Daily Resource News

WSSA-SRM joint newsletter

Thursday, February 11, 2010 Volume 5 — FINAL ISSUE

WELCOME TO

THE SOCIETY FOR RANGE MANAGEMENT AND WEED SCIENCE SOCIETY OF AMERICA

FIRST JOINT MEETING!!

Schedule and Room Changes for Thursday, February 11, 2010FREE OFFER

Additions: NU Farm America—Capital—7:00 am to 4:30 pm

ESD Workshop Planning Meeting, Plaza Court 3, 7:00 am to 8:30 pm

Room Changes: SRM Student Activities Committee Breakfast Meeting, off site, 8:00 to 10:00 am

The Grand Ballroom was the place to be last night! Woodie Procell & the

Snowy River Band has a varied play list that includes not only some high en-

ergy country but Cajun, bluegrass, and rock & roll with even a few rodeo fa-

vorites added along the way! The dance floor was always full! Future SRM and WSSA Members

Colorado Section members, Tom and Leslie

McClure helped provide a tune or two

8:00—8:40 Virtues of grassfed products for the consumer Meg Cattell, Windsor Diary, Windsor, Colorado 8:40 –9:20 Ranching in sync with nature Dale Lasater, Lasater Grasslands Beef, Matheson, Colorado 9:20—10:00 Multiple species grazing Richard Parry, Fox Fire Farms, Ignacio, Colorado 10:00—10:20 Break 10:20—12:00 Low-input ranching Kit Pharo, Pharo Cattle Company, Cheyenne Wells, Colorado 12:00—1:00 Lunch on your own 1:00—1:40 Organic grass-finished beef on a forage chain from conception to consumer George Whitten & Julie Sullivan, San Juan Ranch, Saguache, Colorado 1:40—2:20 The low carbon footprint of local grassfed livestock production in a semi-arid environment Dennis Moroney, Sky Island Brand/47 Ranch/Flavors Without Boarders Foodways Alliance, McNeal, Arizona 2:20—3:00 Desert-adaped cattle: Harvesting the past for the future Ed Fredrickson and Alfredo Gonzales, USDA-ARS Jornada Experimental Range, Las Cruces, New Mexico; Gerardo Bezanilla and José Rios, Universidad Autónoma de Chihuahua, Chihuahua, México 3:00—3:20 Break 3:20—4:00 Benefits of grazing systems to grassfed production Harvey Sprock, USDA-NRCS, Greeley, Colorado 4:00—4:20 Walking backwards into the future: Rebuilding food system infrastructure in the Southwest Laurie Bower, Southwest Grassfed Livestock Alliance, Santa Fe, New Mexico 4:20—4:40 American Grassfed certification 4:40 –5:00 Wrap-up, questions and answers Carrie Balkcom, American Grassfed Association, Denver, Colorado

Sustainable Rangelands Through Low-Input Grassfed Production” 8:00 am to 5:00 pm

Governor’s Square 10

Reminder! Abstracts for the 2010 Annual Meeting are available online at :

https://srm.conference-services.net/programme.asp?conferenceID=en-uk You can view the abstracts by selecting to sort by program, by title, by presenter, or by topic and clicking the presentation title.

WSSA Symposium, Tuesday, February 9, 2010

By: David Remucal

Dr. Jayne Belnap, Scientist, Department of the Interior, Moab, Utah ―Ecological consequence of Bromus invasion and how does it inform distribution??‖ Bromus invasion in Canyonlands, UT was correlated with increases in soil fungal and bacterial populations but drastic decreases in nematode and microarthropods. Bromus also seemed to increase phosphorous availability in a site, con-verting recalcitrant phosphorous to a usable form. Native Hilaria populations seemed to be affected by the changes in the soil caused by Bromus invasions (and not necessarily negatively). While cheatgrass really dominate cover in dry years, the seedbank seemed to bring back native annuals just fine in wet years.

Dr. Jeff Dukes, Professor in the Department of For-estry and Natural Resources and the Department of Biological Sciences at Purdue University ―Invasions in a Changing Global Environment‖ Jeff advocated bringing modelers and experimenters to-gether to improve predictions of invasives. Looking at cli-mate suitability may be a useful exercise because it could tell you what areas of the range of an invasive species you might be able to begin to manage effectively. In many ways invasive plants seem to benefit from a changing cli-mate so we must be wary of climate change and how hu-man activities facilitate how invasives take advantage of these changes.

Dr. Rieks van Klinken. ―Fire and Invasion: Managing Landscapes‖ Fire can play an important role in maintaining heteroge-neity of structural landscapes. Without fire large swaths of grasslands around the world would likely become for-ests. It‘s unclear how invasives affect fire regimes. Some species seem to benefit from fire and promote frequent fires with others suppress fire, making fire management complicated. An added layer of complexity comes in try-ing to come with a fire regime to manage an area with multiple invasives that have different fire strategies. It‘s important to remember that fire management, while cru-cial, can achieve only limited outcomes.

The ―Taste of Colorado‖ was a great success! A sold out venue with over 640 folks enjoyed the superb food and entertainment! Thank you Sponsors for donating items and helping make ―The Taste of Colorado‖ a fantastic time!! Colorado Port Producer’s Council Colorado Beef Council Colorado Lamb Council Homestead Natural Meats Harvest Select Orchard Valley New Belgium Brewing Black Bridge Winery

Companion Tours included Molly Brown home, Brown

Palace tour and tea; the Mint; State Capitol; and Denver

Art Museum

“Arvada OldeTown String Band” provided music for

the Trade Show Mixer

Thanks to everyone for a successful silent auction!! Over $6,000 was raised for the SRM endowment!

Final Results—Congratulations Students!

Top Five Individuals-URME (209 participants) —2010 Name School Score Placing Daniel L. Zvirzdin Brigham Young University 232 1st Lindsey Seastone Colorado State University 221 2nd Kailee Bickford Montana State University 220 tie 3rd Andrew Telander University of Wyoming 220 tie 3rd Andy James Texas A & M University 210 5th

Cody Rickertt (left) - Eastern Oregon University and James Gardner (right) - University of Nevada-Reno are just two of the 209 individuals that participated in the URME exam on Monday.

Top Five Teams (24 teams) - 2010 School Team Score Placing Brigham Young University 628 1st University of Wyoming 620 2nd University of Alberta 596 3rd Montana State University 579 tie 4th Texas A & M University 579 tie 4th

Combined Award Results (plant ID/URME)-2010 Name School Placing Daniel Zvirdzin Brigham Young University 1st Andy James Texas A & M University 2nd Tanner Broadbent University of Alberta 3rd Erin Belva University of Alberta tie 4th Ashley Easton University of Alberta tie 4th

Individual Plant ID Results—2010 Name (all from UAAAN) Score Placing Jose Luis Garcia 97.3 % 1st Eddy F. Roblero 96.7 % 2nd Victor Hugo Villa 95.9 % 3rd Antonio Garcia 95.0 % 4th Amanda Jael Pedraza 94.6 % 5th Top Five Teams—2010 Antonio Narro (UAAAN) 96.63 % 1st Texas A & M University 91.63 % 2nd University of Alberta 87.63% 3rd Utah State University 83.47 % 4th South Dakota State University 81.03 % 5th

Sustained Lifetime Achievement Outstanding Achievement Dr. David D. Briske Research/Academia

Dr. James E. Bowns Dr. Samuel D. Fuhlendorf John L. McLain Dr. Jeffery E. Herrick D. Ann L. Hild

Fellow Dr. Karen L Launchbaugh

Dr. David C. Ganskopp Dr. Bruce A. Roundy Paul V. Loeffler Dr. Jose Alfonso ―Poncho‖ Ortega Santos Dr. Michael A. Smith Dr. Tamzen K. Stringham

Dr John A. Tanaka Stewardship

John D. & Lynn M. Breese

Outstanding Young Range Professional Stevie Collins

Dr. Kirk Davies Harvey A. Sprock Dr. Amy C. Ganguli

Dr. Thomas Aaron Monaco W.R. Chapline Land Stewardship Award

Ben Berlinger

In 1966, the SRM recognized a need to involve youth with the range-related activities at the annual meeting. As a result, the SRM has sponsored a competitive oral presen-tation competition called the High School Youth Forum. With a limit on numbers of delegates that attend each year, it is quite an honor for the youth that are selected. For 2010, there were 27 delegates registered from 13 states, representing 21 sections. The Results:

SRM High School Youth Forum Presentations on Tuesday February 9, 2010

2010 Honor Awardees

Way to go students!!!

Name Section Title of Presentation

1st Ely Long Texas Managing warm-season rangeland for winter forage in Texas

2nd Erin Reid Texas Healing the Desert—The solution to overgrazed bare rangeland

3rd Haley Johnson S. Dakota The Endangered Species Act and Range Management—What’s the Connection?

4th Maddy Knodel International Mtn The Puzzle

5th Ann Hollingsworth Colorado Using Fire Fearlessly

Highlights from Wind Energy and Wildlife Symposium By Nehalem Breiter

Wind energy development is proceeding rapidly throughout the United States as part of the country‘s green energy initiative and is touted as a source of clean energy. However, impacts to wildlife, spe-cifically birds and bats, associated with wind towers and associated transmission lines are cause for concern. The Wind Energy and Wildlife Symposium on Tuesday afternoon included site specific case-studies, state-of-the-knowledge reviews and input from energy development companies. Here are a few highlights from the afternoon‘s discussion: Don Wolfe (to the left), Sutton Avian Research Center, treated the potential effects of wind development and associated transmission lines on Lesser prairie Chicken. Avoidance of transmission lines by the Lesser prairie chicken presents a barrier to movement and the tendency not to nest near anthropogenic features has larger population viability issues.

Ed Arnett (to the right) of the group Bat Conservation International gave an excel-lent and comprehensive review of wind en-ergy impacts on bat populations. Several clear patterns are emerging: mid-summer and fall months have the highest levels of bat mortality, fatalities are the highest along migra-tory pathways; red strobes don‘t seem to ameliorate bat mortality and there is a strong correlation between wind speed and passage of storm fronts and mortality. Arnett went on to discuss mitigation op-tions that could significantly decrease bat mortality: pre-construction site selection should avoid high risk sites; turbine operations should be curtailed during high risk periods and technological advances (i.e.,

ultrasonic noise generators) may be able to deter bats from traveling through wind farms. Erik Blomberg (left), University of Nevada Reno, discussed implica-tions of transmission line development, a very significant indirect im-pact of wind development, on sage grouse populations. His take home message was that transmission lines must be sited before construction in order to avoid important sage grouse habitat. Wayne Walker (below) Oklahoma Wind Energy gave an engaging talk from the business perspective of wind energy development and wildlife concerns – referred to as the ‗Wind/Wildlife Space. Walker submits that energy development in the United States must proceed holistically with compre-

hensive plans to deal with wildlife among other concerns. Energy projects don‘t have to be sited in high risk wildlife habitat sites. Regional solutions which delineate high and low risk areas must be mapped out in advance. Websites to check out: American Wind Energy; American Wind and Wildlife Institute; www.batsandwind.org; www.batcon.org

Platinum Colorado State Land Board

Public Lands Council

Gold BLM/USFS Job Fair

Grazing Lands Conservation Initiative—State Committee

Redd Foundation

Barbara East

National Park Service

Blue Valley Ranch

Silver Kourlis Ranch

Gylling Data Manage

Alligare

Colorado Pork Producer’s Council

Meeting Expectations, LLC

Thank you sponsors!

Diamond Dow AgroSciences

Dupont

Over 90 folks volunteered to help out with the 2010 SRM and WSSA Joint Meeting. THANK YOU!!

The meeting would not of happened without your help!!

“Gotta hold your mouth just right to win at “cow racing””