CapitalPress.com
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March 24, 2017
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O ur V iew
Wolf management idea makes sense
I
f one follows the wolf issue long
enough, occasionally a nugget
of common sense appears.
Such is the case with a recent
suggestion the folks at the
Washington State Department of
Fish and wildlife offered. Speaking
during a conference call with
the state Wolf Advisory Group,
WDFW wolf policy coordinator
Donny Martorello offered this idea:
that dead livestock be considered
“qualifying” victims of wolves if
the time, circumstance and location
of their deaths parallel other
confirmed depredations.
In other words, if a carcass is
found near those of other wolf
victims but scavengers have
destroyed the evidence directly
linking the attack to wolves, state
wildlife managers could label it a
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife managers are offering an idea they
believe would help them manage wolves more effectively.
“qualifying” attack.
Previously, such cases were
considered “probable” attacks
and were not counted against a
wolfpack. Under the Washington
wolf plan, managers can kill only
wolves that are responsible for four
confirmed depredations within a
year.
While this may seem to be a
bureaucratic splitting of hairs, it’s
critically important for managing
wolves. Under the new idea, if
wolves are found to be responsible
for four depredations, including
any that are “qualifying,”
managers could take steps to get
rid of the wolves.
A study found wolfpacks
that are thinned soon after
attacking cattle or sheep get the
message that attacking livestock
is unacceptable. By including
qualifying attacks, managers could
act quicker to thin the ranks of
wolves instead of waiting weeks
or months for another confirmed
depredation.
If managers thin a wolfpack
after a long period of time, the
wolves have no idea whether it is
linked to a depredation, according
to the study.
The idea is to manage wolves
in a way that is both effective and
assures ranchers and others that
each step is effective.
That in itself is good reason
for the department to adopt such a
common sense rule.
It’s also something wolf
managers in other states would do
well to consider.
The state Wolf Advisory Group
will discuss the idea during a
March 29-30 meeting in Olympia.
We urge the group to take a close
look at it, as common sense can
be a rare commodity when dealing
with wolves.
How farmers can
help reduce famine
O ur V iew
By PHILIPPA SOLOMON
For the Capital Press
O
Courtesy of Janicki Bioenergy
The Janicki Omniprocessor prototype in Sedro-Woolley, Wash.
New technology a game
changer for dairy industry
W
ashington legislators last
week were asked to invest
in revolutionary technology
that could distill cow manure into
dry fertilizer and clean water, making
polluted runoff from dairies a
problem of the past.
To quote two legislators who heard
the presentation, “Wow.” This could
well be the innovation that takes
care of huge physical and regulatory
problems for the dairy industry.
Peter Janicki, CEO of Janicki
Bioenergy in Sedro-Woolley, Wash.,
has worked with the Bill & Melinda
Gates Foundation to convert sewage
into drinking water in developing
countries. That technology works.
The prototype of the Janicki
Omni Processor was put in operation
in Dakar, Senegal, in 2015. It is
designed to process 4,000 tons of
fecal waste a year. There’s a YouTube
video that shows Bill Gates drinking
water from the machine extracted
minutes earlier from sewage sludge.
Now, there are differences between
a human waste stream and what’s
produced by the business end of a
dairy cow. But Janicki says the basic
technology can be adapted to the
purpose.
“It makes the dairy farm a zero-
discharge dairy,” he said. “You take
the water coming out of the back
end of the cow and feed it back into
the front end of the cow. So there is
nothing that ever leaves the barn.”
Janicki estimated that with $2
million he could build and install
equipment to showcase purifying
the manure from a 1,000-cow dairy.
He predicted the cost would quickly
drop to as low as $500,000 as the
technology is developed.
It sounds like a game changer
to us. Whether Washington
taxpayers will or should provide
the development funding is open to
debate. But if they don’t, someone
will, eventually. Janicki’s machine is
a huge opportunity that someone will
exploit.
Our larger concern is that
regulators give the technology a fair
examination.
This technology is good news
for the commercial dairy industry,
and bad news for special interests
that have been trying to shut down
large-scale animal agriculture on
the grounds that it’s bad for the
environment.
Taking waste management issues
off the table makes that a harder case
to argue.
Readers’ views
GMO tests
were influenced
A recent letter about GMO
tests left a few important
things out. First, land grant
universities were always
fully funded. Then inter-
estingly, decisions were
made to not fully fund, and
the chemical and seed cor-
porations who would bene-
fit stepped in immediately
to “support” the universi-
ties. Conveniently, a win-
win for them!
How frustrating when
the funding was a drop in
the bucket to fund them
compared to the ever
growing demands of the
military. There is plenty
of money to kill but not to
feed people.
Secondly, recently com-
pared studies between in-
dependent versus corporate
funded research showed
corporate
“scientific”
funded results were almost
always in favor of corpora-
tions, whereas independent
results were substantial-
ly just the opposite. The
famous French Seralini
study showed mass tumors,
liver and kidney toxicity,
and hormonal disturbanc-
es caused by GMO maize
fed to rats. Leaked emails
now show Monsanto had
the study retracted by the
editor, after the appoint-
ment of a former Monsanto
employer ... to the editorial
board.
There are literally hun-
dreds of studies that bring
into question the safety of
GMOs on humans and an-
imals. Instead of meetings
to have open discussions,
name calling and scare tac-
tics occur from the corpo-
rations who are frightened
of loss of profits. The EPA
accepts corporations’ own
safety studies for approval
to the general population.
Kind of like the fox pro-
tecting the hen house, but
on a far grander scale, just
follow the money. Anyone
who opposes gets dragged
through the mud, name
called, fired and vilified.
The power of these large
chemical and seed corpora-
tions are indeed influenc-
ing the results of studies
worldwide. To pretend oth-
erwise is sheer nonsense
and negligent thinking.
Carole Landt
Reardan, Wash.
ne would have to have
a heart of stone not to
be moved by the im-
age of the starving child that
accompanied the editorial
“The Face of Starvation” in
the Capital Press (March 3,
2017). I share the editorial
board’s conviction that we
have an obligation to help the
millions of people facing star-
vation and provide food aid
immediately.
In 1965, economist Lester R.
Brown worked with President
Lyndon Johnson and organized
the largest movement of grain
between two countries in histo-
ry. They saved India from fam-
ine. Brown’s memoir, “Break-
ing New Ground,” details the
race against time and the will-
power and ingenuity that it took
to accomplish this feat.
How we help requires not
only engagement of our hearts,
but using our intelligence and
the best information available
to guide our actions. We are not
only dealing with natural caus-
es; as you correctly point out,
the current famines are the re-
sult of war, drought and political
corruption. The warming of our
world also increases the dura-
tion and frequency of droughts
and flooding, both of which de-
stroy crops.
How can farmers in a
wealthy nation like ours deal
with and prevent famine around
the world?
Opening our granaries and
shipping food to stricken areas
is not the singular ideal response
to famines. Often the time re-
quired to send food halfway
round the world means that it
arrives too late, and local farm-
ers frequently suffer severe eco-
nomic losses from competition
with lower priced or free grain
shipped from the U.S., losses
which are particularly harmful if
shipments arrive at harvest time.
In the short term, aid agen-
cies, such as the widely respect-
ed Oxfam, recommend sending
cash assistance distributed di-
rectly to individuals. Oxfam’s
humanitarian director, Nigel
Timmins says, “If we act now
with a massive injection of aid,
backed with diplomatic clout
and driven by the imperative
to save lives, we can prevent a
catastrophic loss of life. With-
out an urgent influx of cash, the
humanitarian system will not
be able to cope and many more
people will die.” Government
aid helps them buy food from
areas close by without distorting
the local food and commodity
markets, which results in local
farmers losing their land. For
more information, please see
http://bit.ly/2mCX5OI.
In the long term we also
need to support the spread of
improved cultivation techniques
such as the system of rice in-
tensification (SRI) and to re-
duce and manage the risks from
warming of the global climate. It
is the latter aspect of the security
of the world food supply that I
Guest
comment
Philippa Solomon
am addressing in this discussion.
To put the brakes on glob-
al warming, we must reduce
the amount of carbon dioxide
(CO2) and other greenhouse
gases in the atmosphere. We can
do this by (1) reducing our use
of fossil fuels and (2) removing
CO2 from the atmosphere. If we
are to adequately control CO2
levels we will need to use both
approaches simultaneously.
The Citizens’ Climate Lob-
by’s plan seeks to reduce our
use of fossil fuels via a carbon
fee and dividend. This, econo-
mists agree, will speed up our
transition from fossil fuels to
renewable energy sources over
the next 50 years (see www.citi-
zensclimatelobby.org).
Farmers can reduce the
amount of greenhouse gases
produced, for example, by re-
ducing the use of chemical fer-
tilizers and pesticides derived
from fossil fuels. We can also
reduce the amount of CO2 in the
atmosphere by increasing the
amount of organic matter in soil,
which increases fertility and ca-
pacity to retain water as well as
helping to sequester carbon.
Research on ways to increase
soil health and soil carbon con-
tent is increasing and there are
good examples of farms using
these methods. What we lack
are ways to speed up the appli-
cation of this research to work-
ing farms, which often requires
trial and error due to the wide
variation in crops, climate, soils
and cultivation methods.
Is there a way to encourage
regenerative agriculture so that
soil is built up by increasing
the amount of organic matter
(carbon), thus increasing the
microbial content and the capac-
ity to store water? How can we
support farmers willing to work
on improving soil health and
cutting the CO2 burden in our
atmosphere? Can farmers take
up this challenge and engage
not only in discussion of storing
more carbon in the soil, but in
transitioning to a lower-till, low-
er-carbon future for agriculture?
Oxfam agrees with you. It
states: “The world stands on
the brink of an unprecedented
four famines in 2017 due to a
catastrophic failure of the global
community to uphold its obliga-
tions to the world’s most vulner-
able people.”
As you note, these people
will become refugees and it is
our moral duty to act now, as
“Every minute, and every life,
counts.” Thank you.
Philippa Solomon taught
chemistry at Rutgers Univer-
sity and worked as a freelance
editor of college science texts.
She is a certified Rutgers New
Jersey Environmental Stew-
ard, volunteered at the Cook
College (Rutgers University)
organic farm and is currently a
volunteer with Citizens Climate
Lobby.