Adirondack Lake Recovery.....for now...

[The Griz]

Some good news.....but will it be short-lived?

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/13049814/?GT1=8211


~Griz~

[toolmaker66]

2 things really got my attention in that article. I always assumed that the Adirondak lakes got polluted because of bein so close to NYC. Never realized the pollution came from the midwest. Secondly a loon averages over 1500 trout dinners in a year? wow. Good to see some of the polluted lakes recovering and even better to see them recovering faster than anticipated.

[champlain fisher]

Just watched a show on PBS about mercury levels in loons that live in the Adirondacks. They are still showing really high levels of mercury. Mercury is a toxin that levels build over time because an animal be it a human or a loon does not shed this toxin hardly at all. They have banded loons and tracked them over years and it has affected their behavior patterns. They have found that the effects of mecury works on the brain. These loons don't care for the young as well, from not sitting on eggs well to carrying the chicks around on their backs, causing chicks to die from hypothermia. They have also found that the loons don't fight as hard to hold a nesting site, they get territorial when nesting.

This was the thing that was most alarming - The type of terrian in the Adirondacks and with the lack of deep soil levels the mercury that accumilates on the forrest canopy in the summer falls to the ground and is washed into the bodies of water, not enough soil to leach it out. From what they said about that the levels are not going to drop much more without stricter regulations on emmissions from coal burning power plants in the midwest. That is one of the biggest toxins from burning coal, mercury. The prevaling winds carry it from the west to east and the Adirondacks are the first mountians it comes to from that direction, thus thats were it ends up. Thanks to president Bush these coal burning power plants that have been running for decades were made exempt from the regulations now in place for new plants as far as what they need for emissions control and standards.

Without forcing these older plants to conform to the new standards this problem is not going to get much better than it is now and the mercury levels in higher end predators will continue to increase because of the way mercury levels accumilate and animals do not shed this toxin very well.