I realized I hadn't updated this spreadsheet for 2019, and I should do that before the 2020 harvest report comes out. I am going to also make some maps up on this topic.
Along an 18-mile strip of land between the Canadian province of Alberta and its neighbor Saskatchewan, the rat patrol keeps guard. An eight-person team, armed with poison and shotguns, hunts daily for any sign of the rodent invaders.
The Alberta rat patrol checks more than 3,000 farms a year, but it rarely sees an actual rat. Alberta has 4.3 million people, 255,000 square miles, and no rats—bar the stray handful that make it into the killing zone each year. Ever since 1950, a sternly enforced program of exclusion and extermination has kept the province rat-free. Nowhere else in the world comes close; the only other rat-free areas are isolated islands such as the remote British territory of South Georgia.
Public support and education have been key to Alberta’s success. Locals use hotlines (310-RATS or 310-ARM) to report any sign of rodents, though false alarms are common. School programs educate kids about the telltale signs of the invaders. Keeping pet rats is banned and can earn you a fine of almost $4,000.
Abraham, 32, is the first full-time warden of color in the Pennsylvania Game Commission’s 115-year history. His path to conservation law enforcement was an unlikely one — he once planned to become a doctor — and it began in the unlikeliest place: Yonkers, N.Y. Abraham, of Indian and West Indian descent — his father was born in India, his mother in Guyana — grew up there with his family. Wildlife in Yonkers consisted of pigeons and squirrels.
1/16/21
Web player: https://podcastaddict.com/episode/117843019
Episode: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/hunttalk/21011420-20HT20Podcast20-20AZ202021.mp3?dest-id=285647
In this episode of Leupold’s Hunt Talk Radio, Randy shares a mic with seasonal guests Jim Heffelfinger and Johnathan O’Dell. As scientists and biologists, they manage wildlife at the mercy of Mother Nature. Topics covered include drought impacts, disease impacts on big and small game, hunting the Pleistocene, nutrition cycles, waterfowl diseases, too many quail, season setting, man made water sources, predation in drought years, desert adaptations, rabbit and hares, and many more topics about hunting and wildlife in the desert.
The preppers call them bug out bags or go bags while the Federal Emergency Management Agency calls them emergency supplies kit and American Red Cross a Survival Kit. What they ultimately are is a set of core supplies one can grab and put in their car and truck and get out of the way of danger quickly — and sustain themselves and their families — turning the time of emergency.
I don’t per se have a full bug out bag, although I am getting closer to having enough duplicate equipment stored in my truck for camping that if I were to need to leave in a hurry, I could gather up a few clothes and supplies and be good to spend several weeks in the woods, traveling, or doing what I need to do. Probably the thing I most lack in my truck in food and clothing, although both of those things I probably could gather up and be on the road in 10-15 minutes in an actual emergency. I would also need to grab the propane tank which I don’t store in my truck for obvious reasons.
I was kind of glad last summer that I was far out of town during the disorder and riots in City of Albany. While much overplayed in the media, and living safely in the suburbs, I really didn’t want anything to do with it. I was quite happy to be sitting in the Adirondacks next to a fire, sipping a cold beer, listening to the news briefly on my radio before switching it off onto another podcast. It’s nice knowing that I know a lot of places, some very off the beaten track should things get really bad in my neighborhood.
Do I think there is much to worry about over the coming week with the Inauguration and civil disorder? I really doubt it, despite the politically motivated exaggerations and Cassandras everywhere. Despite a lot of rhetoric, all the evidence suggests the system still works, and where there might be minor flare ups from time to time, things are pretty quiet and it’s well oiled machine that does what it does every day. We will have a peaceful change to Biden as our president and rhetoric will be just that. But it never hurts to be prepared.
Things do happen, and they’re not always widely predicted. Last summer, a tanker train full of styrene lost it’s cool and was damaged and started to leak out, prompting an evacuation near the plastics plant some 5 miles away. If the whole tank had leaked out and the wind had shifted, maybe I would have had to leave home quickly. I did monitor the story but decided no further action was required because it was too far away. But it was a reminder the danger is never all that far away.
Over 180 miles of off-road routes were crafted, linking 400 miles of previously unconnected trailway which include activities outside of hiking and biking, such as overnight camping sites and access to cultural attractions