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Webster’s Champion Birder: Phoebe Snetsinger’s Fans Gather For Blackburn Park Event

The weather was perfect for a tribute to the world’s most famous birder in Blackburn Park in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves. The proviso in the WGNSS flyer regarding inclement weather was unneeded.

by Don Corrigan

Admirers of the late champion birder, Phoebe Snetsinger, gathered at the entrance of the Bird Sanctuary at Blackburn Park on Saturday, Feb. 3. An avid naturalist, she turned a humble hobby into a worldwide adventure.

Snetsinger fans were happy to celebrate the unveiling of an informational structure dedicated to her birding accomplishments. They described it as great way to get an introduction to the “Bird Woman of Webster Groves.”

“It’s my privilege to unveil this new sign for the most famous birder of Webster Groves,” said Bill Duncan, who is president of the Webster Groves Nature Study Society. “This new display is dedicated to birding and to Phoebe Snetsinger.

“What was here before was worn out and damaged, as might be expected for something 20 years-old,” said Duncan. “So, Rich Thoma of WGNSS saw that something new was needed and took the initiative to get it replaced.”

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Posted on February 18, 2024 in Home, Outdoor/Nature

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Meatpacker Backs Off Request To Dump Wastewater

By Don Corrigan

Story follow up from the top stories of 2023.

Growing citizen opposition to dumping animal waste into rivers and streams has prompted a Missouri meatpacker to back off from a request to dump animal wastewater into rivers and streams that already are impaired.

According to an article in Missouri Independent, Missouri Prime Beef Packers is backing off from its request to discharge wastewater from its operations into the Pomme de Terre River.

Allison Kite, reporter for the Missouri Independent, attempted to reach the beef packers company for comment about its decision, but did not receive a response. State regulators had indicated that they would deny a discharge permit, according to Kite.

Southwest Missouri newspapers have reported increasing citizen opposition to plans by companies to discharge animal waste products in Ozark streams and rivers.

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Posted on February 7, 2024 in Environment, Home

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Mississippi River Work: Tribute to Environmentalists’ Hero Don Sweeney in St. Louis

Professor Jill Bracy from the University of Missouri-St. Louis knew Don Sweeney as a student, then as a mentor, then as a co-worker. She spoke about his excellence in teaching.

by Don Corrigan
Among the many accomplishments cited for the late Don Sweeney at his St. Louis tribute in January was his work with the Army Corps of Engineers. Sweeney became a whistleblower at the Corps over a proposed billion-dollar Mississippi River project.

Included in relics from that 2000 controversy, available at the Sweeney tribute, was a Time magazine cover story on the Corps’ Mississippi River project, which Sweeney opposed over the objections of his supervisors.

Stories inside the July 10, 2000 edition of Time magazine were packed with headlines, subheads, captions, and accounts of Sweeney’s opposition. Similar news accounts appeared in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and the Washington Post.

One caption read: “Don Sweeney blew the whistle on wasted dollars and a ruined river.” A headline warned: “Mississippi Mud: The Army Corps of Engineers wants to build and dredge, no matter what.”

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Posted on February 3, 2024 in Environment, Home, Local Events

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Tiger-Lily To Visit Powder Valley Nature Center Starting Jan 23

The famous two-headed western rat snake, Tiger-Lily, will be at Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center in Kirkwood from Jan. 23 through the end of February.

Are two heads really better than one?  Visitors to the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Powder Valley Nature Center in Kirkwood can soon find out.

Tiger-Lily, a two-headed western rat snake, (Pantherophis obsoletus), will arrive at Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center on Tuesday, Jan. 23.  The snake will remain there for visitors to see until the end of February.  From there, the two-headed snake will continue her journey around Missouri, staying temporarily at other MDC sites across the state.

Tiger-Lily is on loan from her home at the Shepherd of the Hills Conservation Center near Branson, which is currently closed for construction.

Western rat snakes are non-venomous and native to Missouri.  Tiger-Lily is actually a pair of conjoined identical snake twins that were never completely separated.  Such snakes are rarely seen in the wild, partly because snakes born this way have a low survival rate.

“Tiger-Lily” is the name given to the two-headed snake by the family who found this unique reptile in Stone County in 2017,” said MDC Interpretive Center Manager Alison Bleich. “The female snake was donated to the Shepherd of the Hills Conservation Center for display purposes. “Tiger-Lily is almost five feet long and has a healthy appetite,” according to Bleich, but she said that feeding time always presents a challenge.

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Posted on January 21, 2024 in Home, Local Events, Outdoor/Nature

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Rock Island Rails To Trails Plan Hits Roadblocks: Update

Photo courtesy Bruce Sassmann.

by Don Corrigan 

The Rock Island Trail proposal took a hit this month when Republican gubernatorial candidates Mike Kehoe and Jay Ashcroft announced they have serious doubts about the cross-state project.

This comes less than three weeks after Environmental Echo (EE) noted Republican Gov. Mike Parson’s support of the project as a significant tourism magnet for the state. EE cited the trail as a bright spot in 2024 for state nature lovers.

Kehoe and Ashcroft are running to replace Parson in 2024 as he is retiring. Leading Democratic gubernatorial candidate Crystal Quaid had indicated that she supports the trail as an economic boon to the state.

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Posted on January 20, 2024 in Environment, Home, Outdoor/Nature

Coldwater Creek Update: Informational Signage Promised For Contamination Areas

Posted on January 17, 2024 | Leave a comment

Pictured above: Dawn Chapman (Left) and Karen Nickel, co-founders of Just Moms STL.

The Missouri Independent is reporting Coldwater Creek in north St. Louis County will soon have “informational signs” about potential radioactive dangers after decades of nuclear contamination. (See 1/8/24 story posted on EE)

As Environmental Echo previously reported, there has been plenty of political posturing, crocodile politician tears, and plenty of nothing getting done in 2023 on the radioactive contamination of North County from America’s atomic bomb program.

The nation’s atomic bomb builders have used portions of North St. Louis City and County as a guinea pig, and a sacrificial lamb, for weapons programs dating back to World War II, according to area activists.

Senators, St. Louis’ Congressional delegations, state and regional leaders have seemed powerless to solve the problem. The recent announcement of an Army Corps of Engineers program to post informational signs is a small, but positive development.

Founders of Just Moms St. Louis, a watchdog group on the contamination situation, said the signs are long overdue. The group contends the waste sites and creek contamination from the atomic bomb program have caused serious health problems for residents.

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is meeting with residents this month as the Coldwater Creek contamination issue enters another year of agency discussions with affected communities. For more information follow @Justmomsstl on X (formerly known as Twitter.)

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Posted in Environment, Home

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Powder Valley Nature Center presents An Evening with Raptors Jan. 26

Bird buffs, falcon fanciers, and anyone enraptured by raptors is invited to meet the objects of their admiration during this year’s An Evening with Raptors event.

The annual An Evening with Raptors hosted by the Missouri Department of Conservation’s (MDC) Powder Valley Conservation Nature Center returns this year on Friday, Jan. 26 from 7-9 p.m.  The event is free and is open to all ages.

It’s the ultimate partnership between man and bird.  Falconry is an ancient sport, and you can learn all about it at An Evening with Raptors event.  Falconry is the art of training raptors—birds of prey like hawks and falcons—to capture wild game, so that bird and trainer essentially become hunting partners. The use of falconry can be traced all the way back to 700 B.C.E., and perhaps even earlier.

“Several area falconers will gather to offer the rare chance to observe and learn about these fascinating feathered hunters,” said MDC Interim Nature Center Manager, Robyn Parker.  “They will also explain how viewers can get started in this age-old sport themselves,” she added.

Registration required. See below.

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Posted on January 16, 2024 in Home, Local Events

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Coldwater Creek to finally have warning signs after decades of nuclear contamination

Story by ALLISON KITE – 1/8/24, republished from the Missouri Independent Newspaper

Missouri Independent: An undated photo from the 1980s, of a child swinging from a rope into Coldwater Creek. The photo is from a scrapbook kept by Sandy Delcoure, who lived on Willow Creek in Florissant and donated the scrapbook to the Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection (State Historical Society of Missouri, Kay Drey Mallinckrodt Collection, 1943-2006).

More than 70 years after workers first realized barrels of radioactive waste risked contaminating Coldwater Creek, the federal government has started work to put up signs warning residents.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement Monday that it was working with the Environmental Protection Agency to add signs along the creek to help it monitor areas “that may pose a risk if disturbed.”

Coldwater Creek has been contaminated for decades with radioactive waste left over from the World War II-era effort to build an atomic bomb. But though the creek winds through some of St. Louis’ busiest suburbs and past public parks and schools, the federal government had resisted calls to post signs warning visitors of the contamination.

“This is decades of potential exposure that could have been prevented that they drug their feet on,” said Dawn Chapman, co-founder of Just Moms STL, an organization formed to advocate for communities affected by St. Louis-area radioactive waste.

Despite the delays, Chapman said she’s thankful that the signs are finally going to be installed.

The St. Louis area has long struggled with a radioactive waste problem. Uranium for the Manhattan Project, the name given to the effort to develop the first atomic bomb, was refined in downtown St. Louis.

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Posted on January 13, 2024 in Environment, Home

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Area Gears Up For Rare Solar Eclipse In April 2024

by Don Corrigan

Lots of “iffy” New Year’s predictions are being made for 2024. One sure bet prediction is that the sun will disappear on April 8, 2024. It will be the second solar eclipse for parts of Missouri in less than a decade.

Area astronomy clubs, school science programs and libraries have already got their sights set on a repeat of events that took place on Aug. 21, 2017. A highlight of that event was telescope viewing opportunities in St. Louis.

It’s not too early to start making plans. In fact, it may be too late if you want to get the full eclipse experience available in locales like Cape Girardeau or Carbondale, Illinois. Hotels and campsites are already posting “No Vacancy.”

Many in the St. Louis area will have a front row seat for a partial solar eclipse. There will be some amount of sky darkening, but there will be no corona and no totality, as in August 2017.

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Posted on January 2, 2024 in Home, Local Events

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Missouri Legislation Filed to Halt the Sale of Five Invasive Plants

Sericea lespedeza, a highly invasive plant that can infest grasslands, pastures, rights-of-way, and other areas, is one of five species whose sale would be halted with the passage of Representative Sassmann’s legislation filed on December 1, 2023.

Locally and globally, invasive plants and animals are the second leading cause of native biodiversity decline and also threaten the economic stability of the forest product, livestock, and outdoor industries. In addition, Bradford pear, sericea lespedeza, and other non-native, invasive plants are costly and time-consuming for Missouri landowners and suburban and urban homeowners to control.

Of the state’s 142 invasive plants, as assessed by the Missouri Invasive Plant Council (MoIP), many continue to be sold in Missouri, contributing to their future, unintended spread across the landscape.

On December 1, 2023, Representative Bruce Sassmann (District 061), took action to help protect the state from invasive plants by filing HB 1555 to halt the sale and intentional distribution of five invasive plant species: burning bush (Euonymus alatus), Callery pear (Pyrus calleryana and its cultivars, including Bradford and Chanticleer), climbing euonymus (Euonymus fortunei; also commonly known as wintercreeper); Japanese honeysuckle (Lonicera japonica), and sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata).

Once passed, the Missouri Department of Agriculture is expected to be the agency tasked with enforcement of the legislation, issuing violations if any of the five plants listed above are found to be sold or intentionally distributed. Because of the investment that nursery owners and other plant sellers must make before many shrubs and trees are large enough to sell, two species on the list of five—burning bush and Callery pear plants—acquired by a licensed Missouri wholesale or retail plant nursery before January 1, 2025, shall be exempt from enforcement until January 1, 2028.

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Posted on January 2, 2024 in Environment, Home, Outdoor/Nature