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Summer 2013
In This Issue
Reflections
UC Cooperative Extension Helps Facilitate Collaboration in Public Forest Management
National Hydrilla Integrated Pest Management Guide-UF/IFAS Needs Your Input
Our WHEP Experience
ANREP Members Learn About Small-Scale and Community Forestry in Japan
A Word from Your Editor & Walking Our Talk
Reflections
Sandy Smith
Greetings!
 

The year is drawing to a close.  Autumn is here and the shorter days and cooler weather always cause me to reflect and be thankful.  I am thankful for my family and the many blessings I have.  I'm also thankful to be part of Extension educational efforts that makes this world a better place.  From where I look out, ANREP looms strategic in strengthening Extension natural resources programs nationwide; I see a strong and healthy organization.  Positive signs within ANREP include:

  • a committed membership,
  • an Executive Committee filled with devotion and energy,
  • a dedication to fiscal integrity,
  • a renewed focus on professional development and educational opportunities,
  • a competitive ballot for the upcoming 2014 elections,
  • a belief in leadership development,
  • a solid commitment to the Joint Council of Extension Professionals (JCEP),
  • a restructured Awards Program,
  • a new and improved web site,
  • a new electronic format for our quarterly newsletter, and
  • a new strategic planning initiative.

Despite these many positive signs, we can still be better, and we have areas of need and opportunity.  A few of these include:

  • a need to grow our membership, even in these times of reduction,
  • an opportunity to encourage more state and multi-state association chapters,
  • an opportunity to increase organizational diversity by working more closely with our 1890, tribal, and 1994 colleagues.

As this year comes to a close, you have the commitment of the ANREP Executive Committee to work on and care for the things that are important to you and our profession.  ANREP (now starting our 19th year!) has a great future ahead of it.  Let's be confident about that and never forget to be thankful for the opportunities we have to make a positive difference in the lives of many people and the natural resources we all depend upon and cherish.

Galaxy IV Highlights

Three highlights of the recent Galaxy IV Conference for ANREP Members included the 2013 Awards Banquet (shown above), the Strategic Planning Session during the ANREP Open Forum Business Meeting (shown below) and the Communicating Climate Change and Sustainability Issues Super Session.  All told, 58 ANREP members participated in the conference staged in Pittsburgh, PA.  Great times were had by all.

 

The results for the 2014 ANREP Elections are in...  but first I want to extend a special thanks to each individual that stood up and said, 'YES, I am willing to run and serve if elected.'  This is not always an easy thing to do (to put yourself up for an election), but it is so essential to the flourishing of the democratic process.  We had a competitive election this year, and the races were tight.  Importantly, we had 175 individuals cast their votes.  This was a solid turnout.  Eleanor Burkett, as Past President, organized this year's elections.  We owe her a debt of gratitude for her outstanding service to the organization AND for her many years of selfless work on our behalf.  Thank you Eleanor.

 

Here is the incoming slate of officers for the 2014 National ANREP Executive Committee (a.k.a. 'The Board"):

  • Secretary:  Dana Rizzo, Penn State University, Westmoreland County Cooperative Extension, def18@psu.edu
  • Western Region Representative:  Peter Warren, University of Arizona, Pima County Cooperative Extension,  plwarren@cals.arizona.edu 

Please join me in congratulating these individuals and thanking them for their willingness to serve.

 


Sincerely,

 

Sanford "Sandy" Smith

President, 2013

 

 

UC Cooperative Extension Helps Facilitate Collaboration in Public Forest Management

 

Congress established the Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP), in 2009, to help expand collaborative landscape partnerships on public lands.  Goals included promoting an all-lands approach to forest management through both collaborative solutions and landscape-scale operations in close coordination with other landowners http://www.fs.fed.us/restoration/CFLRP/.

 

These are important goals; however, one might ask how best to really undertake this noble effort.  ColLABORation between agencies and the public is truly LABOR and requires a set of specialized skills and resources.  Democracy is slow.  It takes large amounts of time and effort - on already full schedules - to travel the path of mutual learning and understanding required to come to a decision in a collaborative way.  It also requires the expertise necessary to structure the process, meetings, and project in a way that allows for true collaboration.  Often, land managers and stakeholders have not been trained in these skills.

 

To help promote effective collaboration, the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) offered a series of trainings based on experience gained in the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project (SNAMP),  http://snamp.cnr.berkley.edu/.  UCCE spent six years collaborating with federal, state, local agencies, and stakeholders trying to find and refine the best ways to communicate and involve the public in the management of Sierra national forests.

 

Workshops with 12 hours of instruction, using a train-the-trainer style curriculum, were offered to develop collaboration skills.  These skills included developing project goals and objectives, understanding institutional constraints, active listening, stages of discussion, building agreements, measuring success, learning styles and group dynamics, dealing with difficult behaviors, and reducing conflict.  Trainees have come from federal agencies (US Forest Service PSW Research, USGS, NRCS), state agencies (CalFire, Cal Department of Fish & Wildlife, Sierra Nevada Conservancy), universities (UC Berkeley, UC Merced, UC Office of the President), local government (Resource Conservation Districts, watershed groups, RC&D, counties, and irrigation districts), and local organizations/non-profits.

 

Evaluation feedback has been very positive.  Participants overwhelmingly agreed that the workshops were timely, relevant, and dealt with issues they were currently experiencing, and that they provided practical and useful knowledge and skills that were applicable to their jobs.  UCCE plans to publish a curriculum book in the fall and continue to host additional workshops.  For additional information, please contact Anne Lombardo at amlombardo@ucanr.edu.

 

Submitted by Anne Lombardo

Written by Susie Kocher

Natural Resource Advisor

University of California - Davis

 

 

National Hydrilla Integrated Pest Management Guide-UF/IFAS Needs Your Input

 

The more input we can get from stakeholders the better.  Here is how you can help:  Get in touch with us and let us know what you would like to see included in a comprehensive hydrilla integrated pest management (IPM) guide.  Talk to your colleagues and clients.  Anybody who visits freshwater bodies for any reason is a stakeholder when it comes to management of hydrilla and other invasive aquatic plants.  Ask people for their opinion and help us assemble stakeholder feedback.  Forward responses to:  vlietze@ufl.edu.
 
You are too busy to develop questions?  Simply download a brief questionnaire from our website:  http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/hydrilla.

 

The invasive aquatic plant hydrilla (Hydrilla verticillata) arrived in Florida through the aquarium trade in the early 1950s.  Its accidental release and the absence of natural enemies, which regulate hydrilla in its native range, enabled this aggressive submersed plant to spread to nearly every freshwater body in the state.  By the early 1990s, hydrilla populations occupied more than 140,000 acres of Florida's lakes and rivers.  Heavy reliance on herbicides to control these infestations has led to increasing incidences of herbicide-resistant biotypes.

 

Is hydrilla a problem in your state?  Chances are high, because hydrilla has spread to at least 25 states in the US (Fig. 1).  When left unmanaged, this aquatic weed causes damaging infestations that choke out native vegetation, clog flood control structures, impede waterway navigation and recreational usage, and are - as you can imagine - costly to manage.

 
Figure 1:  Records of Hydrilla verticillata infestations in the United States, documented by the United States Geological Survey in August 2011.
 

Research scientists and Extension specialists at the University of Florida's Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (UF/IFAS), the Florida A&M University (FAMU), and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) have been tackling the issue of herbicide-resistant hydrilla.  Our mission:  Finding cost-effective and environmentally friendly control strategies to reduce management costs and ultimately create more favorable recreational areas on lakes and rivers that have become almost unusable because of dense hydrilla infestations.

  

For more detailed information, visit our project website: http://entomology.ifas.ufl.edu/hydrilla.

 

The central hypothesis of the UF/IFAS hydrilla IPM project involves integrating herbivory by the naturalized hydrilla tip miner, Cricotopus lebetis Sublette (Diptera: Chironomidae), with the indigenous fungal pathogen Mycoleptodiscus terrestris and/or low doses of the acetolactate synthase (ALS) inhibiting herbicide imazamox as a viable strategy for long-term sustainable management of hydrilla.

  

You can learn more about the tip miner (Fig. 2) by watching a short narrated learning lesson on our website at:  http://bit.ly/GHYlto or on the eXtension campus at:  http://bit.ly/1gEBH2M

 

Figure 2:  Larva of the hydrilla tip miner inside a damaged shoot tip of hydrilla.  Photo credit:  Dana Denson, Reedy Creek Improvement District

As part of our extension efforts at UF/IFAS, we have been developing educational platforms to help resource managers understand how these new control strategies can fit into an IPM plan for hydrilla.  During 2014, we will deliver train-the-trainer seminars to equip our nation's Extension specialists, especially natural resource agents, with a tool kit that enables them to convey important information on hydrilla IPM to applicators and aquatic plant managers.  A major tool in this kit will be a National Hydrilla IPM Guide.

  

We look forward to hearing from you and to collaborating with you.  Stay tuned by subscribing to our quarterly UF/IFAS Hydrilla Newsletter at: http://bit.ly/1g2v7Fu

 

Thank you from the UF/IFAS Hydrilla IPM Project Extension Team.

Joan P. Bradshaw (jpbradsh@ufl.edu)

James P. Cuda (jcuda@ufl.edu)

Jennifer L. Gillett-Kaufman (gillett@ufl.edu)

Ken T. Gioeli (ktgioeli@ufl.edu)

Verena-Ulrike Lietze (vlietze@ufl.edu

 

 

Submitted by Ken T. Gioeli

Natural Resource Extension Agent

University of Florida/IFAS



Our WHEP Experience

 

Learning how to manage wildlife for any region is challenging.  Even if you think you know the plants and animals, every area is different.  That is what we were thinking as we traveled to Trafalgar, Indiana to participate in the National 4-H Wildlife Habitat Education Program (WHEP) Invitational, July 21-24, 2013.

WHEP is a challenging contest.  You must learn about and understand different wildlife species, habitat management practices, and how to write management plans.  When you prepare for a national event, there are new species to learn, different ecoregions to study, and new management practices to consider - all for an area you have never seen.  That provided a great challenge and experience for all of us.  And it was exciting!

Our first full day in Traflagar was spent learning about contest procedures and meeting new people.  We were familiar with the procedures already, but the highlight of the day was the "Share Fair" where we got to meet other teams and swap items from their home states.  We took Moon Pies and Goo Goo clusters from Tennessee!

Our second day included educational sessions on hardwood forests and silviculture, salamander and snake research, and how different forest management practices affect different bird species at the Morgan-Monroe State Forest.  It was really neat to actually walk through the managed forests and see the wildlife.  We don't get to do that in school!  Later in the day were fun wildlife activities, including a geocaching scavenger hunt, shooting a tranquilizer dart gun, tracking animals with telemetry equipment, and a demonstration on electrofishing.  The best part was competing with other teams while learning.

The next day was the contest.  We were nervous, but excited.  The national contest is conducted in one day and includes three individual events and two team events.  The morning of the contest, we had to identify 20 wildlife species from specimens and calls, apply our knowledge of wildlife management concepts and terms, and judge a field site as habitat for eight different wildlife species.  We felt like we did well in the individual events, but we knew the biggest part of the contest followed.  We then went to a different field site where we were provided with a written scenario.  From the scenario, and using what we have learned over the past couple years, we had two hours to write our management plan.  We discussed every angle we could think of and finally came up with our plan for the property.  We felt confident with what we came up with.

After lunch, we were back at the FFA Center in Trefalgar.  Oral reasons were next.  We each stood separately before a panel of judges to discuss our plan and answer questions about the property and species involved.  Providing oral reasons is a little nerve-racking, but we felt good about our oral reasons.  The judges were all very nice.

Finally, that evening it was time for the awards banquet and to find out how we did.  Perhaps the hardest part of any contest is sitting through supper and waiting on the awards to be announced.  We were so nervous we could hardly eat!  Finally it was time for the results.  As the team results were announced, Tennessee was not called for 5th through 3rd, so we thought we had a shot at winning.  When Texas was announced in 2nd place, we all looked at each other and held our breath.  "And the winning team is...TENNESSEE!"  We were so excited!  What great fun!  Each of us called our family and friends, who were anxiously waiting to hear how we did.  We were so happy.

We have all spent at least a few years in the 4-H Wildlife Judging Program in Tennessee.  We really enjoy getting outside and learning about natural resources.  Our Extension leaders and coaches are second to none!  And we realize it takes a lot of time, commitment, and money to implement such a program.  We sincerely thank the Association of Natural Resource Extension Professionals for supporting the National 4-H Wildlife Habitat Education Program.  We believe it was money well spent!  Thank you!

Ashley Williams, Susana Clouse, Sydney Wieczorek, and Ben Cody; members of the Putnam County, TN WHEP team.

 Figure 1:  2013 National 4-H WHEP Invitational participants

 

Submitted by  Craig A. Harper

Professor - Extension Wildlife Specialist

University of Tennessee



ANREP Members Learn About Small-Scale and Community Forestry in Japan

 

In September, a joint conference of the small-scale and community forestry groups of the International Union of Forest Research Organizations (IUFRO) was held in Fukuoka, Japan.  Four ANREP members attended the conference:  David Kittredge (University of Massachusetts), David McGill (West Virginia University), Nicole Strong (Oregon State University), and Kevin Zobrist (Washington State University).  Each of these ANREP members presented the results of their research on working with family forest owners, with Nicole Strong having the additional honor of being an invited keynote speaker for her work with the Women Owning Woodlands Network.

The IUFRO small-scale forestry conferences provide opportunities for Extension foresters to share ideas with their international colleagues.  This international exchange of ideas allows participants to draw upon expertise and innovation from outside their home countries.  The issues facing small-scale forest owners - and the Extension educators who work with them - are remarkably consistent across cultural and geographical boundaries.  Nicole Strong noted these strong similarities:  "I was really struck by how many challenges and issues we have in common, whether we work with communities in rural Indonesia, Japan, Kenya, or the United States; and it really touched me to spend a week learning from and sharing experiences with researchers and educators from all around the world, with a similar passion and dedication to work with and improve forest stewardship and the livelihoods of those who depend on them."

In addition to a variety of oral and poster presentations on all aspects of community and small-scale forestry around the world, the conference included several tours.  One of the highlights was visiting a family tree farm where a husband and wife team worked together to yard trees out of the woods using a small, nimble forwarder with a 50-meter, one-ton winch.  These landowners also grew wasabi in the understory as a marketable non-timber forest product.  The hard work and innovation impressed David McGill, who remarked:  "While the culture and environment in southern Japan are very different than we find in the broad-leaved woods of the Appalachians, it was rewarding to see the innovations, hard work, and care for the land demonstrated by the woodland owners we met during our field tours.  Meeting the woodland owner who, with the help of his spouse, harvested timber and grew wasabi in the understory, allowed me to see similarities with some of our own hard-working woodland stewards."

Figure 1:  A husband and wife team use a small forwarder to yard logs from a commercial thinning operation.


Other tour highlights included visits to a local mill that specialized in traditional Japanese windows and doors, a wood drying facility powered by geothermal steam, an active thinning operation, a 250-year-old plantation, and a log auction yard.  Participants also got to experience Japanese culture.  Tour stops included traditional Japanese restaurants, a tea museum, and an overnight stay at a ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn) with an onsen, which is a hot spring-fed bathhouse.

Figure 2:  A 250-yr old Japanese cedar plantation.


Seeing another country through the eyes of its forestry community is a unique way to learn, experience culture, see things that the average tourist would not, and make personal connections through a shared passion for forest stewardship.  David Kittredge summed up the experience this way:  "Professional international travel has been enriching, stimulating, and rewarding.  Nothing puts your own work and issues into crystal clear perspective better than when you travel to a foreign country, meet people like you who do similar things around the world, and see firsthand the ways natural resources are conserved under different social and cultural conditions.  You'll bring home with you stories, pictures, techniques, and good ideas to apply to and enliven your Extension effort."

Figure 3:  From right to left, ANREP members Kevin Zobrist (WSU), David McGill (WVU), David Kittredge (UMass), and Nicole Strong (OSU), along with Dr. Noriko Sato (organizing committee) and two local officials.
 
Submitted by Kevin W. Zobrist

Regional Extension Specialist, Forest Stewardship

Washington State University

 

 

A Word from Your Editor & Walking Our Talk
Diana paddling

To all those who contributed articles to this newsletter: Thank you!  For those of you who didn't, don't despair.  Articles for the winter issue can be submitted any time up to January 15th.

 

Submitted articles should be roughly 600 words or less in .doc or .docx format.  Photos are greatly desired with caption and photo credit!  This is your chance to let your peers know what you have been doing.  As editor, I always find it interesting to read the various submissions.  We do a lot with and for our clients.

 

Speaking of what we do... the NNSLE group recently completed the Walking Our Talk report on Extension personnel sustainable practices.  The report was based on the survey completed in 2010 by 633 Extension folk across the US.  It is available on the eXtension Climate Change & Sustainable Living wiki.  The motivations and impediments sections make interesting reading.  Feel free to check out both the report and the wiki site.  We are trying to get the report into the hands of the Extension Directors in all 50 states.

Sincerely,
 
ANREP Communications Chair
North Carolina State University
 
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