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24 November 2002 - 23:54

society meeting two

Just started rambling, and this ended up longer than I expected. Sorry.

The second day of last week's meetings started a little slower, with only 33 people attending at first. The rest trickled in as the morning wore on, I presume in relation to their bed times.

Since I was there at the start, that should tell you how late I partied (just after midnight).

The morning session was on the uses of prescribed fire. The session moderator started off by waxing nostagic about the good ol' days, when you could just go out and light whatever you wanted to burn.

"I remember my first prescribed fire, when I was eight years old."

And his first fire ecology workshop, where they handed each attendee a box of matches.

The expert on aspen regeneration following fire was unable to attend, no reason given, so he gave his presentation by speaker phone. The first "professional" presentation I've ever attended that did that. With him talking on the phone as he ran through his powerpoint on his computer, and we clicked along on ours.

Actually went quite well, once they got the phone problems corrected. To test the connection, he did counts to ten.

How boring.

I cannot believe he resisted the urge to say "Can you hear me now?"

But all through his presentation, I had this image of some unshaven guy sitting in his pajama bottoms in his bedroom, coffee at hand, as he gave his "professional" presentation.

When one of the biologists from our outfit got up to discuss their fire research, he went through great detail of the study design for the benefit of the university students attending.

And announced "in case any of you game wardens came this morning, we'll go slow."

Do they give out door prizes at your meetings? As an incentive for people to actually attend the presentations?

They do at ours.

Took a little too long on one break, coming in to only hear the digits "408" being called.

Announced that I might have that number, as I hustled to my seat, coffee in hand.

A comment which was greeted by derision by almost the entire room, demanding another draw, but the moderator held off.

I had 408.

And got my choice of a FNAWS ball cap or one from The Nature Conservancy.

Took the TNC hat, of course. We belong to TNC.

The speaker on mechanical and chemical habitat treatments, as an alternative to prescribed fire, mentioned he has no great expertise in those areas. But that is all they will let him do ever since he "over-achieved" his prescribed fire goals by 700%.

Yes, he's one of the guys who lost a prescribed fire a few years back. Cost the outfit a few hundred thousand dollars in damages, if I recall correctly.

Apparently they haven't yet forgotten. Still won't let him even touch a drip torch.

When the powerpoint projector conked out on one presentation, there were several loud suggestions that the speaker just hold the laptop over his head and continue.

Don't think they were all kidding.

One of the female presentors, while discussing the benefits of small habitat treatments, commented that the best example she knows of "patch dynamics" was when Ron tried to grow a beard.

Dan's comment when he hit the wrong button on the remote and his presentation jumped ahead one frame?

"Oh, shit."

Really.

In discussing habitat mitigation for areas lost to oil, gas, coal and CBM, one speaker drew upon one of Harry's more famous quotes.

That "mitigation is like putting lipstick on a corpse."

He also reminded us of Harry's first words when his predecessor (and friend) retired:

"Ding, dong, the wicked witch is dead."

When recommending grazing treatments, one speaker facetiously showed a photo of three roadkilled cow carcasses along an empty highway.

The next shot was of his rig in the shop, the front end caved in by hitting said three cows.

Didn't learn much new from the CWD presentation, since it was a simplified version of the one they gave us this summer. He confirmed the two positive samples from areas immediately to the south of me, which I already knew about from the newspaper.

And that, despite what you read or see in the media (or don't see), the CDC has reaffirmed that there have not yet been any cases of humans contracting the disease.

When discussing the domino effect the malformed "prions" have on normal proteins, he explained that they cause the healthy proteins to "go over to the Dark Side."

One university research project looked at lead (Pb to you) levels in raptors around prairie dog towns which receive extensive shooting pressure.

There is no increase.

Seems they used some of my prairie dog towns and raptors as the controls.

Okay, but it would have been nice to know. As commented on by one of my neighbors to the north.

They closed with a cute photo of a prairie dog in combat helmet, aiming a bazooka in self defense.

The new resident from Michigan apologized in advance for her question, but she wanted get something straight.

These folks just go out and shoot thousands of prairie dogs for the fun of it? They don't collect or eat any of them?

Which drew a fair amount of unpleasant laughter.

Welcome to the West, young lady.

The guy behind me strongly suggested the university not use the term "hunter" when referring to these shooters, not wanting to be associated with this "sport."

When the student asked for a better word, one from our outfit (a fellow redhead, with a redheaded son... good for her) loudly suggested that "bastards" works.

Had not one, but two presentations on the unusually high bat kills that are occurring at our state's windfarm. Seems the vast majority of bats killed by the windmills are hoary bats, even though they are a minor portion of the bat community in the area.

And most die in late summer and early fall, which the researchers attributed to migrant bats passing through.

But they had no idea why the bats would be hitting the blades. Or why there isn't also a peak of deaths during the spring migration.

Solution hit me there in that dark room, although the speaker was later unimpressed with my insight.

The company has to take the blades down regularly to clean off the bug splatters. The layer of dried bug guts builds up, enough to affect aerodynamics and blade performance.

Now, if you've ever driven through our cutworm moth migrations, you know about this juicy splatter.

And you may have noticed that not all moths go splat. Some get stuck to the windshield and wipers fairly intact, even struggling briefly before they expire.

It was my suggestion that the hoarys, who are big enough and have been documented eating these moths, are trying to get the struggling moths on the blades.

Which would also explain why there is a peak during the late summer and early fall, but none in the spring when there are no moths.

Neighbor across the aisle also joked about my "bug guts" solution, but I'll bet it pans out.

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