Re: Burn Bans & Smokestack Scrubbers

In article <Pine.WNT.4.64.0704272118540.296@xxxxxxxxx>,
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 27 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:

Timo Nieminen <timo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Thu, 26 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:
"Timo A. Nieminen" <timo@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 24 Apr 2007, Mitchell Jones wrote:

There are states in the northeastern U.S. that are smaller than
some of those ranches, and cedar--a.k.a., Ashe juniper--is a gigantic,
noxious weed that ranchers must fight constantly, if there is to be any
plant life on their ranches that cattle can eat. Mostly, they bulldoze
it into piles and burn it.

Goats: Nature's own deforestation tool!

***{Goats will eat it, but only after they have consumed everything else
on the range down to bare topsoil--which means: they will destroy your
ranch first, and only then will they turn their attention to the object
of your ire. The cure, in short, is worse than the disease. --MJ}***

Given that goats are used for Ashe juniper control

***{Only by weekend ranchers whose main concern is keeping their
agricultural tax exemption, rather than making money. Such people tend
to be "environmentally concerned," and eager to follow the often silly
and politically correct advice emanating from university professors. In
the universities, "biological control" is in, and bulldozers are out.

Greenies support using goats? Over here, the greenies support culling of
wild goats, to try to reduce deforestation. Your environmentalists need
better education.

***{We don't have problems with wild goats in Texas for a very simple
reason: the land is privately owned, and fenced. There were wild goats
here at the time the state was settled by U.S. immigrants, back in the
early 1800's. Those goats had escaped from the Spanish, and had
continued to flourish under Mexican rule after the Spanish were driven
out. (That's why we call them Spanish goats.) However, during the time
of the Texas Republic and later, after Texas joined the U.S. (a big
mistake), the wild goats were returned to domestication. That happened
because goats, including Spanish goats, cannot jump fences, and all the
range land in Texas is fenced with either barbed wire or goat wire. (We
do have a problem with feral hogs, however. Russian wild boars, for
example, will run along a country road in front of a car for awhile,
respecting the fences along the sides of the road, but then, when they
get tired or, perhaps, panic, they will simply turn at full speed and
plow straight through the fences, breaking the wire and leaving a
hog-sized hole for the rancher to repair. The fence near the end of my
driveway has two hog holes in it that I'm going to have to repair pretty
soon, in fact.) --MJ}***

Biological control is environmentally dangerous, and
needs great care before you release organism X, given how easily the
control agent can become worse than the orginal problem. The commercial
advantages of biological control are pretty clear (when it works), since
the control agents are self-replicating, and free after initial
introduction.

***{The disadvantage of biological control is that it doesn't work. The
critters that are selected as the agent of control are not working for
the rancher, but for themselves, and for the reasons you listed above,
plus some other reasons not listed, the outcome tends to be different
from the intent. Nevertheless, the self-styled "environmentalists" in
this neck of the woods are enamored with that approach, because it seems
more "natural" to them. The alternatives favored by farmers and
ranchers--e.g., pesticides, herbicides, bulldozers, etc.--lead to
outcomes that are much more predictable precisely *because* they are
"artificial," "unnatural," etc.--which means: those sorts of agents are
working for us, rather than for themselves. (Yes, of course, things can
go wrong there as well. The probability of that happening, however, is
much less, especially when the people involved are experienced and
knowledgeable.) --MJ}***

, I doubt very much
that they'll only eat it after everything else is bare topsoil. Goats are
excellent for keeping areas clear of trees, as young trees are pretty much
their favourite food. They might prefer other tree species to J. ashei,
but I'd be suprised if they prefer grass over it.

***{Then be surprised. If there is anything else available for them to
eat, including grass, goats will ignore junipers like they aren't even
there. I have seen land grazed down to bare rock by goats before the
junipers began to be eaten.
[moved]
***{Yup, even politically correct professors are aware that goats (and
deer, and antelope, and sheep, and any other critter with good sense)
won't eat juniper if there is any other source of nutrition available.
Why not? Because junipers are laced with so much turpentine that during
a drought you can actually smell the reek of it. Turpentine is poison,
and goats don't like the taste of it.

We don't have Ashe juniper over here (well, maybe we do, but nowhere that
I've lived or kept goats), so I'll just note:

(a) The literature says that goats find juniper more palatable than pretty
much any other tree/shrub browser.

***{Goats are dumber than deer or antelope, so that may be the case. But
the point remains: they, like deer and antelope, won't eat it except as
a last resort. They will graze a place down to bare rock and prickly
pear before making significant inroads on juniper, in fact. --MJ}***

(b) The literature says that goats are more tolerant of the toxins than
pretty much and other tree/shrub browsers.

***{Whether they are more tolerant or simply dumber, the point remains:
they won't eat the stuff except as a last resort--which means: they will
destroy your place before they will "control" the juniper. (You might as
well "control" the juniper by using hydrogen bombs. :-) And, to
reiterate what I said earlier, even if we were to falsely assume that
goats would preferentially eat cedar/juniper, that doesn't address the
problem under consideration. The goal here, remember, is to have a ranch
on which you can run cattle. That problem, by its very nature, cannot be
solved by running goats. Real Texas ranchers--i.e., cattlemen--tend to
dislike goats. The reality is that most of the people who run goats are
the small time, weekend ranchers I mentioned earlier, who typically own
ten or twenty acres and choose goats because they are the easiest
livestock to run, if your purpose is merely to keep your ag exemption,
rather than to make money. --MJ}***

(c) Goats that I've kept have preferred turpentineous trees to grass; the
difficulty is trying to keep the trees alive, even when the trees are just
where the goats pass by daily on their commute from night-time pen to
daytime enclosure. Just forget about keeping any trees alive in their
daytime enclosure, even when the grass is over a foot high.

***{You are in Australia, right? Want to cause an ecological disaster?
Then travel to Texas--Austin, say--in the winter (December through
March) and stuff your pockets with juniper seeds (those little blue
berries lying on the ground under the "cedar" trees), fly back to
Australia, and sprinkle them around. Don't bury them. The idea is for
wild animals to eat them and carry them far and wide. Most will pass
through the feces unscathed, and will germinate where they are
deposited. Then just sit back for a few years and wait for the howling
and gnashing of teeth to begin.

Of course, I am not serious. Believe me, you do *not* want juniper
problems where you live. If they do get them started over there, you
will discover, to your surprise, that goats will be useless against
them. They will cover the ground with an impassable thicket 15 to 20
feet high, with extremes up to 30 feet or so, beneath which not a sprig
of grass can grow, and through which no animal larger than a raccoon can
comfortably pass.

Not a pretty picture, but a true one.

--Mitchell Jones}***

(d) Of course sheep will avoid juniper. Sheep _like_ to eat grass. For
goats, grass is a food of last resort.

***{See http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/West/05/14/offbeat.goats.reut/, for
an example to the contrary. Yeah, I know: you are going to tell me that
the goats will get wormy from eating grass, especially on swampy ground.
OK, you know that and I know that, but nobody ever explained it to any
goat I've ever seen. :-)

In any case, goats are classified as intermediate feeders, not as
browsers. When free to do so, they will eat a bit more grass than
browse, with forbs bringing up the rear at about 12% of their diet. Even
in winter, grass will still comprise 42% of their diet, if available.
(See
http://animalscience.tamu.edu/ansc/publications/sheeppubs/B6037-rangeherb
ivores.pdf.

--Mitchell Jones}***

(e) The point is to have goats to eat new plants. Seedlings (apparently)
have a lower toxic content than mature plants, and a small amount of
eating kills them quite effectively - the end result is that, despite the
best efforts of the seedlings, goat 30, juniper 0 is quite feasible.

***{Timo, with respect, I've spent my whole life in Texas, and I've seen
literally thousands of cases where goats stripped rangeland down to bare
earth and rock, before they began to make significant inroads on ash
juniper. I know there are places on the net where people talk about
goats eating "cedar," but I can tell you based on eyeball experience
that if there is a "cedar" that goats like to eat, ash juniper ain't it.
Yes, they will eat it; but, no, they do *not* prefer it to grass. If the
answer to the ashe juniper problem were as simple as you say, half of
Texas wouldn't be covered with the goddamned horrible stuff. --MJ}***

Have you ever kept/herded goats? From experience, and (a) and (b), your
claim that goats will kill the grass before starting on junipers is
incredible without supporting evidence. Let me know if you have such.

***{Check out the link cited above. In it, you will find that when goats
are free to choose what they eat, they will choose grass 45% of the
time, browse 43% of the time, and forbs (weeds and wildflowers) 12% of
the time. Factor in the fact that ashe juniper is just about the most
noxious, turpentine-laced, godawful browse imaginable, and it ought to
be extremely plausible to you that what I have seen with my own eyes is
true: goats will eat a place down to bare earth and rocks before they
will make significant inroads on the juniper. They really, really don't
like the stuff. Honest! :-) --MJ}***

Even worse, goats that are literally
starving can't make a dent in a stand of mature junipers, because the
things get 30 feet high. How do you think goats can deal with that? The
answer: they can't. Mr. Bulldozer, however, can deal with it very well
indeed. :-) --MJ}***

The Proper Procedure is you use bulldozers to get rid of the mature trees,
then let the goats loose to stop regrowth.

***{They won't. I have seen goats grazing on grass in fields where there
were hundreds of junipers less than four feet high, standing there
totally unscathed. Hell, there are deer all over Texas in vast numbers,
and they are, unarguably, true browsers. Therefore if browsers could
control juniper, it wouldn't be a problem anywhere. But it is. Even deer
won't touch the stuff if they have anything else, including grass, to
chew on. --MJ}***

Goats are OK at ringbarking medium-sized trees in preference to having to
eat grass, but they're not so reliable at getting rid of big ones.

Goats work - Sahara and Middle East deserts.

***{And if you want to turn a central Texas ranch into a desert, just
keep adding goats until they finally begin eating the juniper. :-)

Seriously, the only shot at controlling juniper with goats that I've
heard of doesn't even attempt to get goats to eat the juniper foliage.
(As I've already pointed out several times, it's very toxic, and they
don't like it.) Instead, the plan is to selectively breed goats with a
taste for the little blue berries, and put them on the range in the
winter, when the berries are dropped on the ground. The idea is that if
a goat eats the berries, he is going to do a much better job of
digesting them than, say, a bear or a raccoon. Result: when they exit
his rear end, they will not be viable. But at present this is just a
scheme by a professor to score some grant money. At best, it is
something that might work in the future, not anything that works now.
(See
http://www.countryworldnews.com/Editorial/CTX/2003/ct0918rangeland.htm
for some sketchy allusions to this concept.

--Mitchell Jones}***

*****************************************************************
If I seem to be ignoring you, consider the possibility
that you are in my killfile. --MJ
.

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