Rural

Walk quickly by and you might miss the coffin-sized fissure on John Yearwood’s sprawling Williamson County ranch, now ground zero in the newest effort to gut the Endangered Species Act. The small limestone cave is home, maybe, to a seldom-seen, spider-like creature with a scary-movie name: the Bone Cave harvestman. The harvestman is known to live only in Travis and Williamson counties, and that fact is key to Yearwood and his allies’ revival of a legal strategy that has been rebuffed by courts in the past — including a case a little over a decade ago involving the same species.  But with th [node:read-more:link]

America is a nation of part-time farmers. According to the U.S. Census of Agriculture, over 52 percent of farmers have a primary occupation other than farming. Sixty-one percent worked some days off the farm. Part-time farming doesn’t mean farming fewer than 40 hours a week. It means putting in long, hard hours of farm labor around 9-to-5 jobs. For many of us, it means getting up extra early to do chores before work, and heading back to the barn after a day at the office. Part-time farming is challenging but offers big benefits, especially for young farmers beginning a farm business. [node:read-more:link]

The Alabama Forever Wild Land Trust is a powerful economic engine that provides numerous fiscal benefits to communities throughout the state, a recently released analysis shows. The Trust for Public Land, in partnership with The Nature Conservancy in Alabama, Conservation Alabama Foundation, Birmingham Audubon and The Conservation Fund, conducted an analysis of the return on investment in land conservation through the Forever Wild Land Trust. [node:read-more:link]

We’ve all heard of the great divide between life in rural and urban America. But what are the factors that contribute to these differences? We asked sociologists, economists, geographers and historians to describe the divide from different angles. The data paint a richer and sometimes surprising picture of the U.S. today. 1. Poverty is higher in rural areas 2. Most new jobs aren’t in rural areas 3. Disabilities are more common in rural areas 4. Rural areas are surprisingly entrepreneurial [node:read-more:link]

The draft plan, currently under public comment, offers four alternatives for recovery, with the aim of one day achieving a population of 200 grizzlies. They range from taking no action to augmenting the population with transplanted bears from northwestern Montana and/or south-central British Columbia. One would see the initial translocation of 10 closely monitored bears with the intention of reaching 200 within 60 to 100 years. Another would move in five to seven bears per year for up to a decade. And an expedited approach could lead to 200 bears in a mere 25 years. [node:read-more:link]

In 1995, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service reintroduced endangered gray wolves in Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho, and they soon spread throughout the Northern Rockies. After a series of lawsuits, in 2011 Congress delisted wolves in Montana, Idaho and parts of Washington, Oregon and Utah. (“How the gray wolf lost its endangered status— and how enviros helped,” HCN, 6/6/11). In Wyoming, wolves remained listed until 2012, when they came under state management. Conservation groups sued, and federal protection was restored in 2014.
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From tackling cancer to eradicating single-gene mutations, the CRISPR/Cas9 gene editing tool is often portrayed as the eighth wonder of the world by many. We look to CRISPR regarding how it affects us as a species, but the implications of the CRISPR Cas-9 system extend far beyond just humanity. [node:read-more:link]

Owners of pets killed on the road will get a chance to provide them with a proper burial under a new program in LaPorte County.LaPorte County Animal Control officer Jane Bernard said the effort is about providing closure and peace of mind for owners wondering about the fate of their missing dog or cat."We just thought that as a good community we want to take care of people's pets," she said.For years, the LaPorte County Highway Department has taken deceased cats and dogs found along roadsides directly to a composting pile containing wild animals that suffered a similar death at its main loc [node:read-more:link]

An eastern Idaho sheriff says he’s investigating after a cyanide trap placed by federal authorities to kill coyotes injured a 14-year-old boy and killed his dog. Bannock County Sheriff Lorin Nielsen tells the Idaho State Journal that the device activated Thursday near the Eastern Idaho city of Pocatello.Nielsen says the boy was taken to a hospital to be tested for cyanide poisoning but was not seriously injured and was released. The dog, a 3-year-old Lab named Casey, died. [node:read-more:link]

More than a dozen men in orange, with the initials of the Arizona Department of Corrections stenciled on their shirts, are caring for 35 wild horses and burros on grounds about 50 miles southeast of Phoenix. The men shovel fresh hay into stalls, the wind carrying wisps into the air. They start to groom the horses.  Bear, the horse, isn’t happy. Rick Kline picks up Bear’s right foreleg, and tries to clean the dark horse’s hoof. Bear keeps shaking his head and tail, stomping out his discomfort.  “It’s okay,” Kline says quietly. He tries again. And again. [node:read-more:link]