National Post Digital

Cattle graze on the TK Ranch, northeast of Hanna. Such grassland could be taken over
by greenhouse gas-boosted woody plants cattle don’t eat, a new study says.

Greenhouse gases threat to prairie pastures

Rising carbon dioxide levels boost growth of woody shrubs cattle won’t eat, study finds

TOM S P EARS

The gases that cause global warming threaten to turn the Prairies from grasslands into an area covered by woody shrubs that cattle can’t eat, a new study says.

But it’s not the warmer temperatures that are to blame.

The main greenhouse gas causing global warming is carbon dioxide, and rising carbon dioxide levels favour the growth of woody plants — but not grasses.

“Encroachment of shrubs into grasslands is an important problem facing rangeland managers and ranchers,” says the study by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“This process replaces grasses, the preferred forage of domestic livestock, with species that are unsuitable for domestic livestock grazing.”

The Department of Agriculture scientists in Colorado got their results by blowing extra CO2 gas into greenhouses in Colorado, simulating the future atmosphere as we keep burning coal, oil and gas.

The scientists knew ranchers have been saying for years tough little shrubs are taking over some grasslands. But they needed proof.

They set up six greenhouses on shortgrass prairie typical of large areas in Canada’s Prairie provinces. Three greenhouses had normal air. The other three had increased carbon dioxide levels.

The greenhouses with extra CO2 produced 40 times more than the normal amount of fringed sage, a woody plant that grows from 10 to 60 centimetres high. The change took place over five years.

“A40-fold increase in biomass (amount of the plant material) is huge,” said lead researcher Jack Morgan of the USDA.

Elk and antelope will eat this plant, but cattle won’t. And other experiments suggest other types of sage and small shrubs may also invade grasslands as the atmosphere changes.

This is more than a North American problem, the scientists say. It’s likely to affect grasslands used for grazing by all kinds of livestock in many parts of the world.

These are mostly lands too dry for most farming, but good for grazing.

Morgan says the slow invasion of woody shrubs has been happening for as much as 100 to 200 years, and has been reported in many parts of the world.

“That’s one of the major points in this paper. Most people, when they hear climate change discussed, think it’s always about the future,” he said.

“CO2 has been going up for the past couple of hundred years, so this relates to changes that are already underway.”

Past analysis has blamed these changes on overgrazing and bad land management, he said. The sage is more common in degraded grasslands.

The new study is published today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a science journal.

“We are embarking on a period in which plant community dynamics in many of Earth’s ecosystems may be subject to relatively rapid changes due to increased atmospheric CO2 levels and altered climate,” it says.

“These changes may affect not only the traditional goods and services we have come to expect from these lands, but may alter their biodiversity as well. “Our report has implications for other rangelands around the world,” it adds.

“Rangelands are important not only for the plant and animal products they provide, but also as regions in which distinct pastoral cultures and societies have developed.”

National Post Digital

Deer whistles don't work -Motorcycle and car safety

 

The most definitive condemnation of deer whistles is in the May 12, 1997 article entitled "Deer-Vehicle Collisions are Numerous and Costly. Do Countermeasures Work?, published by "Road Management & Engineering Journal"(RMEJ) . The article begins by identifying the large number of deer-vehicle deaths in the United States in 1991 at 120. Economic costs based on the National Highway Traffic Administrations 1990 figures produce a conservative annual cost in motorist loss of life and injury from deer-vehicle collisions at almost $200 million .

The RMEJ article reviews the deer whistle manufacturers standard claims that the whistles emit ultrasonic sounds as the vehicle travels over 30 miles per hour and that these sounds (not audible to humans) are effective in frightening deer away from the roadway. The RMEJ article goes on to describe the typical deer whistle and sites the New York Times, that various police agencies, including California, Iowa and Kansas were using the whistles on their patrol cars. "While manufacturers contend deer can hear the whistle up to a quarter mile away, no published research verifies the device's effectiveness.

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) has refuted the effectiveness of deer whistles.

Cherry Creek News - Deer whistles don't work -Motorcycle and car safety

Moose with wind are worse than gas guzzlers

 

Roger Boyes in Berlin

They are dubbed the “Kings of the Forest” and are regarded by Norwegians as their national symbol.

Now, though, scientists have claimed that because of their burping and farting, the placid moose is an eco killer. During a single year, according to new research, a full-grown moose expels – from both ends – the methane equivalent of 2,100kg of carbon dioxide emissions. That is said to be as destructive for the atmosphere as the emissions released by 13,000km (8,000 miles) of car travel.

“To put it into perspective, the return flight from Oslo to Santiago in Chile leaves a carbon footprint of 880 kilos,” said the biologist Reidar Andersen, a biologist. “Shoot a moose and you have saved the equivalent of two long-haul flights.” The findings, from the technical university in Trondheim, place Scandinavians in a dilemma. Many are dedicated winter season tourists to Asian destinations such as Bali and Thailand. Is shooting moose about to become a fashionable way of easing their troubled envi-ronmental consciences? Researchers in Scotland and Wales have been examining how the feeding of dairy cows could be changed to cut back their gaseous belching. No such work has been possible, however, on the 120,000 wild moose in Norway.

Moose with wind are worse than gas guzzlers - Times Online

globeandmail.com: Were bison one of globalization's first victims?

 

Economist says Europeans, with their insatiable demand for hides, were more to blame than Americans for the decimation of herds

DAWN WALTON

July 31, 2007

CALGARY -- The near-extinction of the plains bison in the United States has long been blamed on the advent of the railways, native overhunting and a government policy of slaughter designed to address the "Indian problem."

But a Canadian researcher has discovered that globalization was the real culprit for the decimation of the U.S. bison herd in the 19th century.

M. Scott Taylor, an economist at the University of Calgary who used international trade records and first-person accounts of the hunt, has found that European development of a cheap and easy tanning method after 1870 fuelled that continent's insatiable appetite for bison hides, which could be turned into shoe soles and machinery belts.

globeandmail.com: Were bison one of globalization's first victims?

Prescott Az News and Events ~ Read It Here Magazine - Wildlife feeding leads to personal problem for cow elk

 

Wildlife feeding leads to personal problem for cow elk 

by AZG&F press release

Note: click photo to enlarge.

The negative impacts of people feeding wildlife came to light recently recently in a Hualapai Mountain community when the Arizona Game and Fish Department responded to an unusual report of a necklace-clad cow elk roaming behind a residential area.

The "necklace" in this instance was a Mohave County Parks trashcan lid. The elk had put its head into the trashcan and, upon withdrawing, the lid remained stuck around its neck.

Prescott Az News and Events ~ Read It Here Magazine - Wildlife feeding leads to personal problem for cow elk

U.S. prof says Canada should forget renewable energy

 

An American scientist contends in a new paper in the International Journal of Nuclear Governance, Economy and Ecology that renewable energy is anything but green.

Jesse Ausubel of New York's Rockefeller University argues that mass construction of "boutique fuels" such as wind and solar farms will harm the environment more than it will help it.

He says instead that nuclear energy measured in watts per square metre of land used is greener than other forms of renewables, including for dams and biomass production. His findings have implications for Canada, where governments like P.E.I. are concentrating on green energy.

U.S. prof says Canada should forget renewable energy

New Global Partnership Tracks Plant and Animal Survival

 

PARIS, France, July 12, 2007 (ENS) - A new partnership to track the survival of Earth's diverse animals and plants was launched today by the United Nations Environment Programme with US$3.6 million in funding from the Global Environment Facility.

Monique Barbut is CEO of the Global Environment Facility. (Photo courtesy Earth Negotiations Bulletin, ENB)

"The biodiversity challenge is no less urgent a public issue than the climate change crisis," said Monique Barbut, CEO of the funding organization the Global Environment Facility, GEF. "This effort helps move biodiversity to the front burner to help ignite policy makers to take informed action."

UNEP and the GEF officially introduced the 2010 Biodiversity Indicators Partnership project today during a working group meeting of the Convention on Biological Diversity at UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

New Global Partnership Tracks Plant and Animal Survival

Pressure to Kill Wolves Mounting Across the Western USA

 

Twelve years after reintroducing gray wolves to the Northern Rockies, the federal government has announced a plan that allows many of these same wolves and their offspring to be killed.

Farther south, New Mexico Governor and presidential candidate Bill Richardson Friday called for revision of state and federal wolf operating procedures after an endangered Mexican gray wolf was killed last week by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

The government wants to remove the wolves from the endangered species list in late 2007 or early 2008, a move that conservation groups oppose. The new proposal allows wolves in the Northern Rockies to be killed before they are formally delisted.

Pressure to Kill Wolves Mounting Across the Western USA

Baby mammoth find promises breakthrough

 

The discovery of a baby mammoth preserved in the Russian permafrost gives researchers their best chance yet to build a genetic map of a species extinct since the Ice Age, a Russian scientist said on Wednesday.

"It's a lovely little baby mammoth indeed, found in perfect condition," said Alexei Tikhonov, deputy director of the Russian Academy of Science's Zoological Institute, which has been taking care of the mammoth since it was uncovered in May.

"This specimen may provide unique material allowing us to ultimately decipher the genetic makeup of the mammoth,"

Baby mammoth find promises breakthrough | Science | Reuters

Edmonton Journal Digital

Huge tract of grasslands preserved

HANNEKE BROOYMANS

An anonymous Edmontonian has donated 412 hectares of rare native grasslands and shrublands, an area about the size of Vancouver’s Stanley Park, to the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Only a third of the country’s original grasslands remain, sheltering increasingly rare plants and animals, such as sharp-tailed grouse and piping plovers.

The donated property is located near the Alberta/Saskatchewan border southeast of Wainwright. Aside from its rich biodiversity, the site also holds historical significance, including remnants of the original buildings of the hamlet of Cairns and traces of the historic Hardisty Trail.

“The grasslands is one of the most threatened ecosystems in North America,” said Larry Simpson, regional vice-president of the conservancy’s Alberta region.

“If you measure their health by virtue of grassland bird species, for whatever reason grassland bird species is a group that is falling more rapidly than any other bird group in North America. So every step you take, every little bit you can do, is a step in the right direction.”

Once a property is donated, the conservancy develops detailed land stewardship plans to ensure the site’s natural integrity is maintained and protected for the long term.

The Cairns land was donated under the federal ecological gifts program. This program provides tax incentives for owners of certified ecologically sensitive land wishing to donate their land for conservation purposes.

These tax benefits were strengthened recently with the elimination of the capital gains tax in the 2006 federal budget.

The Cairns property announcement is part of the conservancy’s ongoing efforts to leave a lasting natural legacy for Canadians.

The conservancy also announced nine other “Gifts to Canadians” across the country, one from each province, totalling approximately 16 square kilometres (1,593 hectares).

 

Edmonton Journal Digital