In short, the Farm Services Agency is accepting public comments on the environmental impact of two possible policy alternatives for the Conservation Reserve Program, an important mechanism for protection of wildlife habitat and biodiversity on working farms. At the same time that biofuels are threatening to reduce CRP acreage via economic competition, FSA is considering (see Alternative 2 below) reducing the CRP acreage enrollment cap from 32 million acres (the cap authorized in the 2008 Farm Bill) to 24 million acres, a full 25% reduction. [...]
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I can’t tell you how excited I was when I found out that Seabrooke Leckie of The Marvelous in Nature and the North American Moths had started a blog carnival about moths. Mothing is all the rage these days, and websites like the North American Moth Photographer’s Group, Bugguide, and Butterflies and Moths [...] Another July has come and gone, but not all of the fireworks are over. The striking pink display of spotted knapweed, Centaurea stoebe ssp. micranthos, is still going strong in rangelands and old fields and along highways and railroad grades across the country. Native to Europe, spotted knapweed was introduced accidentally to North America in [...] I’m headed to the Catskills to enjoy the woods and the river for a few days. Last year I did a lot of botanizing, mothing, and bee photography. Hopefully this year will be even better!
Fishing in the Catskills Renewable. Sustainable. Green. All of these buzzwords make us feel good about our progress toward mainstreaming alternative energy sources. We need to power an increasingly energy-hungry world in the face of global climate change, and we all know that fossil fuels are not the solution. What often gets lost in the excitement surrounding “green” energy, though, is [...] |
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Copyright © 2010 Matthew Sarver - All Rights Reserved |
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