Yikes! Stinknet is Here!

Posted on June 14, 2019 by GarryRogers

Stinknet Has Reached Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona

Yesterday (June 14, 2019), I discovered a new invasive weed growing in Humboldt. The plant’s small yellow flowers caught my attention as I walked along Old Black Canyon Highway. Roads are common dispersal routes for invading weeds. First the roadsides, next the yards and hillsides.

Stinknet (Oncosiphon piluliferum), an invasive desert weed.

The first thought produced by Stinknet is that its bright yellow flowers are beautiful. The next thought, however, is that something stinks. Stinknet produces resinous sap that smells like a rotten pineapple. The odor plus the tendency for the plants to grow in tight formation create real impediments to outdoor activity. Even worse, Stinknet is a strong competitor that replaces native plants. But worse still, the plants are highly flammable and encourage destructive wildfires. If Stinknet invades, the quality of natural habitats will decline and many soil organisms, native plants, and native animals will disappear.

Stinknet is spreading across the hot deserts of California and Arizona. I’ve known about the weed since 2008 when Andrew Salywon of the Phoenix Botanical Garden ranked it as one of four weeds posing the greatest threats to Agua Fria National Monument 20mi south of Humboldt. The plant has not been reported above 2300ft in Arizona, and I assumed that at 4500ft, Lonesome Valley winters would be too cold for Stinknet. I did not even include it in the list of possible future weeds in Weeds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. Let’s hope that other dangerous weeds that I did not list will not reach Lonesome Valley.

Stinknet is a member of the Sunflower family. It’s small round yellow flower heads are composed of 100 to 250 flowers packed into a ball no more than 1cm (1/2in) in diameter (Copyright 2019, Garry Rogers).

Treatment: How to Control Stinknet

Though people have carried Stinknet thousands of miles from its South African home, and though the plant has dispersed rapidly along Arizona highways, Stinknet may not survive and spread in Dewey-Humboldt. However, that’s not a safe bet. Like medical doctors, weed professionals practice EDRR (Early Detection Rapid Response). Now’s the time to begin watching for the plant along the highway and town streets. At this early point in Stinknet’s invasion of Dewey-Humboldt, the best control tactic is pulling and bagging the complete plant including the roots. If the plant spreads, control will become much more difficult and expensive. Like any disease, weed invasions are easier to cure when discovered early.

Stinknet (Copyright Max Licher).

Identification

Stinknet (Oncosiphon piluliferum) Daisy Family—ASTERACEAE.
Annual with persistent roots. Small, less than 2ft tall. One to five or more thin stems arising from base, sparse alternate leaves, striking yellow flowers in small tight balls less than 10mm diameter. Stinky.

U.S. Quietly Removes 17 Sites From UN Biosphere Reserve Network

Posted on June 16, 2017 by GarryRogers

GR: Few attacks on nature would be more pointless than this. Is the goal simply to smash anything beautiful and valuable for all people? Of course, somebody out there has a plan to make money on these sites.

Who did this? Trump has probably never heard of the Biosphere Reserves.

Embarrassing that while we remove sites, other countries, including Russia, are adding sites.

The following by Lorraine Chow: “The U.S. has quietly withdrawn 17 sites from the UNESCO World Network of Biosphere Reserves program. As first reported by National Geographic, the sites include a number of national forests, preserves and reserves from Alaska to the Virgin Islands (see list below). There were previously 47 biosphere reserves in the U.S. The move was made during the International Coordinating Council of the Man and the Biosphere Programme meeting in Paris this week. Bulgaria also removed three sites.

“Prior to this year, a total of 18 sites had been removed from the program since 1997, by seven countries,” National Geographic noted.

“It’s not currently clear why the U.S. and Bulgaria asked to remove those sites: requests for comment have not yet been returned. In the past, sites were removed after countries were no longer able to meet the requirements of the program for protecting them.”

“According to the United Nations, biosphere reserves are nominated by national governments and remain under the sovereign jurisdiction of the states where they are located. As detailed by the conservation nonprofit George Wright Society, the biosphere program was launched in the 1970s to establish internationally designated protected areas, help minimize the loss of biological diversity, raise awareness on how cultural diversity and biological diversity affect each other, and promote environmental sustainability. But over the years, the program has been criticized by certain individuals and groups as—per this Infowars post—a United Nations “land grab” of American landmarks.

“The George Wright Society writes: “A large, almost bewildering variety of charges have been alleged about biosphere reserves. Many of these charges revolve around a basic fear and distrust of the United Nations. This category of objections includes such claims as the United Nations is poised to invade the United States, confiscate American land, impose some kind of ‘new world order’ on citizens here, and so forth. There is no truth whatsoever to these charges.”

The U.S. removed the following sites from the biosphere reserve program:

Aleutian Islands National Wildlife Refuge – US Fish & Wildlife Service
Beaver Creek Experimental Watershed – US Forest Service

The Beaver Creek site is not far from Coldwater Farm in central Arizona (photo by Northern Arizona University).

More….–Lorraine Chow (U.S. Quietly Removes 17 Sites From UN Biosphere Reserve Network.)

Yellow-billed Cuckoos at Coldwater Farm, Arizona

Posted on June 15, 2017 by GarryRogers

Yellow-billed Cuckoos in the Willows Today

Yellow-billed Cuckoo by mdf

Yellow-billed Cuckoos (Coccyzus americanus) were calling from perches in the willows over my yard this morning. “Yellow-billed Cuckoos are slender, long-tailed birds that manage to stay well hidden in deciduous woodlands. They usually sit stock still, even hunching their shoulders to conceal their crisp white underparts, as they hunt for large caterpillars. Bold white spots on the tail’s underside are often the most visible feature on a shaded perch. Fortunately, their drawn-out, knocking call is very distinctive. Yellow-billed Cuckoos are fairly common in the East but have become rare in the West in the last half-century.” —All About Birds, Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

I am delighted the birds are present. Ornithologists from the Arizona Game and Fish Department will census birds here this Saturday. Cuckoos along with the Southwest Willow Flycatchers are the principal reason for the visit. Both species are on the U. S. Endangered Species List. Felipe Guerrero saw a fledgling Cuckoo last summer, a sure sign of nesting and more permanent use of our habitat. However, nesting then might have been a single occurrence. Fingers crossed that Saturday’s census discovers nests for both species.

Call For Population Papers: Spring 2018

Posted on May 6, 2017 by GarryRogers

GR: The European Journal of Literature, Culture, and Environment recently issued a call for papers to appear in a special section of the Journal. I’ve reproduced the call here because of its useful summary of the recent history (since 1970) of attitudes toward overpopulation. Joe Bish of the Population Media Center brought the call to my attention. Bish’s weekly essay is essential reading. This week he points out that those who argue population is not a problem “. . . completely fail to acknowledge the existence of any other creature on the planet.” Let me illustrate the population problem and its impact on nature with a few words about population trends in Arizona, the U. S. state where I live.

Arizona urban growth.

From 1970 to 2016, Arizona’s resident population grew from 1.78 million to 7.0 million. Much of the growth is due to immigrants from colder states in the upper midwest and the crowded east and west coast states of the U. S. The total growth rate from this simple formula, Rate = births + immigrants – deaths / current population has decline from 3% in 1970 to1.5% in 2016. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the rate has been fairly stable for since 2010. If Arizona’s population continues to grow at this rate, the population will double by 2063.

In Arizona and other regions to the north and south, people have replaced portions of the wild vegetation habitat with cities, roads, and farms. Much of the undeveloped landscape has been grazed by cows and cleared by loggers. The result has been a decline in wildlife.

During the 44-year period from (1970-2014), the research by the World Wildlife Fund and others found that the total number of wild animals on Earth had declined by more than half. According to the Arizona Game and Fish Department, the same is true for Arizona.

Only the narrow “growth-at-all-costs” philosophy of corporations (including cities and towns) in Arizona and the U. S. can explain the continued disregard for the effect of the human population on nature. Here are a few more thoughts on the consequences of continued population growth.

Call for Population Papers

Population growth is accelerating in China despite the almost insoluable pollution costs.

“Overpopulation has become the ‘third rail’ of contemporary environmentalism: no major organization wants to touch the issue anymore. While it had been one of the driving concerns of early environmentalism up until the 1970s, exemplified by such seminal texts as Fairfield Osborn’s Our Plundered Planet (1948), Paul Ehrlich’s The Population Bomb (1968), and the Club of Rome’s The Limits of Growth (1972), concern with population control has since dropped off the list of popular environmentalist causes. One of the primary reasons for this is undoubtedly that the discourse of overpopulation was found to be freighted with unsavory political associations: in many cases, concern over population seemed like a threadbare cover for racist and classist resentments, or just plain misanthropy, as when James Lovelock famously diagnosed the planet with a case of “disseminated primatemia,” likening humans to pathogenic microbes. Concern with overpopulation was impugned as the expression of a neocolonialist mindset, one that implicitly dehumanized the peoples whose population was said to be in need of control. Environmental problems, it was argued, were not an issue of overpopulation in the Third World, but rather of overconsumption in the First. Famine and poverty were not effects of resource scarcity, but of a failure to distribute properly what resources were available.

“However, recent years have seen a quiet resurgence of Neo-Malthusian thinking, and of the apocalyptic scenarios with which it has been so often aligned, that makes it imperative to revisit these debates. Since the turn of the century, a growing choir of political and military analysts has been prophesying an imminent era of resource wars. Anxiety over economic competition from migrants has fueled nativist movements around the globe. Stephen Emmott’s incendiary pamphlet 10 Billion (2013) closes with the response of one of his colleagues to the question how to best prepare for life on an overpopulated, ecologically degraded planet: “Teach my son how to use a gun.” Such developments seem to bear out the dire warnings of historian Timothy Snyder: in Black Earth (2015), he argues that just as Malthusian fears were an important ideological driver of Nazi Germany’s genocidal warfare in Eastern Europe, they might once again be used to justify the abrogation of basic human rights. Yet all of this only makes it more pressing to find responsible ways of addressing the issue. Even if one does not consider population growth as a primary cause of ecological degradation, there is hardly any environmental problem that is not compounded and aggravated by it. While it is true that overconsumption in the “global North,” where populations are shrinking, must bear most of the blame for climate change and many other large-scale problems, it is also clear that rapidly expanding human numbers in poor countries produce problems of their own. Often, traditional methods of resource extraction and land cultivation which were sustainable while the human population was small have become ecologically destructive simply because more people are now practicing them.

“The aim of this special section is not only to re-assess the long-standing debate on overpopulation in light of these developments, but more importantly to examine the cluster of tropes, narratives, and images which have become attached to this idea, and which we propose to designate as the “Malthusian Imagination.” Even while the issue of overpopulation disappeared from mainstream environmentalist discourse, it continued to flourish in the realms of literature and popular culture. The “mad environmentalist” hatching a secret plan to rid the world of surplus population became something of a stock character (e.g. in Lionel Shriver’s Game Control, 1994; Terry Gilliam’s 12 Monkeys, 1995; Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, 2003; Dan Brown’s Inferno, 2013; or Dennis Kelly’s TV series Utopia, 2013-14). Many of these texts and films engage in complex balancing acts, acknowledging the legitimacy of the concern even while they disavow the violent means by which it is pursued.

“The questions we would like contributors to address include, but are not limited to, the following:

“How do particular works of literature, film, or visual art deal with the representational challenges posed by population growth? How do different representational strategies relate to the ethical and political stance these works take? How do they dramatize a Malthusian “lifeboat ethics” (Hardin 1974), and to what extent do they articulate alternative positions?
“How can a concern over population growth be reconciled with an emancipatory politics? How do gender equality and female education figure within the discourse on overpopulation, or the pro-natalist views advocated by many of the major religions? How do recent concerns over the “refugee crisis” intersect with the issue?
“What theoretical framework should we adopt in order to conceptualize the problem of population growth? How can, for example, theories of biopolitics, postcolonial theory, critical feminism, queer theory, actor network theory, object-oriented ontology, or social systems theory help us to get a better grasp of the issue? –Editors (Continue reading: CFP: Spring 2018).

“Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona” Available Now

Posted on November 10, 2016 by GarryRogers

Book: Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona

“Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona” is now available. Click here for the book description.

Purchase from:

Independent bookstores with books in stock
- Gifts and Games, Humboldt Station, Humboldt, AZ, (928) 227-2775
- Other bookstores can order the book from their distributor.
Internet

The birds

This section could be titled “Some of The Birds.” The birds below are a sample of the 127 birds I’ve seen in Dewey-Humboldt. Note: The photos are copyrighted.

American Robin (Turdus migratorius) With their bright early morning songs and tolerance for human neighbors, Robins are familiar to everyone. They love moist ground and lawns without pesticides. There you will often see the classic tug-of-war between a stretching earthworm and a straining bird. Robins like berries and gather around pyracantha and other shrubs in fall and winter. Description: Eight to eleven inches long, male and female similar, but male breast is deeper red. Robins have average life spans of six years. Nest: Female with help from male builds the nest in spring and lays four blue eggs two or three times during the year. Conservation: Easily poisoned by heavy pesticide use, and preyed upon by cats, hawks, and large snakes, Robins remain numerous and safe under current conditions. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com. Photo: en:User:Mdf/CCSA).

Barn Owl (Tyto alba) Barn Owls are the most widely distributed of all owl species. They hunt small rodents, and never take anything as large as a house cat or dog. Barn Owls range from 10″ to 18″ in height. They can live for 25 years, but because of human impacts and natural predators, they rarely live more than two. If you have a Barn Owl living nearby, you have probably heard its “shreee” sound that’s nothing like the hoots of the Great Horned Owls or the toots of the Northern Pygmy Owls that we often hear in Dewey-Humboldt. Nest: Large tree cavity, barn loft, or house attic. Farmers often place nest boxes around their fields. Conservation: Cats and other owls prey upon barn Owls, and pesticides in the tissues of their prey poison them. Some farmers have stopped using pesticides, but most haven’t. The owls are endangered in seven stats, but not yet in Arizona. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com. Photo: Female by Tony Hisgett).

Black-headed Grosbeak (Pheucticus melanocephalus) Black-headed Grosbeaks aren’t as large as Robins, but they are big enough to have trouble perching on bird feeders. Young birds flutter and flap as they learn to use the feeder. Grosbeaks eat berries and insects, but their large beaks are especially effective with seeds. The birds arrive in spring, build nests, and stay for the summer. They prefer a combination of large deciduous trees and lower shrubs. Their song is a rich warble similar to a robin’s but softer, sweeter, and faster. Nest: Female builds an open, loose nest in a shrub or tree and lays 2-5 eggs. Young birds leave the nest after 12-14 days but can’t fly for two weeks. They hang out on nearby branches and parents feed them. Conservation: Cats and hawks prey upon Grosbeaks, and pesticides in the tissues of their prey poison them. Wildlife biologists do not consider them endangered. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com. Photo: Male by GR.)

Bridled Titmouse (Baeolophus wollweberi) ”Tit” is Old English for something small. Bridled Titmice may be small, but they are outstanding in other ways. They have unique facial markings, and they are among the most loquacious and the most human-tolerant of all the birds. They will trustingly take seed from your hand then fly to a nearby branch where they may surprise you with their jackhammer-like pecking that sends hull fragments flying. Titmice do not migrate though they wander about a bit in winter. They travel in small flocks that may include other bird species. Nest: Titmice lay four to eight white unmarked eggs in tree cavities and nest boxes. They appear to have mystery helpers at their nest that we have not identified. The birds can live more than six years. Conservation: Wildlife biologists consider the Bridled Titmouse safe now, but because of habitat loss and pesticides, the species is of possible long-term concern. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com. Photo by Dominic Sherony.)

Cedar Waxwing (Bombycilla cedrorum) Cedar Waxwings are medium-sized with very smooth feathers. They have a crest that often droops over the back of the head. The wings are broad and pointed, like a starling’s. The short tail is square-tipped. These birds are uncommon in Dewey-Humboldt. Though they usually form large flocks, I’ve only seen two groups of three birds. Waxwings pick berries while perching in berry-laden shrubs or trees or while hovering in mid-air. A line of waxwings perched on a branch sometimes pass a berry from bill to bill, until one of them swallows it. They also cruise over water hunting insects, like abdominous swallows. Nest: Waxwings lay three to five pale gray to bluish gray finely speckled eggs in loose nests built in trees. Conservation: Wildlife biologists consider the Cedar Waxwing safe in some areas and vulnerable to extinction in others. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com.)

Common Raven (Corvus corax) Ravens are smart. They create and use simple tools, they mimic human words, and they call one another to a newly discovered food source. Acrobatic fliers, Ravens can roll, somersault, and fly upside down. I’ve seen a video of a Raven using a large can lid as a sled, repeatedly carrying the lid in its beak to the ridge of a snowy roof, and sliding down to the eve fluttering its wings to say balanced. A friend with a Raven family pet told me that their mischief can be wearying. Wild Ravens have lived more than 22 years. Nest: Females do most of the work building the nest. They begin with large sticks and construct a base up to five feet across and two feet high. In a small interior cup, they lay three to seven green or blue mottled eggs. Conservation: Ravens adapt well to human impacts and may be one of the species that survives the sixth mass extinction. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers.com. Photo: Peter Wallack)

Dark-eyed Junco (Junco hyemalis) Juncos do not migrate, but in the fall, they often drift out of their mountain homes down to nearby valleys. They are especially common in D-H during fall and winter months. These small songbirds have black to light-gray hoods. Males tend to be darker and grayer, females tend to be lighter and browner. All have white bellies and white outer tail feathers that form a flickering V shape when they fly. Juncos eat seeds, insects, and fruit. They prefer to eat on the ground, so sprinkle a few seeds for them when you fill the feeder. Wild birds can live more than 11 years. Nest: Juncos nest in forested mountains. They build their grass and twig nests on the ground and occasionally in a tree. Conservation: Though Juncos are still numerous, the American Breeding Bird Survey reports that Junco populations declined by about 50% from 1966 to 2015. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers .com. Photo: Dave Menke)

Gambel’s Quail (Callipepla gambelii) Gambel’s Quail live in D-H’s chaparral-covered hills. They form coveys of 12 or more birds that roost and nest in shrub thickets. Once, a family of mom, dad, and a line of seven chicks dashed across the road in front of my car. I stopped, and just as the last of the chicks made it to safety, another chick entered the road far behind the others. Dad popped onto road, ran back, and pecked the slowpoke’s fluffy bottom, speeding its dash to catch up. The first covey to move into my place near the center of town came in 2014. The birds roost in a woodpile I made with dead shrub and tree branches. Quail are too plump for standard feeder perches, so be sure to scatter a few seeds for them when you fill the feeder. Quail lives are short, usually less than 4 years. Nest: Grass and twigs on the ground in shrub thickets. Conservation: Gambel’s Quail numbers fluctuate along with winter rain and spring plant growth. As our global warming-imposed drought continues, the D-H quail population will shrink. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers .com. Photo: GR)

Vermilion Flycatcher (Pyrocephalus rubinus) The flying insects this brilliant sky predator takes must be near-sighted and insensitive to color. Other flycatchers are of subdued color, but not this little fellow. Despite brilliant plumage, however, the male Vermilion Flycatcher is not overconfident. He courts his chosen mate by hovering and singing to her high in the air and by offering her butterflies and other brilliant insects. Nest: The birds build loose nests of grass and twigs in trees. The male brings food to the female while she incubates two to four white or creamy eggs with bold dark blotches and small lighter spots. . Conservation: Vermilion Flycatchers are declining in Arizona and other parts of their range due to human destruction of the moist habitats they prefer. The birds are still abundant at many sites and are not an immediate conservation concern. However, without our attention and care, they will continue to decline. (Birds of Dewey-Humboldt, Arizona. GarryRogers .com. Photo by Charles J. Sharp)

Click on a photo for larger image, caption, and photographer.

AZGFD.gov Game and Fish officers euthanize bear that clawed camper

Posted on June 3, 2016 by GarryRogers

GR: As the human population grows and expands, encounters with wildlife increase. We kill any animals that injure a human–usually no questions asked. We also kill wildlife as we build homes and roads and destroy necessary wildlife habitat. Research indicates that already half of all animals are gone. Eventually, there will only be humans, their domestic animals, and a small number of other species.

Do we care enough about other creatures to protect their habitat and reduce our population? None of the zoning regulations I’ve seen preserve habitat just because wild animals need it. Certainly there is no effective effort to control our population. So, is it truly inevitable that humans doom most wild animals to extinction?

PHOENIX — “Arizona Game and Fish Department officers last night trapped and euthanized a black bear that had scratched and injured a camper earlier in the day in a dispersed camping area (not a developed campground) near Cherry Creek in Young, Ariz.

“The subadult (1-1/2 to 2-1/2 year-old) [young] male bear was caught in a culvert trap set by a highly trained team of wildlife officers. They confirmed this was the bear involved in the incident based on descriptions from other campers and because it had a unique hind paw pad that matched tracks found at the scene. The bear was euthanized [killed] per department policy because it attacked a human and was deemed a threat to public safety.

“Officers noted there were unsecured food sources and garbage in the area, and a field necropsy revealed garbage in the bear’s stomach contents. Arizona Game and Fish reminds everyone that leaving food and trash around may be luring an animal to its death.” Read more: AZGFD.gov Game and Fish officers euthanize bear that clawed camper.

The photo is a Pixabay Free Illustration.

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Sierra Club Releases 2016 Report Card for Arizona Legislature and Governor | Sierra Club

Posted on May 31, 2016 by GarryRogers

Phoenix, AZ – The 52nd Legislature’s focus was on limiting safeguards for much of what makes Arizona special. Legislators sought to further weaken water laws, promoted unaccountable special taxing districts to accommodate unsustainable developments, clouded the future of rooftop solar, and passed bills to hinder protection of public lands via national monuments and via the use of impacts fees for regional parks and open space.

“The Arizona Legislature is determined to allow harm to what makes Arizona special – unique and threatened rivers such as the San Pedro, endangered Mexican gray wolves, public lands around Grand Canyon,” said Sandy Bahr, Chapter Director for Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon (Arizona) Chapter. “Rather than taking advantage of our 300-plus days of sunshine and growing solar industry and the jobs its provides, legislators passed a bill to hinder installations and even considered proposed constitutional amendments that would have likely destroyed the rooftop solar industry in Arizona.”

Source: Sierra Club Releases 2016 Report Card for Arizona Legislature and Governor | Sierra Club

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How You Can Help Protect Arizona Wildlife

Posted on November 16, 2015 by GarryRogers

Support Arizona Wildlife

Each year, more than 100,000 people apply for a license to kill one or more of Arizona’s wild animals. The Arizona Game and Fish Department (AZGFD) encourages wildlife killing because roughly one quarter of the Department’s budget comes from hunting license sales. The Department also supports killing to reduce conflicts with the harvesters, the farmers, ranchers, and others that complain about wildlife (click to read more about cattle).

At the same time it encourages killing wild animals, AZGFD works to protect wild animals. Though this sounds crazy, it is a common practice for governments to sell some of their wildlife species for funds to use to protect other species. Of course, we all know that, as of today, protection has failed and more than half of all vertebrates on the Earth has disappeared since 1970.

I find it difficult to believe that there are more people in Arizona that want to kill animals than people that want to protect them. There are many programs that aim to protect wildlife. There is even one by AZGFD called “I Support Wildlife.” Here’s what the Department says about the program.

“I Support Wildlife™ bridges the widening gap between wildlife facing new threats and a sharp increase in the cost of conservation. A one-year membership lets you explore Arizona’s unique natural heritage while taking action to preserve it for the future.”

Arizona Wildlife Problems

“Arizona is home to more than 800 wildlife species, from Gambel’s quail to bighorn sheep. But their natural habitats — which stretch across 50 million acres of public land — are increasingly at risk. A rapidly changing world presents a host of threats to wildlife: Expanding cities, competing uses for open space and increasing demands for a limited water supply all play a role in this.”

“It is the job of the Arizona Game and Fish Department to protect, restore and preserve these species and the places where they live. But no Arizona tax dollars go to support this mission. Instead, the sales of hunting and fishing licenses are the primary source of funding. However, these funds are not keeping pace with the cost of wildlife management, leaving our native animals vulnerable at a critical time.”

You may have noticed that cattle grazing isn’t mentioned directly. That doesn’t mean that AZGFD is unaware of the enormous impact of ranching. It’s just that our political system leaves the Department powerless to protest.

Support AZGFD

Having financial support from those of us wanting to protect, not kill, the animals will help AZGFD with inventories and analysis of more species. It’s possible that our donations will be used to promote more hunting license sales, but I don’t believe that. Anyway, let’s give it a try. Click the I-Support-Wildlife image, sign up, pay your $25, and let’s see if AZGFD’s promotion of hunting licenses declines and its protection programs and reports on wildlife conditions increase.

Saudi Arabia is out of water so it grows hay in Arizona

Posted on November 3, 2015 by GarryRogers

Outside of Phoenix, in the scorching Arizona desert, sits a farm that Saudi Arabia’s largest dairy uses to make hay for cows back home.

(Image: NPR)

“That dairy company, named Almarai, bought the farm last year and has planted thousands of acres of groundwater-guzzling alfalfa to make that hay. Saudi Arabia can’t grow its own hay anymore because those crops drained its own ancient aquifer.
“The laws were put in place in the ’70s, and kudos to Arizona — they were really one of the first states to put in groundwater laws. But the laws were really designed for local or domestic farming. The idea that another country would come and essentially export your water via crops just wasn’t really around 30, 40 years ago. And so the laws that are in place are really inadequate for dealing with this new trend.

“This is occurring in a part of Arizona that is unregulated for groundwater. So there are no limits on how much water they can pump.” From: www.dailykos.com

GR: Not sure how long Arizona can afford to give water to the Middle East. Perhaps this will continue until 1) the depth to water becomes so great, the Saudis will find desalinization of water for livestock feed is cheaper than pumping the water and shipping the hay, or 2), the ruling Saudis complete their move to the U. S. and simply abandon the poor people of their country.

(Thanks to DT Lange for placing the link to this story on Robert Scribbler’s site.)