05/29/2012

BOB DOUGHTY: I’m Bob Doughty.

MARIO RITTER: And I’m Mario Ritter with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.  In the early eighteen hundreds, traveling in the United States was dangerous.  Business and trading were limited.  Then came the waterway called the Erie Canal.  It helped build America. 

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BOB DOUGHTY: Two adventurers recently traveled the more than five hundred eighty kilometers of America’s Erie Canal in kayaks.  Then the two, Richard Harpham of Britain and Glenn Charles of the United States, paddled into the Hudson River to complete their trip to the Statue of Liberty in New York City. 
 
They piloted their light, small boats more than eight hundred kilometers in about twenty-one days.  That time also included stops for cultural and historic activities along the way.
 
The event was called "the New York State Spare Seat Expedition." Harpham and Charles invited others to join them for parts of their travels.  The “guests” rode in the additional seat in the boats.  Many kayaks have a single seat.
 
MARIO RITTER: The two men call themselves “expeditionary kayakers” – explorers on the water.  One goal of their trip was to honor the struggles that built the Erie Canal.  It became America’s first national waterway in eighteen twenty five. 
 
At that time, the Erie Canal crossed the state of New York from the city of Buffalo on Lake Erie to Albany and Troy on the Hudson River.  The Hudson River flowed into the Atlantic Ocean at New York City. So the canal joined the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean. The canal made New York City a major port.

The difficulty of traveling through the Appalachian Mountains had kept many people from going West.  The mountains also prevented people in the West from sending their wood and farm products east.   But the canal overcame the natural barrier of those mountains.  It helped open the American West.  The Erie Canal made the United States a richer and stronger young nation.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: Politicians, businessmen, farmers and traders had talked about creating a canal connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean for one hundred years. A lawyer and politician named De Witt Clinton finally succeeded in getting the canal built.
 
As early as eighteen nine, Clinton saw the need for the canal.  Then he had to defend his idea against people who laughed at him.  Some critics called the canal “Clinton’s Folly” -- a stupid project.  In eighteen twelve, the federal government rejected a proposal to provide money for the canal. 
 
But five years later, the New York State legislature provided more than seven million dollars for the project.  The lawmakers named Clinton to head a committee to supervise the development of the canal. De Witt Clinton was elected governor of New York that same year.
 

A barge traveling through Rochester, New York, on the Erie Canal sometime between 1900 and 1906

 

​​MARIO RITTER: The Erie Canal was five hundred eighty-four kilometers long, more than eight meters wide and one and one-half meters deep.  It could not have been completed without the hard and dangerous labor of many workers.  Historians say about one-third of the workers had recently moved to the United States from Ireland. They received about fifty cents a day for building the Erie Canal.
 
The men used explosives to break the rocky earth.  Many workers were injured.  Many were infected with the disease malaria.  Twenty-six workers died of smallpox.   Some were buried in unmarked graves along the canal. 
 
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BOB DOUGHTY: Big guns were fired in October, eighteen twenty-five in Buffalo, New York.  The cannons were part of a celebration to observe the completion of the Erie Canal.  Governor De Witt Clinton and his wife left Buffalo on a barge called the Seneca Chief.  The boat moved at the rate of less than five kilometers per hour.  It reached the Hudson River nine days later. To mark the arrival, Governor Clinton dropped some water from Lake Erie into the Hudson River. 
 
MARIO RITTER: Within ten years, the Erie Canal had repaid the cost of building it.  Transportation of products by canal was less costly than other methods.The waterway carried barges.  Most of these boats had flat bottoms for carrying goods.  The barges measured up to twenty-four meters long and about four and a-half meters wide.
 
Mules and horses on land pulled the barges through the canal using ropes.  Eighty-three devices called locks raised the barges on the canal by more than one hundred seventy meters from the Hudson River to Lake Erie.  Men and animals worked hard to pull the barges. 
 
BOB DOUGHTY: Over time, the canal grew.  Many improvements were made between eighteen thirty-five and eighteen sixty-two.  But a few years later, the canal began to lose importance.  Trains were becoming an easier and more profitable way to transport goods.
 
As the Erie Canal was losing business, some of its levees began to break.  Levees normally hold back the water, preventing floods.  The breaks damaged the towpaths next to the canal and stopped travel.
 
Age or heavy rains often caused the levees to break.  But the breaks were not always an accident.  Forestport, New York, had been suffering from the closing of businesses.  Then, in the last years of the eighteen hundreds, several area levees broke under suspicious conditions.
 
MARIO RITTER: Breaks in the levees should have been bad news for Forestport.  Difficult repairs were needed.  But few people in the town seemed sad about the breaks.  Instead, many were pleased.  Almost two thousand men were brought in to repair the damage.  That was more than the normal population of Forestport.
 
People crowded into places to eat, drink and play games of chance.  The town had money again. Life became as profitable and wild as it had been during the best days of trade on the canal.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: The administration of New York Governor Theodore Roosevelt grew suspicious.  Officials investigated.  State officials charged several men from Forestport with plotting to damage canal property. 
 
Michael Doyle is a newspaper reporter who writes about legal issues for California newspapers.  In two thousand four, he published a book called “The Forestport Breaks.”  For the book, he did research about his ancestors who had lived in Forestport.  Mr. Doyle said he learned that his great-grandfather took part in the wrongdoing.
 
At the beginning of the story, a farmer sees water flooding over a levee in Forestport.  He warns local officials.  His warning prevents more severe damage. But some of the townspeople give no praise to the farmer for his action.  Instead, Mister Doyle writes that they want to kill him.
 
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MARIO RITTER: By nineteen-oh-three, some businesses were pressuring New York to build a whole system of canals.  These people did not want the railroads to completely control the transport of goods.  So the state formed the New York State Barge Canal System in nineteen eighteen.  The Erie Canal became the largest part, linked to three shorter canals.
 
The canal system stayed busy until nineteen fifty-nine.  At that time, the United States and Canada opened the Saint Lawrence Seaway.  This waterway permitted ocean ships to sail up the Saint Lawrence River and through the Great Lakes.  The Erie Canal lost a lot of its business.
 
BOB DOUGHTY: But the Erie Canal and the other parts of the New York canal system got help.  In nineteen ninety-one, people who cared about the historic canal held a big public event.  The group is called Erie’s Restoration Interests Everyone.  It made the same trip that had celebrated completion of the Erie Canal in eighteen twenty-five.
 
As Governor and Missus Clinton had done, the group traveled from Buffalo, New York to the Hudson River.  A man playing the part of De Witt Clinton dropped water from Lake Erie into New York Harbor.
 
A few days later, citizens voted to take measures to re-develop the canal system.  Today, barges still use the system to transport heavy goods.  One estimate says the canal system carries more than four hundred thousand tons of goods each year.  More than one hundred fifty thousand pleasure boats also use the system each year.
 
MARIO RITTER: Today, an area called the Canalway National Heritage Corridor contains parts of the Erie Canal of the eighteen hundreds.  You can walk, run or ride a bicycle in this area. 
 
You may want to be adventuresome and paddle along in a small boat, like Harpham and Charles.  Or, you can take a historic Erie Canal boat trip. Thousands of people do this every year. 
 
The boat moves slowly along the water.  You listen to guides tell about the animals and the men who pulled the barges.  And, musicians play songs of the days when the Erie Canal was helping a young nation grow.
 
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BOB DOUGHTY: This program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by Mario Ritter. I’m Bob Dougthy.
 
MARIO RITTER: Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.

Cashmere Goats and Angora Goats

This is the VOA Special English Agriculture Report.

Goats are valuable not just for their milk and meat. Or for their ability to control weeds and help renew grasslands. Or even for their ability to be gentle around children. Goats can also be valuable for their hair.

Cashmere goats produce cashmere and Angora goats produce --

Did you think we were going to say angora? No, angora fiber comes from rabbits. Angora goats produce mohair.

Mohair is used in sweaters, scarves, coats and other products, including floor coverings and doll hair.

The United States is a leading producer of mohair, along with South Africa and Turkey. America's top producing state is Texas.

An adult Angora can produce as much as seven kilograms of hair each year. As the goats grow older, however, their hair becomes thicker and less valuable.

Hair from white or solid-colored goats is the most popular, but the appeal of mixed-color mohair has grown.

Angora goats are also used as show animals. They require little special care. The animals need milk from their mothers for three or four months.

They reach full maturity when they are a little more than two years old. But even then they are smaller than most sheep and milk goats.

Cashmere goats are usually larger than Angoras. They can grow big enough to be kept with sheep and cattle.

The outer hair of the animal is called guard hair. Behind it is the valuable material on a cashmere goat. Cashmere is valued for its softness and warmth without much weight.

Some farmers comb their cashmere goats to remove the hair. But if the animals do get a haircut, it often takes place at the time when they naturally lose their winter coat -- between December and March.

Angora goats generally get their hair cut two times a year, in the spring and fall. The job can be done with simple cutting tools or by hiring a professional shearer. Angoras may need special protection from the cold for about a month after shearing.

The value of an animal's coat depends on the age, size and condition. But whatever kind of goat you choose, be sure you have a good fence. Goats love to explore.

And that's the VOA Special English Agriculture Report, written by Jerilyn Watson. To learn more about agriculture, go to voaspecialenglish.com for transcripts and MP3s of all of our reports. We're also on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube at VOA Learning English. I'm Steve Ember.

Bats and Fish Farming

I’m Barbara Klein.

And I’m Mario Ritter with EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English. Today, we learn about the environmental and agricultural importance of bat populations. And, we visit the “Cod Academy,” a training program for fishers in the American state of Maine.

Bats

The United Nations has declared twenty eleven to twenty twelve the Year of the Bat. The campaign was launched last year as a way to strengthen efforts for protecting the world’s only flying mammal.

These creatures can be found in many parts of the world. Bats live in cities, deserts, grasslands and forests. There are over one thousand two hundred bat species.

The smallest bat in the world is from Southeast Asia. The Bumblebee bat measures about thirty millimeters in length. The world’s largest bat, the Giant Golden-Crowned Flying Fox, has a wingspan of one and a half meters. Most bats eat insects, but many feed on fruit or nectar from flowers.

Many people think bats are blind, but this is not true. Many species have very good sight. Most bats communicate and find their way by making “echolocation” noises. They produce high-frequency noises and can estimate the distance of an object by using the sound echoes that bounce back to them. So, while bats may travel in total darkness, they “see” using sound.

Sadly, bats are widely feared and misunderstood. Most bats come out of their shelters only at nightfall. Three bat species feed on blood. Because of these qualities, bats have long been linked in many cultures to death, darkness and vampires.

Yet bats are important for agriculture and our environment. They help pollinate plants and spread seeds. They also help control insects. Bats eat huge numbers of insects, including kinds that damage crops.

For example, a brown bat can eat more than one thousand insects the size of a mosquito in one hour. One report says bats save American farmers billions of dollars every year by reducing crop damage and limiting the need for chemicals that kill insects. The report was published earlier this year in Science magazine.

Bats have also proved useful in the medical industry. Some bats carry a substance in their saliva that has been manufactured and used in medicine to help stroke victims.

Over one-fifth of all bat species are under threat. They face disease and the human destruction of their natural environments. In the eastern United States, a disease called white-nose syndrome has greatly damaged bat populations over the past five years. The organization Bat Conservation International says white-nose syndrome has killed more than a million bats since it was discovered in a New York cave in two thousand six. In some areas, the disease has killed nearly one hundred percent of bat populations.

White-nose syndrome has now spread to at least nineteen other states and parts of Canada. The name of the disease comes from a white fungus found on the faces and wings of infected bats. The disease causes the creatures to awaken more often during hibernation, the period when they normally rest. Infected bats leave their shelters during winter and can freeze to death. Or they may use up stored body fat and starve to death.

Leslie Sturges is doing what she can to save bats. She is the director of Bat World NOVA, a bat protection group in the Washington, D.C. area. She cares for injured bats in the basement of her home. Then she releases them back into the wild.

LESLIE STURGES: “You hear a lot of people refer to bats as filthy. But they aren’t. They groom like cats and dogs do. They use these toes back here to actually comb their fur coat out.”

Ms. Sturges also talks about the importance of bats during visits to schools and nature centers. Her goal is to support their protection by bringing attention to the good things that bats provide to people and the environment.

She and her assistant are caring for about thirty injured, sick or orphaned bats this summer.

When the bats are healthy, she moves them to a closed off area next to her home so they can learn once more how to fly.

One of her bats is named Shaggy. She plans to release him, but first wants to make sure he eats well. When the sun sets, she sets him free. But he does not want to leave just yet.

LESLIE STURGES: “So I think what I am going to do is put him back in and let him nap for an hour and I am going to try and release him later tonight. Because he has to go. He can’t live here.”

Ms. Sturges says Shaggy has a good chance of survival because red bats are common in the area.

Fish Farming

Several fishermen in Maine recently completed a study program at the country’s first ever “Cod Academy.” The Maine Aquaculture Association directs the program. It trains fishermen who usually earn a living fishing in the ocean to be fish farmers. The program is aimed at helping commercial fishers to find a new way to carry out their trade.

On a recent morning, a fishing boat left the public dock in the seaside community of Sorrento, Maine. But the men on the boat were not going fishing … they were going farming.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “Today we’re probably going to be moving cages and sorting codfish so the students will get experience doing that”.

That was Sebastian Belle. He is head of the Maine Aquaculture Association. It operates the new “Cod Academy” in partnership with the University of Maine and other organizations.

About one and a half kilometers out to sea, the boat finds eight circular pens. A rubber tube encloses each one. The pens are covered with netting material to keep out seabirds. Inside each of the fifty-meter wide areas are up to fifty thousand cod. Most of these fish will be served on dinner tables around the world.

This is the only commercial cod farm in Maine. The operator is Great Bay Aquaculture, a fish-farming company. It is one of the partners in the Cod Academy.

Mr. Belle says that during a year, students are taught everything they need to know about operating a floating farm.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “One of the things we’ve been teaching the students is how to feed the fish and not overfeed the fish. So you want to give them enough feed, and not waste any feed and make it as efficient as possible.”

The fish-farmers in training take turns throwing special fish food into the pen.

Air bubbles appear as thousands of cod come up to feed. They can be seen from the boat with an underwater camera.

Bill Thompson is one of the Cod Academy’s four students. He says the program has showed him that aquaculture, or fish-farming, is a wise choice.

BILL THOMPSON SR: “Even if the wild stocks came back to their fullest capacity they still wouldn’t feed the world. So this is the way of the future. And it’s feasible for a family to run a business also.”

That is why Mr. Thompson’s son is also a student at the academy. Thirty-nine year old Bill Thompson Junior has been a working fisherman for much of his life. He earns a living diving for urchins and fishing for lobster. But he notes that he has a wife and four children to support, so it was time for a change.

BILL THOMPSON JR: “Well I’ve seen a depletion of the source of everything I have been harvesting over the years. I look into the future, I can’t see my kids set up in what I’m doing right now as far as, you know, lobstering, urchining. I don’t want to see them get a source that’s depleting every year.”

Becoming a fish-farmer has its own financial risks. Sebastian Belle says students need to develop a business plan before they can graduate. They will be expected to raise about half of the money they would need for any farm they want to create. Mr. Belle says the “Cod Academy” is based on successful programs started in Japan and Norway more than thirty years ago. Those programs were created to retrain fishers who once caught tuna and herring.

SEBASTIAN BELLE: “It’s never been done before in America and we’re trying to see if it’s a model that has some potential.

Mr. Belle says he hopes the program will help people in Maine realize the huge promise that cod farming holds. He admits aquaculture has its critics. Critics say that crowding fish together in a farm can spread disease and produce unhealthy fish.

But Mr. Belle says Maine’s fish farmers have learned from those mistakes. And he says state inspectors make sure that fish farms obey environmental rules.

The first students of the “Cod Academy” graduated this month. They are now permitted to seek financial aid from the Maine Aquaculture Association to start their own cod-farms.

This program was written and produced by Dana Demange, with reporting by Tom Porter and Jeff Swicord.  I’m Barbara Klein.

And I’m Mario Ritter.  You can find our programs online with transcripts, MP3s, podcasts and pictures at voaspecialenglish.com Join us again next week for EXPLORATIONS in VOA Special English.