was among the people who helped to form what is now known as the Military Production Network. Bill Mitchell, the original president of MPN, says the fact that Crawford wasn't a long-time activist proved to be an asset.

MITCHELL: Lisa and the experience of the people in Fernald and the group, the FRESH group, was really kind of very important because not many people had had, oh, their well water contaminated, had their concerns about their kids and their communities so immediately pushed in their face. And had had the Department of Energy obfuscate and lie to them about what was going on.

JORDAN: Crawford helped transform the Military Production Network into an influential lobbying group. Senator John Glenn tells the story of getting letters from Crawford's group and thinking the problem couldn't possibly be as bad as they said. But a visit to the plant convinced him the pollution was actually worse.
He says Crawford deserves a lot of credit for bringing the contamination to national attention.

GLENN: You know, we can deal with with nuclear radiation experts and toxic waste experts here in Washington. We can deal with them here and they have a lot of expertise and so on. But it's even more impressive to me, and I think most other people, when you have people out there in the communities and they can tell you first-hand their experience with them and their children and what it's like to live next to a plant like that, where they're trying to get things cleaned up. So I think they perform a very valuable function when they come in like that.

JORDAN: In addition to bringing the problem to the attention of Congress, Crawford used the legal system as an ally. She spearheaded an effort to sue the Department of Energy for diminished property values and emotional distress. That successful lawsuit has become a model for other groups suing the government over radioactive contamination. While Crawford worked within the system to change the laws and attitudes, she is still angered by the government's conduct in building its nuclear arsenal.

CRAWFORD: For 40 years they built these weapons. They contaminated the land, the water, the dirt, the soil, the air, everything. And they never used them. You know, and I really believe, I feel like they were used on the American people.

JORDAN: And that's why Lisa Crawford says she'll continue her fight against proposals now in Congress to drastically cut back the clean-up of the nation's nuclear weapons plants. For Living on Earth, this is Lorna Jordan in Cincinnati.

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CURWOOD: Our coordinating producer is George Homsy. Production staff includes Peter Thomson, Deborah Stavro, Kim Motylewski, Jan Nunley, Constantine Von Hoffman, and Julia Madeson. We had help from Alex Garcia-Rangel, David Dunlap, Liz Lempert, and Bob Emro. Our WBUR engineers are Karen Given and Keith Shields. Special thanks to Jeff Martini. Our theme music was composed by Michael Aharon.

Living on Earth is a project of the World Media Foundation, and recorded at WBUR, Boston. I'm Steve Curwood, executive producer.

ANNOUNCER: Major contributors to Living on Earth include all-natural Stonyfield Farm Yogurt - whether supporting worthwhile causes or producing healthy foods, Stonyfield's goal is to make you feel good inside; the Great Lakes Protection Fund; the National Science Foundation for coverage of science and the environment, and the W. Alton Jones Foundation.

NPR ANNOUNCER: This is NPR, National Public Radio.