Open topic-What do you want to talk about?

Because people want to write about something where the post may closed or whatever. I’m putting up this comment as a post, and removing from the Climate Rally story.

mikarooni wrote
April 15th, 2007 at 8:52 pm e
I didn’t see a way to post a comment on post 1013, “Fencing, range riders, guard animals show some promise in safeguarding livestock;” but, my experience has been very, very good in raising Texas (actually they’re hybridized, feral, naturalized Spanish cattle that the Texans found and sold, almost to extinction) longhorn cattle in wolf and lion country. I only have black bears and not grizzlies; but, the longhorns have a completely different behavior pattern than northern European breeds. First, longhorns have about a third of the muscle fat of northern European breeds, To achieve all that fat, the northern European breeds were selected to be sedentary and they stand around in a stupor waiting for predators to move in on them. Longhorns keep moving and grazing more evenly, like bison. Second, longhorns are much more athletic and thus harder for a predator to take on. Third, when you approach a northern European herd that has cows with new calves, the herd, including the mother cows, scatters. The mothers may leave reluctantly; but, they do leave and leave the calves to fend for themselves. Do the same thing to a longhorn herd and the mothers will bawl and call the herd to move in on you, which they will do, surrounding the calf and you. The closer that you get ot the calf the closer the herd moves in. Some of my older herd cows are nearly six feet tip to tip and, when they snap their heads from side to side, the horn tips really get moving at rapier speeds. Finally, most of America now has a weight problem, with morbid obesity at record levels. Yes, without the fat to boil the meat in, you do have to eat your steak rare; but, a rare steak is a good trade for one third the fat, actually more usable protein, and far less need to persecute predators.

So whatever anyone wants to write about. Add comments below.

post 1020

Satellite Technologies Detect Uplift in the Yellowstone Caldera

Most people who read this blog know that the Yellowstone Caldera rises and falls, sometimes as much as several feet, due to movements of the magma not far below.

I have linked to a number of newspaper articles about this.

Here is a technical paper from the USGS that is fairly easy to read. Satellite Technologies Detect Uplift in the Yellowstone Caldera
post 1015

Fencing, range riders, guard animals show some promise in safeguarding livestock

Story by Mike Stark in the Billings Gazette. The same story in the Jackson Hole Star Tribune is “Ranchers get creative with Wolves,” but as I reported earlier the idea came from Montana FWP, Wildlife Services, and a USU graduate student who are doing this as a semi-controlled experiment. Non-traditional livestock operations will be tried too. It was not a rancher initiative.

It’s always good to see the misnamed federal agency, Wildlife Services helping with something that isn’t lethal.

– – —

Look at the graph on livestock losses to wolves in Montana (from the Gazette article). Notice there is not a linear relationship between the number of wolves and the number of livestock killed. Earlier there were many predictions, including the USFWS, that there would be a losses in direct proportion to the number of wolves (a linear relationship). There were even predictions that the curve on the graph would rise as the number of wolves increased.

Graph of wolf depredations by year (and lethal control).

post 1013