Loose Ends

A wildlife enhancement workshop is scheduled from 8 a.m to 5 p.m. April 29 at Fort McKavett's Camp Sol Mayer. Camp Sol Mayer is located between highway 190 and Fort McKavett on FM 864.

The program has been approved for three Continuing Education Units in the "General" category. Topics to be discussed include brush sculpting, Brush Busters, wildlife marketing, deer production, quail/turkey production, and nature-based tourism.

Pre-registration by April 27 is $15 per person. Registration at the door is $20 per person. The registration fee covers the noon meal.

Further information is available from Scott Edmonson, Schleicher County Extension agent, at (915) 853-2132, or Terry Milican, Menard County Extension agent, at (915) 396-4787.

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The Area II Conservation Awards Banquet is set for May 6 at 7 p.m. at St. Ambrose Catholic Church Parish Hall in Wall.

The 1999 Area II first place winners of Texas Conservation Awards are: Outstanding Conservation District, Middle Concho No. 234, Joe Dean Weatherby, chairman, Big Lake; Resident Conservation Rancher, Bill Gassiot, San Angelo; Resident Conservation Farmer, Monroe Dierschke Jr., Wall; Absentee Conservation Rancher, Ann Holt, Blanco; Water Quality Management Plan, Larry Powell, Eola; Essay Contest, Nicholas Brenneman, LBJ High School, Johnson City; Poster Contest, Jordyn Granzin, Rocksprings Elementary School, Rockprings; Business/Professional Individual, John Ward, General Manager, Bexar-Medina-Atascosa Water Improvement District, Natalia; Conservation Teacher, Evelyn Weinheimer, Frdericksburg; Wildlife Conservationist, R.W. (Dick) Winters Jr., Brady; Conservation Homemaker, Debbie Rios, Hondo.

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Environmental permitting legislation under consideration by the Texas Legilature would streamline a variety of permitting processes at the Texas Natural Resource Conservation Commission. H.B. 1283 gives TNRCC discretion to issue general permits for numerous facilities including feedlots; H.B. 801 improves the contested-case hearing process for individual permits; and S.B. 766 creates a voluntary permitting process for so-called "grandfathered" facilities constructed prior to the creation of state air permits.

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The U.S. Meat Export Federation expects meat exports to increase. "Beef and pork products have proved to be imprevious to the recession" faced by Pacific Rim countries, notes MEF president and CEO Phil Seng. The tight times have made Japanese consumers cost-conscious, however, Seng cautions.

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"Endangered Species" manipulations by eastern eco-activists are coming back to haunt them, or at least to poke fun at them. U.S. Rep. Helen Chenowith, R-Idaho, has long chafed about environmental regulations that Easterners have imposed on the West, and now she's dishing a little back out.

Chenowith has come to the aid of "Bucky the Beaver," one of a family of the tree-gnawing rodents recently captured by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service after they chewed down four Washington D.C. cherry trees. Using her congressional power, Chenowith called for listing the beaver as an "endangered" species.

"Out West," she explained, "it is the policy of federal agencies to remove the people rather than the animals when there is conflict between people and wildlife. I just think that we need to bring equality in the way that we handle threatened and endangered species."

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The U.S. Forest Service is charged with protecting natural resources, but now a Forest Service ranger has been convicted of deliberately setting 34 forest fires. Tamara Meredith faces up to five years in prison for setting the fires, apparently as a way to increase work opportunities for the agency — her own overtime pay, in particular.

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