Earlier this month I was in Ozona attending the Grazing Classes taught by Terry Gompert (really great classes, lots of information). Our field exercises were on the West Ranch and it was phenomenal the amount of green! Grasses, forbs, trees; I think even a few rocks and sheep were turning green!

As usual Peggy has assembled great articles for News & Notes. A couple are controversial AND there are responses to previous articles. Plus the list of Upcoming Events is growing; so get your calendars out. If you know of an event, please let us know.

Sharon

Wednesday, June 20, 2007

CREDIT: Andrew Barr, National Post (See hardcopy for Chart/Graph)

Politicians and environmentalists these days convey the impression that climate-change research is an exceptionally dull field with little left to discover. We are assured by everyone from David Suzuki to Al Gore to Prime Minister Stephen Harper that "the science is settled." At the recent G8 summit, German Chancellor Angela Merkel even attempted to convince world leaders to play God by restricting carbon-dioxide emissions to a level that would magically limit the rise in world temperatures to 2C.

The fact that science is many years away from properly understanding global climate doesn't seem to bother our leaders at all. Inviting testimony only from those who don't question political orthodoxy on the issue, parliamentarians are charging ahead with the impossible and expensive goal of "stopping global climate change." Liberal MP Ralph Goodale's June 11 House of Commons assertion that Parliament should have "a real good discussion about the potential for carbon capture and sequestration in dealing with carbon dioxide, which has tremendous potential for improving the climate, not only here in Canada but around the world," would be humorous were he, and even the current government, not deadly serious about devoting vast resources to this hopeless crusade.

Climate stability has never been a feature of planet Earth. The only constant about climate is change; it changes continually and, at times, quite rapidly. Many times in the past, temperatures were far higher than today, and occasionally, temperatures were colder. As recently as 6,000 years ago, it was about 3C warmer than now. Ten thousand years ago, while the world was coming out of the thou-sand-year-long "Younger Dryas" cold episode, temperatures rose as much as 6C in a decade -- 100 times faster than the past century's 0.6C warming that has so upset environmentalists.

The Deniers: The National Post's series on scientists who buck the conventional wisdom on climate science. The National Post is a Canadian national newspaper. Here is the series so far:

Climate-change research is now literally exploding with new findings. Since the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the field has had more research than in all previous years combined and the discoveries are completely shattering the myths. For example, I and the first-class scientists I work with are consistently finding excellent correlations between the regular fluctuations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate. This is not surprising. The sun and the stars are the ultimate source of all energy on the planet.

My interest in the current climate-change debate was triggered in 1998, when I was funded by a Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council strategic project grant to determine if there were regular cycles in West Coast fish productivity. As a result of wide swings in the populations of anchovies, herring and other commercially important West Coast fish stock, fisheries managers were having a very difficult time establishing appropriate fishing quotas. One season there would be abundant stock and broad harvesting would be acceptable; the very next year the fisheries would collapse. No one really knew why or how to predict the future health of this crucially important resource.

Although climate was suspected to play a significant role in marine productivity, only since the beginning of the 20th century have accurate fishing and temperature records been kept in this region of the northeast Pacific. We needed indicators of fish productivity over thousands of years to see whether there were recurring cycles in populations and what phenomena may be driving the changes.

My research team began to collect and analyze core samples from the bottom of deep Western Canadian fjords. The regions in which we chose to conduct our research, Effingham Inlet on the West Coast of Vancouver Island, and in 2001, sounds in the Belize-Seymour Inlet complex on the mainland coast of British Columbia, were perfect for this sort of work. The topography of these fjords is such that they contain deep basins that are subject to little water transfer from the open ocean and so water near the bottom is relatively stagnant and very low in oxygen content. As a consequence, the floors of these basins are mostly lifeless and sediment layers build up year after year, undisturbed over millennia.

Using various coring technologies, we have been able to collect more than 5,000 years' worth of mud in these basins, with the oldest layers coming from a depth of about 11 metres below the fjord floor. Clearly visible in our mud cores are annual changes that record the different seasons: corresponding to the cool, rainy winter seasons, we see dark layers composed mostly of dirt washed into the fjord from the land; in the warm summer months we see abundant fossilized fish scales and diatoms (the most common form of phytoplankton, or single-celled ocean plants) that have fallen to the fjord floor from nutrient-rich surface waters. In years when warm summers dominated climate in the region, we clearly see far thicker layers of diatoms and fish scales than we do in cooler years. Ours is one of the highest-quality climate records available anywhere today and in it we see obvious confirmation that natural climate change can be dramatic. For example, in the middle of a 62-year slice of the record at about 4,400 years ago, there was a shift in climate in only a couple of seasons from warm, dry and sunny conditions to one that was mostly cold and rainy for several decades.

Using computers to conduct what is referred to as a "time series analysis" on the colouration and thickness of the annual layers, we have discovered repeated cycles in marine productivity in this, a region larger than Europe. Specifically, we find a very strong and consistent 11-year cycle throughout the whole record in the sediments and diatom remains. This correlates closely to the well-known 11-year "Schwabe" sunspot cycle, during which the output of the sun varies by about 0.1%. Sunspots, violent storms on the surface of the sun, have the effect of increasing solar output, so, by counting the spots visible on the surface of our star, we have an indirect measure of its varying brightness. Such records have been kept for many centuries and match very well with the changes in marine productivity we are observing.

In the sediment, diatom and fish-scale records, we also see longer period cycles, all correlating closely with other well-known regular solar variations. In particular, we see marine productivity cycles that match well with the sun's 75-90-year "Gleissberg Cycle," the 200-500-year "Suess Cycle" and the 1,100-1,500-year "Bond Cycle." The strength of these cycles is seen to vary over time, fading in and out over the millennia. The variation in the sun's brightness over these longer cycles may be many times greater in magnitude than that measured over the short Schwabe cycle and so are seen to impact marine productivity even more significantly.

Our finding of a direct correlation between variations in the brightness of the sun and earthly climate indicators (called "proxies") is not unique. Hundreds of other studies, using proxies from tree rings in Russia's Kola Peninsula to water levels of the Nile, show exactly the same thing: The sun appears to drive climate change.

However, there was a problem. Despite this clear and repeated correlation, the measured variations in incoming solar energy were, on their own, not sufficient to cause the climate changes we have observed in our proxies. In addition, even though the sun is brighter now than at any time in the past 8,000 years, the increase in direct solar input is not calculated to be sufficient to cause the past century's modest warming on its own. There had to be an amplifier of some sort for the sun to be a primary driver of climate change.

Indeed, that is precisely what has been discovered. In a series of groundbreaking scientific papers starting in 2002, Veizer, Shaviv, Carslaw, and most recently Svensmark et al., have collectively demonstrated that as the output of the sun varies, and with it, our star's protective solar wind, varying amounts of galactic cosmic rays from deep space are able to enter our solar system and penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. These cosmic rays enhance cloud formation which, overall, has a cooling effect on the planet. When the sun's energy output is greater, not only does the Earth warm slightly due to direct solar heating, but the stronger solar wind generated during these "high sun" periods blocks many of the cosmic rays from entering our atmosphere. Cloud cover decreases and the Earth warms still more.

The opposite occurs when the sun is less bright. More cosmic rays are able to get through to Earth's atmosphere, more clouds form, and the planet cools more than would otherwise be the case due to direct solar effects alone. This is precisely what happened from the middle of the 17th century into the early 18th century, when the solar energy input to our atmosphere, as indicated by the number of sunspots, was at a minimum and the planet was stuck in the Little Ice Age. These new findings suggest that changes in the output of the sun caused the most recent climate change. By comparison, CO2 variations show little correlation with our planet's climate on long, medium and even short time scales.

In some fields the science is indeed "settled." For example, plate tectonics, once highly controversial, is now so well-established that we rarely see papers on the subject at all. But the science of global climate change is still in its infancy, with many thousands of papers published every year. In a 2003 poll conducted by German environmental researchers Dennis Bray and Hans von Storch, two-thirds of more than 530 climate scientists from 27 countries surveyed did not believe that "the current state of scientific knowledge is developed well enough to allow for a reasonable assessment of the effects of greenhouse gases." About half of those polled stated that the science of climate change was not sufficiently settled to pass the issue over to policymakers at all.

Solar scientists predict that, by 2020, the sun will be starting into its weakest Schwabe solar cycle of the past two centuries, likely leading to unusually cool conditions on Earth. Beginning to plan for adaptation to such a cool period, one which may continue well beyond one 11-year cycle, as did the Little Ice Age, should be a priority for governments. It is global cooling, not warming, that is the major climate threat to the world, especially Canada. As a country at the northern limit to agriculture in the world, it would take very little cooling to destroy much of our food crops, while a warming would only require that we adopt farming techniques practiced to the south of us.

Meantime, we need to continue research into this, the most complex field of science ever tackled, and immediately halt wasted expenditures on the King Canute-like task of "stopping climate change."

R. Timothy Patterson is professor and director of the Ottawa-Carleton Geoscience Centre, Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University.

© National Post 2007

Copyright © 2007 CanWest Interactive, a division of CanWest MediaWorks Publications, Inc.. All rights reserved.

EnviroMedia's National Poll Reveals the More Consumers Know, the More Willing They Are to Save

AUSTIN, Texas--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Today marks the official start to summer and as temperatures steadily increase across the U.S., so will Americans’ thirst for water.

EnviroMedia's survey, conducted by Opinion Research Corporation January 11-14 among 1,015 Americans, showed that only 32 percent of Americans say they “definitely know” the natural source of their drinking water. However, there is a high willingness among Americans to conserve water in order to ensure a plentiful supply for the future.

“Our research suggests Americans would do their part to save hundreds of millions of gallons of water a day if they were reminded that their drinking water originates from a natural source, such as a lake or river, before it gets to their taps,” said EnviroMedia President Kevin Tuerff. “The link between knowledge of a local water source and willingness to conserve is never more important than during hot, dry summer months when water use peaks in most communities.”

According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the average American family uses about 400 gallons of water a day, and about 30 percent of that is devoted to outdoor use as homeowners and businesses try to keep their grass green. But the EPA says as much as 50 percent of water used outdoors may be wasted due to run-off, evaporation and over-watering, putting a strain on community water supplies in many parts of the country.

According to EnviroMedia’s poll, 90 percent of Americans are willing to conserve at least 5 percent of their current water use. Almost one-fifth are willing to conserve as much as 20 percent.

“Ensuring ample water supply for our children over the next few decades is a big concern in many parts of the U.S.,” said Carole Baker, Chair of the Alliance for Water Efficiency, a national organization advocating for water efficiency research and education. “It's heartening to know there is hope with education.”

In the same study, 65 percent of Americans claimed to know the fuel source for their electricity. Only 16 percent cited coal, America’s primary fuel source for electricity and major contributor to climate change.

“Although these two statistics may seem unrelated, they tell an important story,” said EnviroMedia CEO Valerie Davis. “In general, it seems that Americans are uneducated consumers when it comes to their utilities and this lack of knowledge may create an unintended barrier to conservation.”

Based in Texas, EnviroMedia Social Marketing is the nation's only communications firm that works solely on environmental and public health campaigns. EnviroMedia is a leading expert on water conservation and energy issues. EnviroMedia researches, develops and implements campaigns educating consumers about how to protect and save water. Working with the Texas Water Development Board, EnviroMedia created the brand “Water IQ: Know Your Water,” which has been implemented in communities across Texas.

Contacts for EnviroMedia
Kelli Johnson, 512-476-4368
kjohnson@enviromedia.com

Conference Features International Experts, Workshops On Soil Issues, Global Warming, Animal Behavior, Organic Food, Drought and Marketing

Albuquerque, NM. “Early Bird” registration, with substantial savings, is now open through Monday, July 16 for Holistic Management International (HMI)’s International Gathering, November 1-4, 2007 at the Hotel Albuquerque in Albuquerque’s Old Town.

“From The Ground Up: Practical Solutions to Complex Problems” features keynote addresses, round table discussions educational workshops, a children’s program and a certified HMI educator track with international experts on soil health and desertification, sustainable farming and grazing, animal behavior, and global warming.

Scheduled keynote speakers include:

• Joel Salatin, one of America’s premier grass farmers, speaks on Friday, November 2 on “Building a Local Food System That Works.” Owner of Polyface Farm in Virginia, Salatin is featured prominently in Michael Pollan’s best-selling book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.

• Temple Grandin, the best-selling author of Animals in Translation: Using the Mysteries of Autism to Decode Animal Behavior and an international speaker on both autism and animal behavior, will deliver an address titled, “If You Eat, You Are a Change Agent,” on Saturday, November 3.

• Thom Hartmann, celebrated broadcaster on Air America Radio, author, psychotherapist and commentator, has written widely on environmental, political and social justice issues. He speaks on “Human Relationship to the Environment” on Saturday, November 3.

• Allan Savory, founder of HMI, provides the closing address, “Healing the Land,” at the closing reception on November 3 and leads a “Walk Around the Bosque” on Sunday, November 4.

• Historian, storyteller and renowned stage performer Raphael Cristy will be featured in a family friendly performance of “Charlie Russell’s Yarns” at the opening dinner on November 2. Russell was one of America’s best-known chroniclers of the Old West.

HMI, an Albuquerque-based international non-profit founded in 1984, works with stewards of family farms, rural communities and large land holdings (farmers, ranchers, government agencies, environmental advocacy groups, and others) to make their lands healthier, more productive and more profitable.

For more information, a complete schedule of events and to register, call HMI at (505) 842-5252 or visit www.holisticmanagement.org.

June 14, 2007

By TANYA MOHN

There is a crisis brewing in America’s vast forest lands, but it has little to do with the health of the woods: the acreage is essentially the same as it was a century ago, and there is over 30 percent more wood volume per acre than in 1952.

At stake are large tracts of private forest that are at risk of falling into mismanagement, subdivision or being sold for development.

“It’s a ticking time bomb” said Brett J. Butler, a research forester with the United States Forest Service Family Forest Research Center in Amherst, Mass. He says the situation could jeopardize things like the wood used to build homes, jobs, and clean water and fresh air.

Nearly 60 percent of the nation’s forests are privately owned, the majority by families and individuals and most of these owners are 55 or older. A huge swath of forest land is about to change hands as aging landowners pass the land to heirs or buyers.

“Without a doubt, it is the largest intergenerational transfer of forest land in our nation’s history,” said Al Sample, president of the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, a nonprofit environmental policy research organization, “and we are not ready for it.” Already, he said, forest land is rapidly disappearing. “We’re losing four acres a minute; were not talking about the Amazon here.”

The institute, in cooperation with the Forest Service, recently completed a survey of the next generation of family forest owners and found that heirs who will inherit the land are often professionals living far away in cities, have weak bonds to the land, and have little involvement in management of family forests.

High taxes were a top reason heirs cited as deterrents to keeping the land. “The first time Wal-Mart or a developer makes an offer, they are going to take it,” Mr. Sample said. “They often feel that they have no choice.”

Steve Presley remembers spending time growing up on land his father owned in Palestine in East Texas: watching the sun go down, listening to the crickets, frogs and coyotes and picking blackberries with his high school sweetheart. (The bushes are still there, and the girl is now his wife of some 30 years.)

But Mr. Presley, who now owns the land, worries that high inheritance and property taxes may prevent future generations from experiencing similar pleasures. “My children are faced with selling part of the property to pay for taxes.”

Subdividing the land is a major obstacle to practicing responsible forestry, said Edward Steigerwaldt, president of the Association of Consulting Foresters. Parcels must be a certain size to harvest economically and to sustain water quality and wildlife habitats.

Mr. Presley harvests much of his 750 acres, but said that increased regulations and negative public opinion make tree farming difficult. In recent years landowners have been criticized for cutting down trees.

“Trees are absolutely the best way to take carbon out of the atmosphere,” Mr. Presley said. “What environmentalists don’t understand is that as trees get really, really big, the growth rate goes down. Slow growth results in less carbon absorption.” Harvesting mature trees and replanting younger, faster growing trees “helps the small forest owner and the environment.”

Laurence D. Wiseman, president and chief executive of the American Forest Foundation, a nonprofit conservation organization, said private forest owners played a critical role in protecting water and air quality and habitats for rare and endangered animals.

“They preserve the environment, but don’t get credit for it. Seventy percent of the Eastern watershed flows through family forests — all outside of public view,” he said. “ It’s a paradox. The public enjoys the benefits but don’t help pay any costs.”

Mr. Wiseman and others in the industry hope the reauthorization of the 2007 Farm Bill currently being drafted by the House Agriculture Committee will provide incentive programs to help family forest owners bear the costs of maintaining their lands.

A recent national poll conducted for the Nature Conservancy found that most Americans incorrectly believe that the federal government owns most forests. But when respondents were informed that families and individuals did, they expressed strong support for protecting private forestland. The survey of 1001 registered voters was conducted by telephone in February 2007.

“There has been little Farm Bill funding for family forest landowners in the past,” said Louise Milkman, director for federal programs at the Nature Conservancy, even though “family forests are a large part of the working rural landscape.”

The Subcommittee on Department Operations, Oversight, Nutrition, and Forestry is expected to consider provisions today, and the full House Agriculture Committee is taking the matter up the last week of June.

Lack of communication among family members is a common problem.

“Families resist talking about death and dying; it’s like going to the dentist,” said Thom J. McEvoy, a professor and extension forester at the University of Vermont who has studied this issue. When family members do not discuss matters, or disagree, “the path of least resistance” is often taken, which is selling part or all of the land.

Wayne Rivers, president of the Family Business Institute, a consulting firm in Raleigh, N.C., who serves as a consultant to an industry association, said many families “see the land as something more than a business, as a family legacy, but it is still a business.” As a result, they do not take measures like estate and succession planning. “Most are woefully unprepared,” he said.

But programs to help families are becoming more common.

Stephen Whitfield, executive director of NCWoodlands, a nonprofit group in North Carolina, affiliated with the National Woodland Owners Association, runs workshops in cooperation with the State University extension service, “to give people tools to be able to keep land if they want to”

One of them, Women in the Woods, is geared to widows, who often find themselves in charge of land unexpectedly when their husbands die, Mr. Whitfield said.

Some programs focus on exploring revenue sources beyond timber.

The Forest Service has links and information on its Web site (www.na.fs.fed.us/stewardship/estate/estate.shtml) on tax and estate planning options as conservation easements, which let landowners maintain ownership but provide monetary payments and ensure that the land will remain intact.

Peter and Jane Revesz, 78 and 72, respectively, are planning for the transition of their 560 acres in Clark County, Wash., which has been in the family for over half a century.

Their hope is that their son, Mike Revesz, 46, an engineering scientist living in Austin, Tex., and their daughter, Sandra Revesz, 49, a nurse living in Seattle, will become third-generation managers.

Both Revesz children participated in the Pinchot study several years ago, but at the time had no concrete plans in place. “I think it made us start thinking,” Sandra Revesz said. Both she and her brother have since realized the importance of the land as a family legacy.

“My parents have worked hard to take a very realistic approach, producing enough income to make the land pay for itself,” Mike Revesz said.

The family gathered in January to use a Ties to the Land program offered by Oregon State University that provides exercises and worksheets to guide families in shifting land from one generation to the next.

“The materials helped us all talk through issues,” Mike Revesz said, to avoid being overwhelmed at a later date. The family plans to keep the land as a working tree farm.

In 2002, when Carolyn Vassar Pickett’s mother died, she seriously considered selling the family land in Marengo County, Ala.

But a childhood friend encouraged her to contact the National Network of Forest Practitioners, a clearinghouse for information and technical assistance. “That was the catalyst that changed my mind,” said Mrs. Pickett, now 59, who travels between Chicago and Selma, Ala., to manage the land.

Several years later she created Women in Land Ownership, a nonprofit organization that offers financial and legal advice to help landowners keep their property. One recent member was encouraged to harvest timber to help finance a child’s college education; another was “being coerced to sell mineral rights,” she said, but with the organization’s help, was introduced to a lawyer who specializes in land law.

Her motivation comes from her father, a skilled laborer who bought the land when she was child. He died 14 years ago. “He always said: ‘Man can create houses and man can create businesses. But God created the land, and he won’t create any more in our lifetime.’ ”

Tuesday, May 29, 2007

It was close, but the Texas House yesterday finally approved legislation that will let the state identify sites for 19 new lakes, strengthen conservation and determine how much water that rivers need for their ecosystems. After tense debate for more than an hour on the Legislature's last day, the House joined the Senate in taking the most serious step in water planning since the 1960s.

The bill was about more than water policy, however. It also was about whether Texas is coming to terms with being an urban state.

For a while this session, it looked as if that wasn't going to happen. A few days ago, Rep. Charlie Geren of Fort Worth asked his colleagues whether they knew who this Fastrill guy was that a lake in East Texas was named after. No one knew, so he joked that the state should change it to Lake Tuffy Hamilton.

The line drew laughter from the floor because everyone knew that Rep. Mike "Tuffy" Hamilton of East Texas had been fighting like mad to keep the lake from becoming part of the state's water plan. But Mr. Geren's humor also beautifully captured the dilemma that keeps playing out in Austin.

Here was a representative from a leading metropolitan area asking a rural legislator: Hey, would you go for this lake if we named it after you?

It's gotten down to that for the state's cities and suburbs, where the vast majority of Texans live. Lake Fastrill, for example, is one of two reservoirs the Dallas-Fort Worth area needs, but East Texas legislators fought until the last to kill it and the Marvin Nichols Reservoir.

Never mind that 9 million Texans will need water from those reservoirs. East Texas lawmakers like Mr. Hamilton and Rep. Stephen Frost didn't want them in their back yards.

The state got lucky this time. But if we don't watch it, we're going to hurt ourselves. Water wasn't the only issue caught up in the big city/rural Texas tug-of-war. So was transportation planning.

Before this year, that same division slowed down the state's school funding debate. What is pressing to many Texans, like sufficient funding for their schools, hasn't always been uppermost to leaders outside of Houston, D-FW, Austin and San Antonio.

This is all odd because Texas long ago moved from being a rural society. We are not only an urbanized state, but a suburbanized one.

What do the East Texans opposed to new lakes for Dallas-Fort Worth say to their children and grandchildren who've moved to Plano or Dallas? Are they saying their communities shouldn't have enough water? I doubt it, but clutching onto our days as a rural state limits our potential.

The urban-rural divide was at play in the speaker's race, too.

According to people I spoke with on the House floor, some rural legislators stood by House Speaker Tom Craddick of West Texas because rural Texas may not see one of its own become speaker again for a long time if the House elects a speaker from a big metropolitan area. They fear that once urban-suburban Texas takes over, they won't get the power back.

Perhaps. But it's healthy that Brian McCall of Plano and Fred Hill of Richardson tried to become speaker. The metro areas need to assert themselves, since their leaders represent most Texans.

Rural leaders can be a big part of this, too. What we need is leaders of vision, no matter where they come from.

Their vision, however, needs to start with a clear understanding of what's coming Texas' way. Former GOP Sen. Bill Ratliff of Mount Pleasant and former Democratic Rep. Paul Sadler of Henderson had that vision when they chaired Austin's education committee in the 1990s. They knew we needed to pay for a top-rate school system and hold schools accountable if Texas was going to prepare its kids for a global marketplace.

In the early 1970s, The Last Picture Show grabbed Texans' attention because it dramatized how rural Texas was being eclipsed. We need a similar reality in our politics.

It shouldn't take offering to name a lake after a rural legislator to get our politicians to understand the coming days.

William McKenzie is a Dallas Morning News editorial columnist. His email address is wmckenzie@dallasnews.com

Response

Mr. McKenzie,

There will probably never be a better example of the concept of tyranny of the majority than your editorial today regarding the potential conflicts between urban Texas and rural Texas. It will surely be a classic, at least for modern times.

You, speaking on behalf of a huge metroplex have said, on the record in a major daily newspaper: "We don't care about you little people out there in the rural areas. If you have something we want, we're going to come take it." That is arrogance of the highest order.

It also illustrates a frightening amount of natural resources illiteracy.

Many thanks,
DKL

David K. Langford, Vice President Emeritus
Texas Wildlife Association
P.O. Box 1059
Comfort, TX 78013
830/995-2147 home 210/827-0306 mobile
dkl@texas-wildlife.org
www.texas-wildlife.org

Response

Wikipedia has a discussion of "invasive species" that illustrates the diversity of perceptions. Maybe we are a really effective invasive species. Humans began in central Africa, and invaded the remainder of the Earth, mostly by walking, sometimes in a boat. However, the San Bushmen still live in their original home, and genetic studies indicate they are the modern genetic equivalent of Adam and Eve. It's interesting how they are a gentle and peaceful group who stayed where they originated. They aren't the invaders of the remainder of our planet.

We, the aberrant humans, profoundly have played havoc with the ecological processes. Technically it's difficult to determine if we migrated as an invasion after we became Homo sapiens. Maybe we were induced to migrate as a feature of being genetically inclined to roam, genetic aberrations from "Adam and Eve" and the records are just a bit incomplete. After all, the San Bushmen didn't leave Eden, so those who did wrote the historical record. and developed our "military" tools as we morphed into more effective invaders. The Bushmen have spears, but they use them to hunt game for food, not other humans. Chimpanzees are tool users and they haven't disrupted the ecosystem any more than the Bushmen. Their tools also are for obtaining food, like the Bushmen.

Consider nonnative "invaders" like KR Bluestem. Technologically savvy humans working for the USDA brought it here as a federally funded effort to find grass that would grow on "poor" soils largely created by other humans. I guess we techno-humans were the KR's military transport system. Likewise, humans seem to serve this role often, whether by intention or accident. We really have done a good job with distribution of our "ornamentals" for landscaping, which we find sometimes became invaders when they "escaped" our yards and gardens. I think we label them "invasive" when they escape and we can't control them. Maybe we should call them "teenagers" instead!

From the perspective of Holistic Management, we don't "solve problems" one at a time, but work with the whole ecosystem. Maybe we are primitive San Bushmen when we take this approach. After all, life moves in cycles. Humans just may take longer than geology to change our perspectives.

Dick Richardson
Professor
The University of Texas at Austin
Integrative Biology
Phone 512-471-4128 FAX 512-232-9529
Biology Labs, 114A
1 University Station, Bio 404, MS C-0930
205 W. 24th Street
Austin, Texas 78712-0253

Christopher Gill of Circle Ranch, a 32,000 acre ranch in the southeast corner of the Sierra Diablos, in Hudspeth County 10 miles northwest of Van Horn, Texas attended a class in New Mexico, along with the construction company that does their roads. What they learned has changed the way they deal with road construction and maintenance, and with water, allowing them to dramatically reduce road maintenance, and to reestablish natural water flows across pastures, which in many cases were being killed by the roads that cross through them.

This knowledge was so valuable that Gill urged Courtney White, the Executive Director of the Quivera Coalition, to sponsor one of these classes in West Texas. He obtained a grant for this purpose through the Dixon Water Foundation, based in Dallas, to expand Quivera’s “New Ranch Network Program” into Texas. Circle Ranch is matching this grant through in-kind donations of bulldozer time and facilities. They propose to put on two-two day, or, one three day road seminar(s) taught by Bill Zeedyk September 20-23, 2007.

HRM of TX is both sponsoring and endorsing this education for Texas landowners so that they can learn how to harvest water out of roads and back onto their pastures where it can restore plant growth, instead of treating this precious resource as a liability to be dumped into gullies, whereupon it is lost to the habitat, cattle, and wildlife.

Bill Zeedyk says it is very hard for him to help people with erosion control if they do not also practice some form of planned grazing to restore plant density and foliation, and thereby reduce runoff, as runoff caused by bare ground is usually the root cause of the erosion problem. We will include a short presentation, and field comments, about how planned grazing has helped Circle Ranch. This program is a way to increase knowledge about high density, short duration planned grazing.

While it is still in the planning stages, this workshop promises to be highly valuable to anyone with roads on their property. Keep an eye on the News & Notes, our website and Quivira Coalition’s website for additional information.

Haney Field Day in Whitney, Texas (near Corsicana) September 29, 2007
This one, too, is still in the planning stages, but get it on your calendar as a time to learn about how to get started using HRM on your land

Bryon Haney says, “Our idea is to have a short farm tour and a longer session of reviewing ours and other participants HRM plans. As we are new to HRM, any ideas would be helpful. I had hoped we could focus the event on "new" HRM folks with an "old timer" or two to help us lead the discussion on folks getting started with HRM. It would be a ‘ we will show you ours, then everyone talk about their own plans’ event with a potluck meal.

“Our current operations consist of 50 laying hens selling 10 dozen eggs/wk (100-200 hens by fall), 5 (almost bred) cattle and 3 donkeys used for grazing control on 80 acres, and the beginnings of rainwater catchment system with two full time city jobs and a 3 hr commute daily. We are interested in everything (of course) but could use the most help in taking what we read in the books and putting together a budget and a plan, investigating ways to move to full time agriculture, determining the carrying capacity of our land, marketing/CRA ideas, and everything else.”

If you are interested in getting together at the Haney’s place to discuss how they can implement HRM on their place and how you can implement HRM on your place – sharing encouragement, enthusiasm and knowledge and ideas, please let us know. Pot luck sounds great to us and, with the help of the GR White Trust, we can waive the usual fee to attend.

This is our big 20th birthday bash and a celebration of our great leader, Clint Josey, who has a big birthday of his own this year. We have chosen this timing to allow international holistic managers coming to the states for Holistic Management International’s big International Gathering November 1-4, 2007. Come camp on this beautiful ranch and celebrate with us.

We’ll start with a wonderful gift from the Quivira Coalition. They are treating us to two full days (October 25 & 26) of Guy Glosson’s low stress stockmanship. We are still planning the details, so let us know what you would like to see Guy focus on? Low stress with dogs? Horses? A-foot?

Saturday October 27 we will gather education and entertainment from far and wide to honor Clint and the effects holistic management is having on land and people in our neck of the woods.

Move on to Albuquerque for more outstanding classes and conferences on the issues you care about. See their website for full details. Pre Conference courses start October 30, 2007. There will be exhibits, sponsors, auction and discussions, so get involved today.

HRM member, Kathy Comer, has invited us to do a field day on her place north of Liberty Hill. The property has a nice little creek running through it, we thought this would be a good opportunity to learn all about what makes a creek and its riparian area healthy. So we have enlisted Steve Nelle to lead us in a riparian assessment workshop. An interdisciplinary team will teach us what to look for in assessing the riparian area. Does it meander? What holds the banks in place? Is it steep and narrow or shallow and wide? Participants will practice techniques for assessing their own riparian areas and learn actions that will increase riparian function.

Keilsel Ranch is 68 acres with a 1,100 foot high ridge on one side and a creek running from one side to the other of the property. On the North side of the creek is a gentle slope from fence line to creek. On both sides of the creek there are huge oaks, sycamore, buckeye, Spanish oaks, redbud, mesquite, juniper, pecan, walnut and many others to numerous to name. The creek runs about 11 months of the year and there are always spring feed swimming holes.

The ranch was overgrazed in the past but is making a stunning come back. Grasses are: Blue stem, side oats gramma, blue gramma, curley mesquite, linheimer mully, Switchgrass, Lovegrass, buffalo etc.

Kathy plans to eventually raise Llama for their fiber, not to mention their love. She says, “ To me they are an elegant and kind animal. They are easy on the land and the environment. Eventually I will probably have a bed and breakfast too.”

Kathy is already doing rain water collection and plans to put in a guzzler in the future, plant native grasses and plants, possibly using an acre of the property to raise Lavender, since it does so well there. She would like to get feed back from the group on correcting some erosion issues in the riparian areas.

This Field Day is still in the planning stages so the registration fee is not yet set. Please watch for more information in the next News & Notes and on our website.

The theme of our annual meeting in 2008 is How to Make a Sustainable Living on Your Land – 5 acres to 5 sections. Right now we have tentatively scheduled April 11 & 12 near Waco. More details in the next edition.