- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
Robert Timm, director of UC Hopland Research & Extension Center and UC Cooperative Extension wildlife specialist, retired July 1, wrapping up a 27-year career with the University of California.
Timm's career has focused on managing wildlife damage and providing science-based advice for people to solve conflicts between humans and wildlife, which increasingly arise as both human and wildlife populations expand. One of his research subjects was finding better ways to prevent coyotes from preying on sheep.
He compiled, edited and published the reference book “Prevention and Control of Wildlife Damage”...
- Author: Suanne Klahorst
Inspired by an uptick of diet-related diseases and emerging antibiotic-resistant microbes, doctors are overdue when they insist that hospitals practice their prescriptions for healthy diets and healthier agricultural practices. Anything less would be a violation of their ethic to “first, do no harm.
However, transitioning hospital food service to what they would like their patients to eat has been a two-year struggle. Many institutions do not systematically provide higher budgets for food procurement just because their doctors insist. Organic or antibiotic-free foods are consistently more costly and seldom available in the form that foodservice facilities have grown dependent on: prewashed, precut and...
- Author: Pamela Kan-Rice
How do people really feel about cattle grazing on public lands? According to a study of comments on social media, park users don't feel as strongly as one might surmise from attending a public hearing about cattle grazing in parks.
To get a more complete picture of public perceptions of cattle grazing, Sheila Barry, University of California Cooperative Extension advisor in the San Francisco Bay Area, analyzed photos and comments in the photo-sharing website Flickr.
Her study, published in the February 2014 issue of Environmental Management, showed that Flickr can...
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
Central Coast farmers can cut back irrigation water by 50 percent over the course of the lettuce or broccoli growing season and still harvest the same yield using an online decision tool developed by UC Cooperative Extension.
Michael Cahn, UCCE advisor in Monterey County, developed CropManage and is now conducting field trials comparing crop water use and nitrogen use under standard growing practices and the recommendations made by the web-based tool. So far, research results are in for lettuce and broccoli, showing dramatic reductions in both water and fertilizer use when the computer aids decisionmaking. Current crops supported by CropManage are romaine and iceberg lettuce,...
- Author: Katherine E. Kerlin
Can't live with them, can't live without them — at least not at first when it comes to the relationship between some invasive and endangered species.
Efforts to eradicate invasive species increasingly occur side by side with programs focused on recovery of endangered ones. But what should resource managers do when the eradication of an invasive species threatens an endangered species?
In a recent study published in the journal Science, researchers at the UC Davis examine that conundrum now taking place in the San Francisco Bay. The California...