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USDA-NRCS Co-Sponsors Wildlife and Range Management Seminar at Cisco Junior College

Story by Randy Henry, Public Affairs Specialist, Arlington

With nearly 60 landowners in attendance, the USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) co-sponsored a Wildife and Range Management Seminar at Cisco Junior College on Oct. 27, 2006. The seminar focused on conservation issues and concerns in Eastland County, along with new online technology offered to the landowner by NRCS via the Internet.

Many topics were addressed that increased the landowner’s knowledge about deer habitat, mesquite control, supplemental feeding of deer, the importance of soils, conservation planning, and online technology utilizing NRCS’s web soil survey.

NRCS is moving into the 21st century with an online web site that targets soil surveys information, along with a geographic information system (GIS) that landowners can access on their computer at home or office. Jerry Rives, NRCS soil scientist for Zone 5, demonstrated the user friendly web site for landowners to get valuable soils information on any property of interest.

Jerry Rives: NRCS Zone Soil Scientist Jerry Rives addresses questions about the online soil survey web site during an informative session about NRCS's new online technology. Cisco Seminar Audience: Filling out one of the surveys given at the seminar, a packed room of visitors gave valuable information to the speakers that helped monitor their needs toward conservation issues within Eastland County.

“The online web soil survey utilizes three user friendly steps, it defines the area of interest, views the selected soil maps, and uses a soil data explorer to get the soil properties and interpretations,” said Rives. “Once a landowner generates any reports and interpretations of interest, several options are available including printing the information and saving the information to a computer’s hard drive.”

Several speakers focused on local topics in Eastland County, such as brush management, food supplements for deer habitat, as well as livestock and deer coexisting in the same environment. Besides Rives, the speakers included NRCS Wildlife Biologist Ricky Linex, Eastland County Extension Agent Dale Dunlap, HiPro Feeds Kent Mills, Extension Range Specialist Dr. Charles Hart, NRCS Hamilton County Range Specialist Charles Kneuper, and NRCS Eastland County Range Specialist Jeff Goodwin. The seminar was also sponsored by the Texas Cooperative Extension Service and HiPro Feeds.

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