Rural News

Drones are the blackfooted ferret's last hope

The flea-borne sylvatic plague has wiped out most of the ferret’s favorite snack—prairie dogs—and when the dogs die, so do the ferrets. So the US Fish and Wildlife Service wants to use drones to sprinkle peanut butter-flavored plague vaccines over the prairie dog’s habitat. If it gets approved, the agency wants to start testing the method in UL Bend National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Montana, where they’ve been trying to reestablish a ferret population for more than two decades.  “It’s a good year if it takes more than two hands to count them all,” says USFW biologist Randy Matchett. “As of a month ago, there were seven ferrets on the site and many, many thousands of prairie dogs.” It takes 100 acres of prairie dogs to support a female ferret and her litter for a year. On a 1,200-acre lot like UL Bend, 12 ferret families could flourish—once the USFW gets rid of the darn plague, that is. That’s why US Geological Survey epizootiologist Tonie Rocke and a team of scientists at the University of Wisconsin concocted the world’s first prairie dog vaccine back in the early 2000s. You wish you got these vaccines as a kid: They’re delivered orally, via delicious, peanut butter-smothered bait. (“It’s organic,” adds Rocke.) And while they don’t have the hard coating of an M&M, they’re roughly the same size and shape, with the texture of a chewy energy bar. Prairie dogs are big fans, eating up to 90 percent of the goodies in field tests.

Wild hogs can now be shot from helicopters in North Carolina

Now wild hogs can be culled by aircraft in North Carolina — provided they are shot by federal or state wildlife control officers.  The 2016 North Carolina Farm Act, which lawmakers passed July 1, contains two sentences making the change.

Kansas extends ‘angel investor’ tax credit; North Dakota mulls changes to its program

Lawmakers in two Midwestern states have given close scrutiny in recent months to a targeted tax credit that has become an increasingly popular policy tool for trying to help entrepreneurs and startup companies. Known as “angel investor” tax credits, these incentives encourage investment in early-stage firms by mitigating some of the potential loss if a company fails. Most states in the Midwest have some form of this tax credit. Kansas’ 11-year-old program was on track to sunset this year, but passage of SB 149 extended it for five years. As a result, individuals can receive a tax credit of 50 percent on their investment in a business that has been in operation for less than 10 years; has gross revenue of less than $5 million; and has an innovative and proprietary technology, product or service.

The True Cost of Rural Hospital Closures

After 66 years in business, my hometown hospital recently closed its doors to patients. Gone is the emergency room, skilled nursing facility, lab, radiology, and physical therapy services — as well as 67 full-time jobs.  Meanwhile, in the past six years. 72 rural hospitals in the U.S. have closed, including nine already in 2016.  One in three rural hospitals is at risk of closing, and according to the National Rural Health Association’s Journal of Rural Health, closure rates have increased 600 percent in the put five years.

Across the country, small towns are literally losing their lifelines. What gets lost in this story is what these closures mean lot the towns whose hospitals are shuttered. Sure. It’s obvious that jobs, public safety and community institutions are at stake. But what are we really doing by letting that institutions die? Where is this all going?  The first loss is a sense of safety and security, one that is backed up by hard evidence. A 2014 study in Health Affairs showed that the death rates for patients in towns where the ER recently closed increased 5 percent across the board and 15 percent when patients had a heart attack or stroke.