Ohio State, with CFAES’s involvement, has started the new Center for Human-Animal Interactions Research and Education — CHAIRE for short. Read the story.
wildlife
A Bonasa umbellus in a pear tree
Ohio has “partridges,” once had partridges and has pear trees. It’s a tale of quirky regional names, of wildlife management and habitat loss, and of the challenges of sustainable fruit production. Read more under the “1st day” heading. (Photo: iStock.)
Watch: Bats’ big benefits to people, especially to farming
In the 2011 video above, CFAES’s Marne Titchenell talks about bats, the spreading white nose syndrome disease that was and is killing them, and why losing our bats would be a bad thing indeed. (Hint: They gobble tons of farm pests.) She was quoted on the topic in an Oct. 30 CFAES press release and will speak on the topic during the Nov. 8 annual conference of the Ohio Community Wildlife Cooperative at Ohio State.
Hello, kitty. Let’s talk
Conservation biologist Pete Marra, author of Cat Wars: The Devastating Consequences of a Cuddly Killer (2016, Princeton University Press), speaks twice at Ohio State next week: at the Tuesday, Nov. 7, breakfast program by the Environmental Professionals Network (EPN), and at the Wednesday, Nov. 8, annual conference of the Ohio Community Wildlife Cooperative.
No treat for bats, it’s ‘one of the worst wildlife diseases of the past century’
This Halloween, give a thought to Ohio’s bats, which are facing something truly scary.
Continue reading No treat for bats, it’s ‘one of the worst wildlife diseases of the past century’
Sssselebrities to follow on Twitter
http://vimeo.com/182386219
Follow Skeate, Arwen, Hermione and Mr. Darcy, among others — radiotagged timber rattlesnakes living in southeast Ohio woods — on the @TimberTweets Twitter feed by CFAES’s Peterman Lab. Lab staff are tracking the secretive snakes, an Ohio endangered species, to see how forest management affects them. Venomous but shy, with a taste for eating small rodents (including ones spreading Lyme disease), timber rattlers help ecosystems and, quietly, people.
Lab head Bill Peterman, assistant professor in CFAES’s School of Environment and Natural Resources, says, “I’ve had a passion for amphibians and reptiles since I was a kid catching frogs and snakes.” He’s in the video above.
Check out Gwynne’s green goings-on
A short wagon ride away from Farm Science Review’s (Sept. 19-21) rows of gleaming new tractors, its grounds full of hundreds of exhibitors, its streets packed by thousands of visitors, you’ll see another side of farming …
5 ways Gwynne’s growing greener (and you can, too)
Look for new players like riprap, blazing star and willow fascines in Ohio State’s Gwynne Conservation Area.
The nearly 70-acre facility, part of CFAES’s Farm Science Review site at the Molly Caren Agricultural Center in London, has started two new projects — one to diversify its prairie plantings; the other, to protect the banks of Deer Creek, which flows through the grounds. Continue reading 5 ways Gwynne’s growing greener (and you can, too)
Today: Trade your plastic bags for a reusable one
Today (Wednesday) from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.: Bring five plastic bags with you to Ohio State’s Ohio Union in Columbus and trade them for a reusable bag. The bags collected will be recycled. It’s part of the university’s Time for Change Week.
Buckeye bird
Birders are reporting a loggerhead shrike, a predatory songbird considered endangered in Ohio, at CFAES’s Waterman Agricultural and Natural Resources Laboratory in Columbus. Lab website here. Loggerhead lowdown here.