The Environment

By Alan J. Bartels

The brief history of humans in North America pales in comparison to that of sandhill cranes (Grus Canadensis). For many years and as many springs, waves of the large gray birds have sailed north on thermal winds, set their wings and slowly descended into the nurturing flows of the shallow Platte River.

By John E. Thorson

The Missouri River is synonymous with western history. From its mouth near St. Louis to its headwaters west of Bozeman, Montana, America’s longest river evokes the legends of Lewis and Clark, Sacagawea, steamboats, epic floods and monumental dams. Congressional passage of the 1944 Pick-Sloan Plan initiated decades of dam construction, flood control and navigation improvements on the river. The Missouri has also been the venue for waves of litigation and conflict—somewhat ironic given the generally plentiful river. For example, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineer’s (USACE) revision of the Master Water Control Manual for operating main-stem reservoirs on the river, commenced in 1989, took 15 years to complete in the face of controversy over how the many users of the river would be affected.

By Brad Mellema

Nature centers are a tough business. Last time I checked, Warren Buffet had no nature centers in his holdings, and the business of outdoor education is not on the top of the list for career-minded young people. Despite the obstacles, there is a need, a need for a place for people to connect. What we now call Nebraska Nature & Visitor Center has come about because of a need to connect people of all ages to the Platte River and, in larger part, to Nebraska and the Great Plains.

By Ruth Ann Norton

In today’s economic circumstances, many public health and housing department officials face rising challenges of increasing need and decreasing budgets: how to do more with less. Through an integrated, holistic Green and Healthy Homes intervention strategy, the Green and Healthy Homes Initiative (GHHI) is producing homes with reduced energy consumption costs that yield better health, social and economic outcomes for occupants and their children.

By Annabel Lee Major

The University of Nebraska-Lincoln, with funding from the Nebraska Environmental Trust and the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, will begin training conservation volunteers through the creation of a Nebraska Master Naturalist Program.

By Bruce Kennedy

Most Nebraskans visit the Niobrara River in the summer, for leisurely float trips through a scenic landscape. But decisions that affect whether you can continue to make such float trips, and whether that landscape will remain so scenic, are made at all times of the year. Sometimes, as now, they are made during late winter in the faraway corridors and galleries of the Nebraska State Capitol in Lincoln.

By John H. Davidson

Whether one chooses to blame it on global warming, climate variability or population growth, one thing seems certain—we are confronting an era of broad-based regional water shortages, particularly in and around the American West. Current patterns of water use and the vast infrastructure built to support them are based on climate patterns as we have experienced them, but climatologists now agree that future water patterns will not simply mimic the past. This is particularly true of the American West, which is getting drier while supporting an ever-increasing human population.

By Paul A. Johnsgard

Walking down the hall of our university’s biology building on a winter day during the late 1990s, I overheard two young men recounting their recent activities. One was proudly telling the other that he and some friends had killed over 120 “sky carp” the previous Saturday. Initially I had no notion of what he was talking about, but it soon became apparent that he was talking about snow geese and that he had exploited newly relaxed regulations that permitted winter snow goose hunting with few limits on the number of birds that could be shot in a day. I could scarcely imagine why anybody could take pleasure in killing that many geese, much less brag about it. Since childhood, snow geese have been my symbol of unmatched beauty and grace in the natural world.

By Duane Hovorka

Climate change may be a global problem, but the risks to natural resources on the Great Plains were brought home at a Sportsmen’s Forum on Climate Change and Nebraska Fish and Wildlife, on Dec. 1, 2009, in Lincoln, Neb.

By John Kimble

There are many people saying we can reduce the dependency on fossil fuel by using renewable resources, such as biomass from crops like corn stubble, for ethanol along with grains. Are we at the Dawning of a New Age on the farm where biomass will provide a new income stream for farmers, or are we back to another point in time where we will be exploiting our soils for a quick-term profit without regard for the sustainability of the soil resource? Many have suggested that biofuel is a possible solution to the continued exploitation of fossil fuel, which is a nonrenewable resource.

By Ted Lee Eubanks

Green travel. Geotourism. Ecotourism. Heritage travel. Culinary travel. Nature tourism. Avitourism. Agritourism.

By Tim McCoy

In the search for alternative and renewable sources of energy, wind turbines that generate electricity have a lot going for them. They generate little or no pollution, do not contribute greenhouse gas emissions to the environment during operation, do not require water resources for cooling or power generation and are increasingly becoming cost-effective.

By Paul A. Johnsgard

When I was very young, I used to walk along railroad track right-of-ways near my home in the Red River Valley of eastern North Dakota. I didn’t know that the “turkey-foot grass” that grew higher than my head was something special, and under its more formal name of big bluestem is a charter member of the tallgrass prairie that once covered much of eastern North Dakota.

By Mary Bomberger Brown and Linda R. Brown

The National Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Count (CBC) is the oldest and largest citizen science event in the world. This winter bird survey has been held every year since 1900—110 years.

By Joyce Coppinger

Build with what you have at hand. Use indigenous and salvaged materials. If the pioneers had too much waste from their crops—straw, for example—or if plants such as cattails and reeds filled the marshes and wetlands, or if the native grasses could use a bit of trimming, they found ways to use the “waste” or the overabundance of plants and grasses. They baled the waste, plants or grasses and built walls and thatched roofs to protect the structure, themselves and their livestock. Not wasting these precious materials but using them for shelter.

By Consul General Martin Loken

The United States and Canada have always had an unparalleled relationship as neighbors, friends and allies.

Nowhere is that relationship more evident than in the extent of our two countries’ commercial relationship: More than seven million U.S. jobs were supported by trade with Canada as of 2005, Canada buys 3.6 times more from the United States than does China and close to $2 billion in goods and services cross the Canada-U.S. border every day.

By Samuel J. Truax, PE

My boss was driving us back to Lincoln, Neb., along Highway 2 from meetings in Alliance and Chadron. Suddenly, near Whitman, a pair of large white birds with black beaks flew right in front of our windshield from a nearby pothole lake. After recovering from the fright of such a near miss, my boss said, “Wow! Big birds.” He was impressed. But in my case I was so excited, I could hardly even say “big birds.” As a matter of fact, my adrenalin level was at least as high as if I were at a Husker game and they had just scored a spectacular touchdown.

By Dave Titterington

October: A time of change. Winter will soon be settling in across the Central Great Plains and the signs are everywhere. Shorter daylight hours are changing the leaves from summer greens to autumn’s gold, red and orange. The sweet aroma of a wood fire drifts from a chimney. And the blackbirds are massing in the treetops, waiting to be escorted south by the first cold front.

This article is the third of a three-part series on the environmental changes to the Missouri River. The legislation that caused the environmental damage is reviewed and explained, along with new legislation that, over time, will hopefully provide the cure.

By Gene Zuerlein and Lacey Bodnar

By Don Hutchens

Agriculture is under attack. On one hand, corn is vilified as the cause of obesity; while on the other, the conversion of corn to ethanol is causing worldwide starvation. Corn prices, supposedly driven by ethanol demand, have led to high food prices. To hear others tell it, American farmers are destroying the environment, depleting natural resources and mistreating animals.