PESTICIDE TRAINING PROGRAM OFFERED

PESTICIDE TRAINING PROGRAM OFFERED Eddy County Extension Service will be conducting pesticide applicator training on October 19 from 8:30 am to 4:00 pm. Cost is $10 per person. This class is good for 5 CEU’s. Private applicator testing will not be available if you need to test call and arranged with NMDA 575-646-3007. The information presented may help you prepare for the exams however. These will be in Carlsbad at the Eddy County Extension Office. Dr. Sam Samallidge Extension Wildlife Specialist will be presenting information on gopher control, rodent control, keeping pack rats out of trucks, rattle snakes and more. There is limited space so if you wish to pre-register or if you are in need of special assistance due to a disability please contact the Eddy County Extension Office 887-6595 at least 7 days before the class. This and all programs are available to everyone regardless of age, color, disability, gender, national origin, race, religion, or veteran status. New Mexico State University, U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the Eddy County Government Cooperating “to put knowledge to work”.

NMSU rodeo team rides away with five event wins in Douglas, Arizona

NMSU rodeo team rides away with five event wins in Douglas, Arizona DATE: 09/28/2017 WRITER: Savannah Montero, 575-646-1614, smontero@nmsu.edu CONTACT: Logan Corbett , 270-293-9242, lcorbett@nmsu.edu Hot, dry, windy weather, faces covered in dirt, and the New Mexico State University rodeo team still came out with a bang. At the Cochise College rodeo in Douglas, Arizona, Sept. 22-23, the men’s team finished first overall and the women’s team placed second. The Aggies had multiple event average winners for the weekend. Assistant Rodeo Coach Oobie Hawkes was asked at the rodeo about how the team was doing. “I just want the kids to go to College Finals and do the best that they can at every college rodeo,” Hawkes said. “We have done well so far at the Cochise rodeo. We are placing in just about everything. It’s just a matter of the student athletes getting their minds right in order to match their talent.” Derek Runyan, sophomore of Silver City, New Mexico, won the average for the tie-down roping event. “Ultimately winning is not my goal, but more of a desirable result of not just going to practice to win at the rodeo,” Runyan said. “Instead I have been practicing to make myself better. So, my goal at every rodeo is to go rope every calf and tie them down without any mistakes and that’s what I have been working on.” Ty Ballard, freshman of Fort Sumner, New Mexico, ended up first for the weekend in the saddle bronc riding. Hayley Dalton-Estes, sophomore of Las Vegas, Nevada, finished first in the goat tying event after completing two quick runs. “It felt good to put a couple of solid runs together, especially since I’m riding a different horse this year in the goats,” Dalton-Estes said. Wyatt Jurney, senior of Las Cruces, won the steer wrestling event. Jurney was asked last Saturday about his outlook on rodeo, along with his placing so far in Douglas. “You have to look at life and rodeo the same. If you’re not having fun with rodeo, then there is no reason to do it, so have fun, try your best and do the best that you can, and that’s what it’s all about,” Jurney said. “I won fourth today. I should have ridden my horse better, but we are headed to the short-go and we are blessed. That is all that matters.” The next college rodeo will be held in Las Cruces, Thursday and Friday Sept. 28-29. For more information contact Logan Corbett at lcorbett@nmsu.edu. - 30 - Follow NMSU News on Twitter: http://twitter.com/nmsunews Follow NMSU News on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/NMSUNews

Chaves County North Eddy County Pesticide workshop

pesticide workshop for Eddy County

Leaky Pipes Everywhere! Understanding Connectivity Along River Corridors

In parched North Dakota, cloud-seeding irks some farmers By dave kolpack, associated press FARGO, N.D. — Sep 24, 2017, 11:56 AM ET

In the parched northern Plains, where the worst drought in decades has withered crops and forced some ranchers to begin selling off their herds, a cloud-seeding program aimed at making it rain would seem a strange target for farmer anger. But some North Dakota growers are trying to end a state cloud-seeding program that's been around for generations, believing it may be making the drought worse. Besides anecdotal accounts from decades of farming, they cite satellite images of clouds dissipating after being seeded and statistics over two decades that they say show less rainfall in counties that cloud-seed than surrounding ones that don't. "You watch the planes seed, you will see storms weaken," said Roger Neshem, a 39-year-old farmer in the northern part of the state who is leading an effort to see if Mother Nature can do better on her own. In response to the push, Republican Gov. Doug Burgum has asked the state Water Commission to review the program. Hank Bodner, a cloud-seeding supporter who chairs the state's Atmospheric Resource Board and the Ward County Weather Modification Authority, said opponents have no scientific basis for their doubts. "We've told them that if we're going to have a meeting to discuss this, you need to come with someone who has a PhD to tell us that we're chasing the clouds away," Bodner said. While Hurricanes Harvey and Irma have been battering the Gulf Coast and Southeast with wind and water, the northern Plains have received little more than dust all summer. Almost one-third of Montana is in exceptional drought. Much of North Dakota is in severe to extreme drought, and even the least affected parts of the state are classified as abnormally dry. The federal government has offered emergency loans to help farmers, and the state has requested a federal disaster declaration that could unlock direct disaster payments to farmers and ranchers hit by the drought. Into all this comes cloud-seeding, which involves spraying fine particles of silver iodide and dry ice into a cloud system. It's done by aircraft in North Dakota, but can be done by rockets or by generators on the ground. The silver iodide causes water droplets in the clouds to form ice crystals that become heavier and fall faster, releasing rain and small hailstones — rather than larger stones that could batter crops. More than 50 countries do it in some fashion: ski resorts use it to add precious powder to their slopes; hydroelectric companies seek to bolster spring runoff that powers generation systems; insurance companies support it to cut down on big hailstorms that require big property damage payouts. Some environmental groups have raised questions about the environmental risk of using silver iodide, but the U.S. Public Health Service says cloud-seeding is safe and the North Dakota farmers who oppose their program aren't doing so because of health concerns. It was hail's threat to small crops that spurred North Dakota to launch its program back in the 1950s. The state currently pays about $400,000 toward the program, or about one-third of the cost, and it operates in seven counties. Most studies suggest cloud-seeding produces more rain, but it's not clear to what extent. The state Atmospheric Resource Board points to a Wyoming study from 2005 to 2014 that reported an increase in snowfall of 5 to 15 percent "during ideal seeding conditions." The board also cites a nearly 50-year-old North Dakota project that estimated a potential rainfall increase of 1 inch per growing season. David Delene, a University of North Dakota professor and editor of the Journal of Weather Modification, said it's difficult to assess the effectiveness of cloud-seeding because it's impossible to tell how much rain would have fallen if the clouds hadn't been seeded. "Statistics aren't always as good as we want because every cloud is different," Delene said. "We're getting positive indications the seeding is working. In order for it to be accepted, you need hundreds of cases." Neil Brackin, president of Weather Modification, Inc., the Fargo company that does the aerial seeding, said he doesn't believe cloud-seeding is making the drought worse. He said he welcomes a review of the program. "We have a good story to tell," he said. Neshem, the farmer, isn't convinced. "It should be their job to prove that it works," he said. "They're the ones taking taxpayer money without any proof that it's doing anything. You have 55 years of seeding in Ward County and if you want to have a true scientific experiment, let's do 55 years without it."

Why Does the Colorado River Need to Sue For Rights?

Why Does the Colorado River Need to Sue For Rights? https://sandiegofreepress.org/2017/09/why-does-the-colorado-river-need-to-sue-for-rights/ San Diego Free Press By Will Falk On Tuesday, September 26, the Colorado River will sue the State of Colorado in a first-in-the-nation lawsuit requesting that the United States District Court in Denver recognize the river’s rights of nature. These rights include the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve. To enforce these rights, the Colorado River will also request that the court grant the river “personhood” and standing to sue in American courts…Because our legal system currently defines nature as property, “resourcism” is institutionalized in American law. While climate change worsens, water continues to be polluted, and the collapse of every major ecosystem on the continent intensifies, we must conclude that our system of law fails to protect the natural world and fails to protect the human and nonhuman communities who depend on it. Jensen, while diagnosing widespread ecocide, observes a fundamental psychological principle: “We act according to the way we experience the world. We experience the world according to how we perceive it. We perceive it the way we have been taught.” Jensen quotes a Canadian lumberman who once said, “When I look at trees I see dollar bills.” The lumberman’s words represent the dominant culture’s view of the natural world. Jensen explains the psychology of this objectification, “If, when you look at trees you see dollar bills, you will act a certain way. If, when you look at trees, you see trees you will act a different way. If, when you look at this tree right here you see this tree right here, you will act differently still.” Law shapes our experience of the world. Currently, law teaches that nature is property, an object, or a resource to use. This entrenches a worldview that encourages environmental destruction. In other words, when law teaches us to see the Colorado River as dollar bills, as simple gallons of water, as an abstract percentage to be allocated, it is no wonder that corporations like Nestle can gain the right to run plastic bottling operations that drain anywhere from 250 million to 510 million gallons of Colorado River water per year. The American legal system can take a good step toward protecting us all – human and nonhuman alike – by granting ecosystems like the Colorado River rights and allowing communities to sue on these ecosystems’ behalf. When standing is recognized on behalf of ecosystems themselves, environmental law will reflect a conception of legal “causation” that is more friendly to the natural world than it is to the corporations destroying the natural world. At a time when the effects of technology are outpacing science’s capacity to research these effects, injured individuals and communities often have difficulty proving that corporate actions are the cause of their injuries. When ecosystems, like the Colorado River, are granted the rights to exist, flourish, regenerate, and naturally evolve, the obsolete causation theory, en vogue, will be corrected. ************ American history is haunted by notorious failures to afford rights to those who always deserved them. Americans will forever shudder, for example, at Chief Justice Roger Taney’s words, when the Supreme Court, in 1857, ruled persons of African descent cannot be, nor were never intended to be, citizens under the Constitution in Dred Scott v. Sanford. Justice Taney wrote of African Americans, “They had for more than a century before been regarded as being of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race … and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect…” And, of course, without rights that white, slave-owning men were bound to respect, the horrors of slavery continued. The most hopeful moments in American history, on the other hand, have occurred when the oppressed have demanded and were granted their rights in American courts. Despite centuries of treating African Americans as less than human while defining them as property, our system of law now gives the same rights to African Americans that American citizens have always enjoyed. Once property, African Americans are now persons under the law. Similarly, despite a centuries-old tradition where women were, in the legal sense, owned by men, our system of law now gives the same rights to women that American citizens have always enjoyed. Once property, women are now a person under the law. It’s tempting to describe this history as “inevitable progress” or as “the legal system correcting itself” or with some other congratulatory language. But, this glosses over the violent struggles it took for rights to be won. The truth is, and we see this clearly in Justice Taney’s words, the American legal system resisted justice until change was forced upon it. It took four centuries of genocide and the nation’s bloodiest civil war before our system of law recognized the rights of African Americans. While the courts resisted, African Americans were enslaved, exploited, and killed. Right now, the natural world is struggling violently for its survival. We watch hurricanes, exacerbated by human-induced climate change, rock coastal communities. We choke through wildfires, also exacerbated by human-induced climate change, sweeping across the West. We feel the Colorado River’s thirst as overdraw and drought dries it up. It is the time that American law stop resisting. Our system of law must change to reflect ecological reality. ************ Colorado River between Marble Canyon (Source: Alex Proimos/Flickr/CC-BY-NC-2.0) This is ecological reality: all life depends on clean water, breathable air, healthy soil, a habitable climate, and complex relationships formed by living creatures in natural communities. Water is life and in the arid American Southwest, no natural community is more responsible for the facilitation of life than the Colorado River. Because so much life depends on her, the needs of the Colorado River are primary. Social morality must emerge from a humble understanding of this reality. Law is integral to any society’s morality, so law must emerge from this understanding, too. Human language lacks the complexity to adequately describe the Colorado River and any attempt to account for the sheer amount of life she supports will necessarily be arbitrary. Nevertheless, many creatures of feather, fin, and fur rely on the Colorado River. Iconic, and endangered or threatened, birds like the bald eagle, greater sage grouse, Gunnison sage grouse, peregrine falcon, yellow-billed cuckoo, summer tanager, and southwestern willow flycatcher make their homes in the Colorado River watershed. Fourteen endemic fish species swim the river’s currents including four fish that are now endangered: the humpback chub, Colorado pikeminnow, razorback sucker, and bonytail. Many of the West’s most recognizable mammals depend on the Colorado River for water and to sustain adequate food sources. Gray wolves, grizzly bear, black bear, mountain lions, coyotes, and lynx walk the river’s banks. Elk, mule deer, and bighorn sheep live in her forests. Beavers, river otters, and muskrats live directly in the river’s flow as well as in streams and creeks throughout the Colorado River basin. The Colorado River provides water for close to 40 million people and irrigates nearly 4 million acres of American and Mexican cropland. Agriculture uses the vast majority of the river’s water. In 2012, 78% of the Colorado’s water was used for agriculture alone. 45% of the water is diverted from the Colorado River basin which spells disaster for basin ecosystems. Major cities that rely on these trans-basin diversions include Denver, Los Angeles, San Diego, and Salt Lake City. Despite the Colorado River’s importance to life, she is being destroyed. Before the construction of dams and large-scale diversion, the Colorado flowed 1,450 miles into the Pacific Ocean near Sonora, Mexico. The river’s life story is an epic saga of strength, determination, and the will to deliver her waters to the communities who need them. Across those 1,450 miles, she softened mountainsides, carved through red rock, and braved the deserts who sought to exhaust her. Now, however, the Colorado River suffers under a set of laws, court decrees, and multi-state compacts that are collectively known as the “Law of the River.” The Law of the River allows humans to take more water from the river than actually exists. Granting the river the rights we seek for her would help the courts revise problematic laws. The regulations set forth in the 1922 Colorado River Compact are the most important and, perhaps, the most problematic. Seven states (Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, and Wyoming) are allotted water under the Compact. When the Compact was enacted, the parties assumed that the river’s flow would remain at a reliable 17 million acre-feet of water per year and divided the water using a 15-million acre feet per year standard. But, hydrologists now know 17 million acre-feet represented an unusually high flow and was a mistake. Records show that the Colorado River’s flow was only 9 million acre-feet in 1902, for example. From 2000-2016, the river’s flow only averaged 12.4 million acre-feet per year. So, for the last 16 years, the Compact states have been legally allowed to use water that isn’t there.