Environment

Powerline Blues Part 5: In an April 1978 poll, the Minneapolis Tribune asked Minnesotans whether they sided with the farmers or the utilities. Sixty-three percent said they sided with the farmers. Among rural Minnesotans, support for the farmers ran at 70 percent. That spring, Alice Tripp decided to run for governor.

Although faced with a situation in which law enforcement officials were reluctant to use force against their own neighbors, Gov. Wendell Anderson declined to intervene. But when the fall of 1976 turned to winter, a new governor took office: a former Iron Range dentist named Rudy Perpich.

In the late 1970s, a mass protest swept through the normally conservative farm country of west central Minnesota. Farmers tried to stop construction of a 400- mile-long transmission line that would cross their land on the way from North Dakota to the Twin Cities. Powerline Blues looks back at the conflict through the eyes of people who lived it. It's a story of how a system they didn't think was fair turned ordinary people into radicals.

In June 1976 the state of Minnesota issued a construction permit for the transmission line. Three days later, utility company surveyors arrived at Virgil and Jane Fuchs' farm. By the end of the day, Fuchs was under arrest.

A Mainstreet Radio broadcast from Aitkin Minnesota, including a conversation with members of the Howard family, who have hunted on their family's land in Aitkin County for decades.

A Mainstreet Radio broadcast from Aitkin, Minnesota about deer hunting in Minnesota, hosted by Rachel Reabe. The program covers reactions of Minnesota deer hunters to the threat of Chronic Wasting Disease.

When members of the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe head into the woods on a deer hunt, it's more than recreation. Band members say deer are a source of food for their people and they see hunting deer as a right and a responsibility. Hunters from the Mille Lacs Band are able to kill as many deer as they want on certain tracts of land in Minnesota and Wisconsin. Talk of chronic wasting disease makes many Mille Lacs Band members nervous.

Biologists with the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources want to survey the state's sensitive natural areas before they disappear. The DNR's County Biological Survey was created in 1987. Its purpose is to help government officials preserve at risk areas in their communities. The DNR hopes to finish a survey of the entire state within 20 years.

A wild elk from South Dakota has tested positive for chronic wasting disease. The elk was found in a herd in the Wind Cave National Park in the southwest part of the state. Park workers noticed the elk showing symptoms of the fatal brain disease. South Dakota is taking a wait and see approach to CWD.

State wildlife officials have embarked on a different kind of hunt this deer season. They're not wearing blaze orange. Instead they're wearing lab coats and protective eyewear. It's all part of an intricate plan to determine whether or not chronic wasting disease has invaded Minnesota's deer population.