Shelby County Iowa State University Extension and Outreach have announced the Pesticide Safety Education Program (PSEP) team is now offering certified commercial pesticide applicators the opportunity to receive email notifications of upcoming Continuing Instructional Courses (CIC) and other pesticide safety education opportunities.

Kristine Schaefer, PSEP program manager at ISU Extension and Outreach, says “Applicators can select the categories for notification and can make update if it changes, or opt-out at any time. This will help applicators know when the CIC programs are offered if for some reason employers do not receive our spring or fall postcard reminders.”

PSEP will use an online email management system to send notifications to commercial, noncommercial and public applicators interested in the pesticide safety courses to maintain their certification. Schaefer says participation in the notification signup is voluntary. Applicators who are for-hire are required to have certification and be licensed in the state and must participate in CICs in order to maintain their license for pesticide application.

To sign up for the notifications, go online at: http://eepurl.com/_kHb1. After entering an email address, name and zip code, categories of interest for pesticide safety training opportunities (i.e., agriculture weeds, aerial application, public health, turf or household pests, etc.) can then be selected. Once registered, a confirmation email will be sent. Recipients can change their profile at any time.

To register or to obtain additional information about the CIC program, contact the ISU Extension and Outreach office in Shelby County at 712-755-3104.

A new pedestrian bridge in Avoca connecting to a trail system was completed last month, giving residents of the community a connection from East Thomas Street to Edgington Memorial Park over the East Nishnabotna River. Anna Hoegh, director of Avoca Main Street, told the Daily NonPareil in 2007, the city council worked to establish the foundation of a prosperous future through a financial comprehensive plan.

w/ Kate Olson

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Several southwest Iowa communities have received grants totaling $203,000, through MidAmerican Energy’s Trees Please! program. The Daily NonPareil reports the cities include Council Bluffs, Farragut, Macedonia, Marne, Modale, Randolph, Red Oak, Shelby and the Glenwood Tree Board. Each of those entities received funds to promote energy efficiency and environmental beautification through the planting of trees. Council Bluffs received $20,000. The other cities received $1,000 each.

A series of workshops targeting Iowa beef producers will be held across western Iowa next month which will compare various types of cattle operations. Beth Doran is a beef program specialist at the Iowa State University Extension, based in Orange City. She says the workshops are targeted towards potential and current producers. “We’re going to try to give an overview of facility types,” Doran says. “We’ll be talking about different kinds of facilities, hoop barns, monoslope barns, open lots, deep-pitted slotted-floor barns. We’ll talk about the advantages and disadvantages of them and review some of the research on those types.”

Doran says producers will receive several production resources and tools as well as an updated manual on feedlot systems. “We’re also going to give the workshop participants several scenarios and they’ll have to work through making appropriate choices for an operation,” Doran says. “That might involve their financing decisions, cost-benefit measurements and taking a look at that production environmental risk that’s going on with that.” Doran says northwest Iowa contains a lot of the different operations that will be discussed in the workshops.

Producers interested in attending should call their local extension office to pre-register. The workshops will be held (locally) March 18th in Lewis, and on March 25th in Carroll.

(Radio Iowa)

Officials with the Iowa DNR say the three month window to reserve a state park campsite for a Friday arrival on Memorial Day weekend opens this Sunday, Feb. 22. But more than a few campers have their sites already reserved arriving on the weekend before Memorial Day and staying through the holiday. Todd Coffelt, chief of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources State Parks Bureau, says “Campers can make reservations for sites three months ahead of their first night stay.” He said also “We had a flurry of reservations when campers began getting their sites for a two-week stay that includes the Memorial Day weekend.”

Most parks will have nonelectric sites available for the Memorial Day Weekend. Not every campsite is available on the reservation system. Parks maintain between 25 and 50 percent of the electric and nonelectric sites as non-reservation sites, available for walk up camping.

Information on Iowa’s state parks is available online at www.iowadnr.gov including the link to reservations. Campers can also log on directly to http://iowastateparks.reserveamerica.com; enter their preferred amenities and requirements, dates and/or parks to see what sites are available and make a reservation.

Iowa is playing host to a national event focused on bird hunting, wildlife conservation and dog training. Mick Klemesrud is a spokesperson for the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, a sponsor of the 2015 National Pheasant Fest and Quail Classic — this Friday through Sunday at the Iowa Events Center in Des Moines. Klemesrud notes two days coincide with the State Wrestling Tournament.  “We’ll get a lot of the different vendors from the across the country that are involved in pheasant and dog training. They expect about 25,000 (people to attend) so it would be nice if we had a little bit more than that with the additional people in town,” Klemesrud says.

The annual Pheasants Forever event began in 2005 and was previously hosted by Iowa in 2007 and 2010. Klemesrud says pheasants may not be as plentiful in Iowa as decades ago, but they’re making a comeback. “We are not to the glory years that we were in the 1990s, but we’ve had a few upticks in our pheasant numbers and we expect to have good survival into next year,” Klemesrud says. “So, we’re going build on year-over-year pheasant numbers and if we have a good spring, we’re going to have more pheasants than even last year.”

At this weekend’s event, landowners can meet with DNR conservation officers to discuss ways they can help improve upland bird habitat. Klemesrud says the event will also include a Youth Village.  “In the Youth Village, we’ll have a lot of different entertainment and games for the kids. Our officers will have some air rifle ranges, some 3D archery and we’ll have a snowmobile simulator,” Klemesrud says.

Daily admission to Pheasant Fest is $10 for adults, $5 for children 6-16, while children 5 and under get in free. For a complete schedule of events visit www.pheasantfest.org.

(Radio Iowa)

MISSOURI VALLEY, Iowa (AP) — A federal wildlife refuge north of Omaha is offering opportunities to learn more about nature during winter. The DeSoto and Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuges are offering several different programs in February and March. The refuges are about 30 miles north of Omaha near the Iowa border.

Tours of the area are offered at 10 a.m. on the following Saturday mornings: this Saturday, February 28th, March 7th and March 21st. Tours are also offered at 2 p.m. on February 15th, March 1st and March 15th.

The story of the Steamboat Bertrand and its passengers is retold at 1 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. The 150th anniversary of Bertrand’s sinking will be celebrated on the last weekend of March. Anyone visiting the refuges must have a $3 entrance permit.

DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP) – John Deere has recently laid off hundreds of workers in the Midwest, but it has added jobs at its factory in Dubuque, where the company manufactures huge vehicles for construction and forestry. Last month, the company announced the layoff of 910 workers at five locations in Iowa and Illinois, citing reduced demand for farming equipment as the reason. But the Telegraph Herald reports that John Deer Dubuque Works has added more than 100 jobs since late 2014.

General Manager Byron Taylor says this addition brings the total number of people working at the Dubuque site to 2,500. Taylor says the rollout of new bulldozer models and forestry machines, which hit the market in January, have contributed to the company’s strong growth in a new customer segment.