(Radio Iowa) – The Dubuque City Council passed an ordinance Monday against feeding or harassing bears. During discussion of the ordinance, the D-N-R’s Ross Ellingson said the idea is take away the things that lure the bear in.

Ellingson said bears are becoming more prevalent in Iowa due to the large populations of black bears in neighboring states.

Brian Preston. (photo from Dubuque Council meeting video)

Dubuque County Conservation executive director, Brian Preston, said there is one bear that now lives near the city.

Preston said they are trying to emphasize that feeding the bears is not a good thing.

People who feed the bears could face a fine of up to 750 dollars. The ordinance could also require a resident to take down a bird feeder to deter bears. Residents are advised to stay away from bears and not follow them to try and get a picture or video. Harassing bears to get them to go away is not allowed under the ordinance, as the expert said that could lead to more unwanted interaction with the bears.

Wet conditions kept some farmers out of the fields last week, while others were able to get plenty of planting done. Radio Iowa’s Dar Danielson reports.

Ten percent of the corn has already emerged, and five percent of the soybeans have emerged.

(Radio Iowa) – One month after the Trump administration announced sweeping tariffs on imports to the U-S, the pork and soybean industries are closely watching how countries respond. Weekly export sales for U-S pork recently hit a marketing year low, in part because China cancelled a contract for 12-thousand metric tons. Iowa State Extension economist Chad Hart says agricultural export sales fluctuate, but aggregate data over the last four months shows countries are buying less U-S pork.

Hart says the majority of soybean export sales have already been made and delivered for the current marketing year, which ends in August. He says the U-S/China trade war could have a much greater impact on the soybean industry if retaliatory tariffs are still in place this fall.

Hart says corn exports have been up despite the tariff chatter, but countries have pulled back purchases of U-S pork since January. He says the 10 percent baseline tariffs on almost all imports into the U-S could make it harder to find new trading partners for farm products.

(Radio Iowa) – Iowa State University will begin offering the state’s first four-year degree in digital and precision agriculture this fall. I-S-U associate provost Ann Marie VanDerZanden presented the program during the recent Board of Regents meeting, and says it will train students in technology and data analysis.

VanDerZanden says precision ag has come a long way.

VanDerZanden says surveys and discussions with ag equipment manufacturers shows a need for more people who understand the methods. And she says I-S-U students are anxious to get involved.

VanDerZanden says their projections show the program will take off quickly.

Several Iowa community colleges offer an associate degree or certificate in precision agriculture, and VanDerZanden says I-S-U will work with these colleges to develop articulation agreements. Information shows South Dakota State University is the only one in the Midwest that offers a major in precision agriculture, but it does not require the level of specialization that the I-S-U degree will require.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa Department of Natural Resources is using a mix of conventional and modern methods as it tries to figure out why the population of the gray fox has rapidly declined in the state. Wildlife biologist Vince Evelsizer says they started the study by putting tracking devices on a couple of the animals.

They are also reviewing photos from stationary trail cameras set out in areas where the animals live.

Evelsizer says new A-I technology is helping them look for clues in those thousands of photos.

He says D-N-R experts finish off the work after the A-I review.

Evelsizer says they hope the information gained from tracking the gray fox and the photos will help them learn why their populations have dramatically dropped.

(Wiota, Iowa) – Members of the Cass County Cattlemen’s organization have selected 2025 Royalty. Officials report their selection was made April 22nd, at the Wiota Steak House, after a personal and dinner interview was conducted. Royalty for the year are:

• Princess –  Addi Masker (of Atlantic)
• Queen  – Jacquie Freund (of Lewis), and
• Ambassador – Hayden Kleen (of Atlantic).
  

  Cass County Cattlemen Royalty for the year are: (from Left) Princess Addi Masker (Atlantic), Queen Jacquie Freund (Lewis), and Ambassador Hayden Kleen (Atlantic).

The group of young people will represent Cass County Cattlemen in parades, promote beef at various speaking events, and help at the Beef Quarters at the Iowa State Fair.

The Princess, Queen and Ambassador presented officials with Cass Health in Atlantic, a “Happy First Baby” May Day Basket. The basket of beef products will be given to the first baby born at Cass Health, in May. Each baby born during the month will receive a bib “When I get teeth, feed me beef”. May is beef month. (Photos & info submitted to KJAN)

Princess Addi Masker, Nurse Brooke Dreager, Queen Jacquie Freund, Nurse Britini Olson, and Ambassador Hayden Kleen show the basket of beef products given to the first baby born at Cass Health in May.

(Radio Iowa) – A contract botanist from northeast Iowa who says he’s eaten more than a hundred species of wild Iowa mushrooms says he wants to set the record straight about what some mushroom hunters call “false” morels. Ben Hoksch, of Elkader, describes himself as a longtime forager of wild plants and mushrooms, who has a master’s degree in biology from U-N-I. “The term false morel is a common name that actually encompasses a large group of mushrooms, of which the most commonly identified mushrooms as false morels,” Hoksch says, “which in Iowa can be seven or eight or nine species, none of them are poisonous.” Though he notes, if you go to other parts of the country, there are mushrooms called false morels, some of which are poisonous. Hoksch has spent years learning the characteristics of various plants to distinguish between things that might be hazardous and those that are nutritious and delicious.

“To the lay person, two mushrooms can look superficially similar,” Hoksch says. “They can say, ‘I can’t tell the difference between those two,’ but an individual that spends any amount of time in the woods studying the features of these can easily tell the difference between something that’s called a false morel — which there aren’t any poisonous ones in Iowa — and a morel.” The key to mushroom hunting, he says, is to learn from others who are well-trained and knowledgeable.”The Prairies States Mushroom Club, they’re based out of Cedar Rapids,” Hoksch says. “They’re a great organization and honestly, a lot of the identification groups on social media do a good job, if you can rifle through the lay people who comment and look to the group experts and moderators of the well-recognized pages.”

Common morel mushroom (Photo by Iowa State University Extension and Outreach)

Hoksch says wild food is everywhere around us and his breakfast most mornings is as local as it gets. “I walked down to the river. I picked three different types of wild greens. I picked cutleaf coneflower, nettles and wild mustard. I cooked that up with eggs from the backyard and a steak of venison that I harvested last winter,” Hoksch says. “Food didn’t always come from a grocery store, and I still think today it’s a great way to connect with the land and have a deeper connection with community.”

(Radio Iowa) – Green sprouts from the corn and soybeans Iowa farmers planted in mid-April are starting to emerge from the soil, but many farmers are still waiting to get their crops planted. Angie Rieck Hinz, an agronomist for the Iowa State University Extension in north-central Iowa, says planting started around April 10th and continued “going gangbusters” for a little over a week. “Ever since then, it’s been raining or drizzling in some cases, where we haven’t got a lot rain, but we’re not getting a lot of soil drying out,” she says, “so it’s been very difficult for people to get back in the fields since April 19th.” Rieck Hinz says the U-S-D-A crop report that came out earlier this week may not be telling the full story.

“The North Central Crop Reporting District shows us at about 23% of the corn planted and 11% of the beans, compared to statewide where we have 34% of the corn and 25% of the beans planted,” she says. “I think most people would tell you those numbers seem pretty low, that there’s actually a higher percentage of corn and beans planted.” Rieck Hinz offered a bit of advice to farmers who are anxious to get their planting work completed. “We have a lot of time to get crop in the ground once it dries out,” she says. “We’re supposed to go into a hot, dry period starting the end of next week, so I think once we get dried out, we’ll be back in the field relatively quickly and we’ll finish up planting for this season.”

Farmers need to be patient and wait for conditions to be right for planting, she says, otherwise seeds won’t be at the right depth and won’t root well. Rieck Hinz says yields last year were just as good for the early-planted crops as for those that were planted later.

(Radio Iowa) – The Iowa D-N-R says its spring efforts to collect walleye eggs to raise the next generation of fish was one of the fastest in the program’s history. Jay Rudacille oversaw the operation at Lake Rathbun and says all the fisheries seemed to benefit from warmer water temperatures during the spawn. “Most of our walleyes get stocked as just one to two day old fish that are very small and they have a fairly low survival rate, but we can we can produce them very cheaply and we can produce them in mass. So it’s an easy thing to do,” he says. Other walleyes are kept around a little longer before being released.

“We will raise fish to an inch and a half size and we will stock those about the first two weeks of June. And those are mostly stocked in rivers, and then we will raise some fish to the eight to nine-inch size at both our Rathbun and Spirit Lake hatcheries, and those get stocked into constructed and natural lakes in the month of October and early November,” Rudacille says. Rudacille says their goal is to have 116 million walleye fry. He says that’s believe to be second only to Minnesota, which looks to stock 257 million walleye. Rudacille is the D-N-R Warm and Coolwater Fish Culture Supervisor, and says Iowa doesn’t grow all the fish it stocks here in the state. He says they do a lot of fish trading with other states.

“Yellow perch from South Dakota. We will be providing some muskellunge to back to South Dakota and we’ll be sending some down to the state of Missouri. In exchange for those muskies that we send down to Missouri, in return, we’re going to get channel catfish and also paddlefish. So, there is a fair amount of fish trading,” he says. The fish trading is somewhat similar to the old kids card game “Go Fish” as he says if Iowa has more of one fish than it needs, they can trade for something they don’t have. “We don’t necessarily want to duplicate efforts, so if a state is very good at producing a certain species and we can have something to give them an exchange for that, there’s no real reason for us necessarily to go through the learning curve to try to develop a program for that same species,’ Rudacille says.

There is little natural reproduction of walleyes in most Iowa lakes and rivers, and Rudacille says keeping the population of those fish up depends on the stockings.