Skip to main content

Swans on Lake Charlotte

The first Trumpeter Swans that I ever saw in this area were on Lake Charlotte south of Long Prairie. It was twenty years ago. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d never seen such magnificent creatures. I’d never dreamed I’d see Trumpeter Swans on Lake Charlotte or any other lake.

When I was a kid I heard that Trumpeter Swans were nearly extinct. They could be counted in the dozens and weren’t long for this world. Then, as a young adult, I read E.B. White’s delightful story The Trumpet of the Swan. The message was the same: Trumpeter Swans were highly endangered and only hung on in remote northern locations and in inaccessible locations in the western mountains.

Swans on Lake Charlotte
Photo by Sue Farmer


Since that first sighting on Lake Charlotte I’ve had numerous and wonderful encounters with Trumpeters. A flock blessed me by flying over my head at tree top level. The rush of their magnificent wings nearly lifted me off my feet. I came across a pair while camping at the hike in lakes at Itasca Park. And for the past two summers a pair has nested on a beaver lodge in a pond up the road.

The return of the Trumpeters from the brink of extinction is partly due to the wonderful resilience of the species. But it’s also due to the fact that we humans made a choice. We decided that the swans were worth saving. Then talented and dedicated biologists and administrators in state and federal agencies, using the best science, brought them back to the point that Trumpeter Swans are now thriving.

The same is true of the Bald Eagle, the Peregrine Falcon, and the Sandhill Crane. There was no profit in it. But we as a people made a choice to invest the resources to preserve a species.

Every time I see a Bald Eagle or hear a Sandhill Crane I think how lucky I am to be on earth with them. And I once again thank the citizens, politician, scientists, public regulators, and administrators that had the vision and courage to make sure that it was so.

We must fight those who think that if a swan cannot profit the shareholders of a distant corporation it is just in the way. We must do all we can to be sure swans will be landing on Lake Charlotte for generations to come. We must continue to make the right choices.


You can read about the return of the Trumpeter Swans here

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Let us all walk in the foot steps of John Lewis

By John King In Selma, Alabama, on Sunday, March 7, 1965, John Lewis, standing in the lead of a long line of marchers, looked down from the crest of The Edmund Pettus Bridge at the line of police armed with clubs, whips and truncheons and said, “I am going to die here.” Lewis intended to lead the marchers from Selma to the capital Montgomery, to demand access to voting for Black people in Alabama. Sheriff Jim Clark lowered his gas mask and led the deputies, some on horseback and some on foot, into the line of marchers. Under swinging clubs and hooves trampling, Lewis was the first to go down. Women and children were not spared. Choking and blinded by tear gas, they were struck by clubs and truncheons wrapped with barbed wire. Lewis, with a fractured skull and a severe concussion, almost did die. The nearby Good Samaritan Hospital did not have enough beds to care for the injured marchers. A nation watched in horror as news footage of that bloody day appeared on T...
2 comments
Read more

Step aside Republicans; Minnesotans want electric vehicles

Late last month Senator Paul Gazelka, the Republican leader of the Senate, told the Minnesota Reformer that the Republican controlled Senate would likely fire the acting Commissioner of the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency, Laura Bishop, if the Agency, at the behest of the Governor, went ahead with the Clean Car Rule. The rule would require automakers to increase the number of electric vehicles they deliver to Minnesota auto dealers. Gazelka told The Reformer that he’d had “a conversation” with Bishop about the rule. Bishop has not been confirmed by the Senate. Gazelka, and his Republican colleagues, claim that electric vehicles are too expensive and that the rule would be a burden to Minnesotans. Gazelka, and the rest of his Party are wrong. They aren’t paying attention to the economics of EV ownership and they are not paying attention to consumer preferences. Way back in September 2019, Consumer Reports reported on a study of Minnesotans they had done in collaboration with the...
2 comments
Read more

Super-emitting frequent fliers responsible for 50% of aviation CO2

U.S. airlines received a $15 billion subsidy in December’s COVID relief package. The subsidy was for the companies to re-employ thousands of their furloughed employees and keep them on the payroll until at least the end of the first quarter of this year. Congress, and the President, attached no other strings to the huge subsidy, even though airlines social costs, in terms of climate disruption, are huge. In 2018 airlines produced a billion tons of CO2 and benefited from a $100 billion subsidy by not paying for the climate damage they caused, a report published in the November 2020 journal Global Environmental Change, pointed out. The report, summarized in The Guardian on November 17th, drew together data to provide a global picture of the impact of frequent fliers. The conclusion reached by the study’s authors, led by Stefan Gössling at Linnaeus University in Sweden, is that a tiny fraction of the global population benefits from the highly subsidized airline industry while the rest...
4 comments
Read more