Hospital Employees Give Up PERS

 Night Vision

Editor's Note: For those readers who follow Brian Cain's column Night Vision in the Modoc Indepdent News, here's an update from Brian about the Oroinids meteor shower that is coming this Friday and Saturday and a link from the LA Times.

The moon will be a little bit of a problem, but it doesn't rise till a few hours after midnight. If you start looking around midnight you might get lucky. The shower produces up to 20 meteors per hour.

-- Brian Cain

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2011/10/meteor-shower-alert-2011-orionids-are-on-their-way.html

 Corner Post

by Missy Merrill Davies

Editor's Note: This column originally appeared in the October, 2011 issue of the Modoc Independent News.

 I am continuously amazed at the changing vernacular in agriculture. Methods which producers have been practicing for decades are being labeled differently depending on the trend. Similar to the recent push for organic and natural products which may have been viewed as lazy, cheap, or rawhiding (least amount of inputs possible) in the 1970’s; but is now a marketing opportunity.

       
The most recent phrase is “ecosystem services.” A combination of sustainable practices, land stewardship, and plain, old common sense created this buzz phrase. Ecosystem services are currently being evaluated to determine their value.

Proper livestock grazing goes hand-in-hand with many of the methods used to provide ecosystem services. Managed livestock have the ability to positively manipulate range lands with less fossil fuels than other methods employed such as fire or mowing. If and when a value is placed on these services it may be a boon to ranchers in the area.

       
Modoc County is rife with opportunity to provide or continue providing ecosystem services, many of which offer green instead of gray (think cement) possibilities for end users. These services include wildlife habitat, water quality, and carbon.

      
The benefits of grazing to wildlife have been documented time and time again. Cattle and sheep are both ruminants, meaning they have the ability to break down cellulose for uses beyond fiber in the diet. Antelope, deer, and elk are also ruminants but prefer browse (shrubs) species over grass especially in late summer when grasses tend to become wolfy or decadent. Through grazing livestock wolfy vegetation is reduced allowing wildlife more access to green material, especially important for small birds and mammals.

     
The Pit River is the head of the Sacramento Watershed, supplying water to many in the Central Valley. Again, properly managed livestock grazing can be manipulated to improve the water quality and reduce the need of gray structures such as water treatment facilities. This is possible through buffer strips, upland biodiversity improvements, and riparian pastures.

     
Carbon sequestration is the latest in environmental verbiage. It is the act of taking carbon dioxide, considered a greenhouse gas, from the air and storing the carbon. Plants are great at carbon sequestration. However, for many plant species, some form of disturbance is necessary to improve plant and stand vigor.

      
Proper grazing is one of those disturbances. Plants use carbon dioxide to produce carbohydrates for structure within the plant, in turn; animals eat those plants thus turning it into something humans can use. Additionally, animals trample some plants, returning the carbon into the soil as organic matter.

     
Conversely, it has been suggested if practices such as grazing and even crop production are abandoned the soil becomes a net producer of greenhouse gases due to burning and rotting and thus releasing carbon back into the atmosphere.

      
The environmental services provided by livestock producers are continually becoming more apparent to some, especially now that it has a name. Proving once again, ranchers are the original environmentalists.