Rural News
Panel addresses ‘What’s Right About Kansas’
Hays Post | Posted on January 9, 2019“That’s the thing about rural Kansas,” Corie Brown wrote. “No one lives there, not anymore.” The Los Angeles author’s assessment on rural Kansas in particular and Kansans in general was the outcome of an odyssey across the state for an online article published in April 2018. Its title, “Rural Kansas is Dying: I Drove 1,800 Miles to Find Out Why,” set the stage for her thesis.She interviewed farmers, university professors, politicians, local food system supporters and farm group leaders about the state’s rural population and community decline and what could be done to mitigate it. She found little hope in their responses.While many felt some of her conclusions were accurate, many who were interviewed felt disappointed that she did not place more emphasis on the efforts being made to address the problems and challenges rural communities and farmers face. They ended up feeling used, and none more so than Marci Penner, who had recommended many of the locations and people for the interview.After asking people to identify what makes their community livable, the answers largely centered on its people. “People are engaged in a community and the dedication to its quality of life,” Hendrickson said. “This has to be measured, but nobody measures it. We don’t have a happiness scale, though that might be more important than the gross domestic product.”
Roadkill studies aim to help animals cross the road
Daily Camera | Posted on January 9, 2019t's more a question of "Where did the chicken cross the road?" At least, that is the question state transportation and wildlife officials hope to answer when they compile and release stats on roadkill in an effort to make sure animals get to the other side.Every year, the Colorado Department of Transportation releases a report on the number, type and location of every animal that did not survive its foray onto the highway. "We break it down by month, species, highway and if you want to go deeper, we even have certain stretches of highway," said Jeff Peterson, CDOT wildlife program manager.Peterson said the studies are primarily used to determine highways or areas that are proving especially dangerous for animals."The obvious thing is we're finding out where animals are not successful in crossing the road," Peterson said. "If there's a big problem with animals, we might recommend a bridge or fencing to make it better for the animals."The numbers also are how CDOT decides where to place animal crossing signs, which actually are based on statistics, Peterson said."We get our biologists involved to look at animal movement and corridors to try to find the problem areas to mitigate potential safety concerns with people and obviously animals," spokesman Jason Clay said. "Our collaboration with CDOT has been great. It's a huge safety hazard, and is bad for wildlife and very dangerous for humans as well."
These species went extinct in 2018. More may be doomed to follow in 2019
USA Today | Posted on January 9, 2019They'd been on our planet for millions of years, but 2018 was the year several species officially vanished forever. Three bird species went extinct this year, scientists said, two of which are songbirds from northeastern Brazil: The Cryptic Treehunter (Cichlocolaptes mazarbarnetti) and Alagoas Foliage-gleaner (Philydor novaesi), according to a report from the conservation group BirdLife International. According to BirdLife, the other extinct bird is Hawaii's Po'ouli (Melamprosops phaeosoma), which has not been seen in the wild since 2004 (the same year the last captive bird died). A disturbing trend is that mainland species are starting to go extinct, rather than island species: “Ninety percent of bird extinctions in recent centuries have been of species on islands,” said Stuart Butchart, BirdLife’s chief scientist and lead author on the paper.“However, our results confirm that there is a growing wave of extinctions sweeping across the continents, driven mainly by habitat loss and degradation from unsustainable agriculture and logging," he said.
Mexican immigrants in U.S. continue drop, driven by politics, economics
News Maven | Posted on January 9, 2019The number of Mexican-born immigrants in the United States dropped by about 300,000 people between 2016 and 2017, according to Census Bureau data, a shift that experts say is likely driven by changes on both sides of the border. While the drop, from 11.6 million to 11.3 million, coincides with the election of President Donald Trump, who made border enforcement and deportation of unauthorized immigrants top priorities of his administration, analysts said Trump was not the only factor. The 2016 decline was just the latest turn in a shift that began years earlier, they say.“It’s part of a long-term decline in the Mexican immigrant population in the United States, which appears to have peaked about 10 years ago, just before or during the beginning of the Great Recession,” said Randy Capps, director of research for U.S. programs at the Migration Policy Institute.The decline has contributed to a shortage of labor in the U.S., particularly within the agriculture industry, where Mexicans who would usually take jobs here are now in shorter supply, according to Ana Otto, government relations manager for the Arizona Farm Bureau.
Some Drug Users in Western U.S. Seek Out Deadly Fentanyl
Pew Trust | Posted on January 8, 2019Ever since the powerful synthetic opioid fentanyl started showing up in the U.S. illicit drug supply eight years ago, experts have surmised that drug traffickers were using the inexpensive white powder to boost the potency of heroin, sometimes adding too much and inadvertently killing their customers.In a series of interviews with heroin users in Rhode Island in 2017, Brown University researchers reported that users “described fentanyl as unpleasant, potentially deadly, and to be avoided.” They concluded that demand for the deadly contaminant was low and that its presence in the drug supply was “generating user interest in effective risk mitigation strategies, including treatment.”But here in San Francisco’s gritty Tenderloin district, where fentanyl was only rarely seen until last year, drug users tell a starkly different story. For many of them, fentanyl is a high-value drug that, if used carefully, can prevent dope sickness and deliver a strong high for a fraction of the price of heroin.
Rural's connection to environment means bigger climate-change impact
The Daily Yonder | Posted on January 7, 2019Rural communities face clear economic and environmental risks from a changing climate, according to the 2018 National Climate Assessment. The report documents changes in the timing of seasons, temperature fluctuations, increased incidence of extreme weather and change in rainfall – all patterns with the potential disrupt rural economic activities. Climate change in rural communities poses an outsized risk to the national economy, the report says. “Rural America’s importance to the country’s economic and social well-being is disproportionate to its population, as rural areas provide natural resources that much of the rest of the United States depends on for food, energy, water, forests, recreation, national character, and quality of life,” the report stated. While not all regions face the same impacts due to increased greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere, the assessment explains how increased volumes of carbon, methane and other greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere will lead to changing climatic patterns. The report’s authors predict that changes will likely increase volatility in agricultural commodity markets, shift plant and animal ranges, increase the number and intensity of droughts and floods, and increase the number and size of wildfires throughout the rural landscape. For portions of rural America with an economy based on agriculture, climate scientists are most worried about shifting geographic suitability of particular crops and abnormal timing for planting and harvest.
It’s time to start eating roadkill
High Country News | Posted on January 3, 2019My mother texts me four photos of a dead moose the week I leave Alaska. It is freshly hit. The animal will not go to waste. For the past 50 years, Alaska has been the only state where virtually every piece of large roadkill is eaten. Every year, between 600 and 800 moose are killed in Alaska by cars, leaving up to 250,000 pounds of organic, free-range meat on the road. State troopers who respond to these collisions keep a list of charities and families who have agreed to drive to the scene of an accident at any time, in any weather, to haul away and butcher the body. During a recent trip to Fairbanks, my hometown, I asked locals why Alaska’s roadkill program has been so successful for so long. “It goes back to the traditions of Alaskans: We’re really good at using our resources,” Alaska State Trooper David Lorring told me. Everyone I talked to — biologists, law enforcement, hunters and roadkill harvesters — agreed: It would be embarrassing to waste the meat. In the past few years, a handful of states, including Washington, Oregon and Montana, have started to adopt the attitude that Alaskans have always had toward eating roadkill. A loosening of class stigma and the questionable ethics and economics of leaving dinner to rot by the side of the road have driven acceptance of the practice in the Lower 48.
'Don’t go to India, look to our rural counties’: Utah offering money to companies who hire workers to telecommute
Fox 13 | Posted on January 3, 2019The state is offering money to companies who hire workers to telecommute from rural Utah. The incentives -- as much as $6,000 per full-time job -- are meant to help boost unemployment in rural areas."It’s a great way for the businesses along the Wasatch Front that are having a challenging filling these positions. Things are booming here. The demand is great. Don’t go to India, look to our rural counties," said Rebecca Dilg, the rural and community outreach manager for the Governor's Office of Economic Development.The Utah State Legislature approved spending $1.5 million for the program. Dilg said they were starting to get interest from a few companies."If you can get online, you can have a business anywhere within the state," she said.
Students bear the brunt of cuts to land grant colleges
Daily Yonder | Posted on January 3, 2019The issue we want to focus on in this column is the funding of land-grant universities and colleges. n recent years we have been dismayed by the significant decline in the share of the cost of operating these land-grant institutions being borne by the federal and state governments. The result of this has been the increasing dependence of these educational institutions on student tuition, grants (public, charitable, and commercial), and philanthropy. From our perspective, the most critical issue to be addressed is the increasing dependence of land-grants and other public institutions of higher education on student tuition. We were both able to graduate debt-free even though we received minimal financial support from our families. Tuitions were low, student employment was available, and the funding from the state and federal governments were a higher portion of the cost of operating these schools.
Rural trend in lung disease heads wrong direction
Daily Yonder | Posted on January 3, 2019COPD is one of the five most common causes of death in the U.S. The other four are heart disease, cancer, stroke and accidents. Of those five, death rates due to heart disease, cancer and stroke are higher in rural communities than in towns and cities, but are coming down for both rural and urban people. Deaths due to accidents, including drug overdoses, are increasing in both areas. The pattern for COPD is unique. Death rates due to COPD are falling in urban people, but increasing among rural people.It’s not clear why more rural people are dying of COPD. Several typical rural jobs expose people to very dusty or dirty air….farm work, mining etc. Even non-agricultural rural workers are much more likely to be exposed on the job to high levels of gases, dust and fumes (27%) than urban workers (15%).