Think modern wildfires are bad? Fires once burned up to 36 times more of the West, study says [McClatchy News Service]
…The destruction looks and feels unprecedented — and compared to the last several decades, today’s fires are extremely destructive and expansive, according to satellite data and other measures cited by Utah State University researchers. But in a new study published by the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, those researchers argue that Western blazes today (even if they’re bigger than in the 1980s) are still consuming “a small fraction” of the land fires consumed before European settlers arrived en masse in the West….But why did the number of acres burned fall so precipitously by the mid-20th Century? Researchers said it was a combination of livestock eating up the plant material that fuels fires, the expansion of firefighting infrastructure like water towers and forest roads, new technologies like fire retardant and successful campaigns like Smokey Bear.
https://www.sacbee.com/latest-news/article220810830.html
Man says he’s innocent of labor trafficking. Judge says he turned three women into slaves [Fresno Bee]
By accounts shared in court, Efren Alvarez was a hard-working, generous man who got along with nearly everyone, including his neighbors. But on Monday, the Fresno man was sentenced to eight years in prison in one of California’s first farm labor trafficking cases….Prosecutor Lynette Gonzales said that Alvarez utilized a complex scheme in which he obtained the victims’ visas, passports and other documents and held them as collateral for a loan. He then threatened to harm the victims and report each of them to immigration officials if they did not continue to work for him.
https://www.fresnobee.com/news/local/crime/article220799270.html
Napa vineyard worker dies after getting pulled into grape-picking machine [San Francisco Chronicle]
A worker was killed Monday afternoon at a Napa vineyard after getting stuck in a grape harvesting machine. The Napa man was working near the machine at Deconinck Vineyards when his clothing caught in it, pulling him in and killing him, according to Chet Schneider, a spokesman for the Napa County Sheriff’s Office….Though worker deaths are rare in Wine Country, they are not unheard of….And while there has been resistance to mechanical harvesting among high-end wineries, especially in Napa and Sonoma counties, which see hand-picked grapes as an essential component of their premium products, the machines are becoming more common.
https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Napa-vineyard-worker-dies-after-getting-pulled-13346601.php
Threat from fruit fly over on the coast [San Mateo Daily Journal]
Some 11 months after the appearance of two Mediterranean fruit flies in Half Moon Bay prompted a quarantine, officials are calling off an extensive effort to limit spread of the pest after announcing the insect has been eradicated in the county earlier this month….Though some growers who plant annual crops were able to shift away from potential host plants, those who grow orchards of fruit trees that could have been hosts for the pest were required to follow strict regulations, such as treating their crops with organic pesticides before they could distribute their produce outside the county, he said, noting 41 growers and businesses are believed to have been affected by some kind of quarantine requirement….Though he said growers and the community are ready for the quarantine to be lifted, he hoped more county residents will keep the risks of bringing fruit from quarantined areas top of mind in the future.
SLO High grad elected FFA president — and his dad led a prayer with Donald Trump [San Luis Obispo Tribune]
As he celebrated the biggest achievement of his young agriculture career, San Luis Obispo High School graduate Luke O’Leary watched his father lead a prayer in the wake of a national tragedy, flanked by President Donald Trump. O’Leary, 20, was chosen from a select group of 42 high-ranking national FFA candidates as the youth organization’s national president — the highest rank for an FFA officer. O’Leary, who’s currently taking a leave from his agriculture leadership and development major studies at Texas A&M University, served as California’s FFA president in the 2017-2018 cycle.
https://www.sanluisobispo.com/news/local/education/article220815550.html
Opinion: Yes, eating meat affects the environment, but cows are not killing the climate [Santa Maria Times]
As the scale and impacts of climate change become increasingly alarming, meat is a popular target for action. Advocates urge the public to eat less meat to save the environment. Some activists have called for taxing meat to reduce consumption of it. A key claim underlying these arguments holds that globally, meat production generates more greenhouse gases than the entire transportation sector. However, this claim is demonstrably wrong, as I will show. And its persistence has led to false assumptions about the linkage between meat and climate change.
