- Author: Cheryl Reynolds
As summer is quickly coming to a close, and most kids have already headed back to school or will be returning in the next couple of weeks, integrated pest management will be an expected and important tool for the upcoming school year.
Classrooms, playgrounds, and athletic fields that were quiet during the summer months will once again be filled with the sounds of learning and playing. Landscape and pest management professionals have been taking advantage of the slow summer months preparing the grounds and facilities for the upcoming year. While at one time this may have meant heavy applications of pesticide to rid the facilities of pest problems, today schools are healthier...
- Author: Jennifer Rindahl
The Water Quality, Supply, and Infrastructure Improvement Act of 2014 (Proposition 1) is set to appear on the November 2014 ballot. If approved by voters, it would “authorize $7.12 billion in general obligation bonds for state water supply infrastructure projects, such as public water system improvements, surface and groundwater storage, drinking water protection, water recycling and advanced water treatment technology, water supply management and conveyance, wastewater treatment, drought relief, emergency water supplies, and ecosystem and watershed protection and restoration.”
Per the full text of the proposition, the distribution of funds would be approximately as follows:
$810 million for...
- Author: Melissa G. Womack
Help the California Department of Fish and Wildlife celebrate their first annual California Invasive Species Action Week, Aug. 2 – 10, and protect California's diverse landscapes. Hundreds of invasive plants and animals have already established themselves in California's landscapes and populations are quickly expanding each year.
Invasive species are organisms that are not native to an environment. Once they are introduced, they establish themselves quickly and spread - causing harm to the environment. Invasive species threaten our waters, native plants, animals, agriculture, economy and popular recreational sites.
Prevention is the most effective...
- Author: Alison L Kent
It's May in Hopland, and the sparse winter rains are nothing more than a memory. Sharpened shears at the ready, Stephany Wilkes, an information science Ph.D. who works for Mozilla, walks a 150-pound sheep into the shearing area. Under the watchful eye of expert instructors, she flips the sheep on its side and starts methodically removing the fleece, smoothing the skin with her left hand, clippers in her right, moving the sheep with her legs.
“It's like a dance,” she says. “Once you have it right (and I mean, really have it), suddenly the whole method makes sense. You expend much less energy. You're controlling the sheep with your legs, which leaves your hands free, one to hold the shearing hand piece...
- Author: Brook Gamble
Stewardship: \ˈstü-ərd-ˌship: the activity or job of protecting and being responsible for something.
In 1862 the Morrill Act was passed to support and maintain colleges of agriculture and mechanical arts, including a later provision that included the donation of public land. As one of the first land grant Universities, the University of California was well positioned to manage agricultural extension across the state as part of the Smith Lever Act of 1915. Today, many people think of California agriculture as strawberries, broccoli and rice; but it is livestock and forestry that dominated California working landscapes in those early days.
Research and extension efforts to improve forestry...