This week: Brian Johns of The Youth Farm Stand program at Holmes Foundation Academy in Flint, teaches students to grow vegetables using traditional farming methods, as well as cutting-edge technologies such as hydroponics and aguaponics.

Get outside and do it simply, Detroit Free Press outdoor writer Eric Sharp urges in this article on hiking trails of the Pinckney and Waterloo state recreation areas.
Hiking is a great way to get some exercise and tune into nature without spending hundreds on a bike or boat. That’s not to say that I couldn’t sink a few pay checks into ultralight tents, packs, sleeping bags and camp cookware systems. But all you really need are some shoes and a trail.
Sharp profiles some the 2- to 30-mile trails in the …

Curious what land is protected in your state?

Then meet CARL — a Conservation And Recreation Lands map.

A decade-old discovery in Lake Michigan is already disappearing.

From 2003 to 2007, researchers estimate that the cormorant ate 13 million fewer yellow perch and 600,000 fewer smallmouth bass in two large Lake Ontario cormorant colonies.

This week: The debate on “shrinking the city” because of the large inventory of vacant, overgrown lots and abandoned homes. In this clip, Mama E and Mayor Dayne Walling are on the same side of the debate.

Last month Echo reported that Great Lakes migratory birds are threatened by the Gulf oil spill.
Regional bird expert Francie Cuthbert, a University of Minnesota professor, was busy with fieldwork when we tried to reach her then. But she got back with us for this update:
Female Great Lakes piping plovers will head south for the winter ahead of the males in a couple weeks. Since nothing is cleaned up, they will almost certainly be affected by the spill, Cuthbert says.
She expects only a small percentage of plovers that come in contact …

A map made by the Michigan Lighthouse Fund has information for more than 100 structures along Lake Michigan, Superior and Huron.

Around a quarter of Michigan’s Great Lakes tributary streams and rivers are ecologically impaired.

Ah, July in the Great Lakes region, kicking off with Canada Day/Fête du Canada, followed by a quick segue into Independence Day, and then a blur of festivals, picnics, barbecues, mosquitoes, raspberry and cherry season, county fairs, beaches and boats, lemonade, and maybe baseball on the radio. We squeeze a lot into these rare weeks of precious Midwestern summer, which is why carving out time to get substantive comments into the US-Canada Great Lakes Water Quality Agreement negotiating team by July 9 seems even harder than a deadline in say, …