• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer
  • Search Projects
  • Help
  • Log in

Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education

Grants And Education To Advance Innovations In Sustainable Agriculture
  • Grants
  • Project Reports
    • Search Projects
    • Search Project Coordinators
  • Learning Center
  • Professional Development
  • State Programs
  • Events
  • Newsroom
  • About SARE

Project Overview

EW11-012
Project Type: Professional Development Program
Funds awarded in 2011: $96,053.00
Projected End Date: 12/31/2014
Region: Western
State: Montana
Principal Investigator:
Dr. Jim Knight
Email
Extension Wildlife Specialist

Wildlife Damage Control for Traditional and Organic Farmers

View the project final report

Annual Reports

  • 2012 annual report
  • 2013 annual report

Commodities

  • Agronomic: corn, sunflower, grass (misc. perennial), hay
  • Fruits: melons, apples, berries (other), berries (blueberries), cherries, berries (strawberries)
  • Vegetables: asparagus, beans, beets, broccoli, carrots, greens (leafy), peas (culinary), cucurbits, sweet corn
  • Additional Plants: ornamentals, trees
  • Animals: poultry, rabbits, sheep

Practices

  • Animal Production: feed/forage
  • Crop Production: application rate management
  • Education and Training: demonstration, display, extension, farmer to farmer, networking, workshop
  • Farm Business Management: budgets/cost and returns, risk management
  • Pest Management: biological control, chemical control, cultural control, economic threshold, eradication, field monitoring/scouting, integrated pest management, physical control, traps
  • Production Systems: holistic management, transitioning to organic
  • Sustainable Communities: urban agriculture, urban/rural integration, employment opportunities

Abstract:

This project addressed the increasing need for county and reservation extension educators and Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) personnel to provide education related to wildlife damage control on farms and ranches. In addition to requests from traditional farmers, there are increasing wildlife damage control needs from small acreage landowners and organic farmers. Organic farmers have limitations on how they can cope with pests, including wildlife pests. Like the organic farmers themselves, Extension and NRCS personnel lack information on controlling wildlife pests on organic farms. This project provided the training and materials needed to allow educators to address the vertebrate pest control needs of organic and traditional farmers. We conducted hands-on training workshops for Extension and NRCS personnel in Idaho and Montana, presented an online course in Prevention and Control of Wildlife Damage for western state’s Extension and NRCS personnel, developed demonstration sites on private farms and the Flathead Reservation, developed a Wildlife Damage Control for Organic Farmers handbook and completed a webpage for wildlife damage control for traditional and organic farmers. Evaluations to measure short term and long term impacts have been conducted.

Project objectives:

As the result of this project and the training received by county and reservation extension educators, we estimate 3000 producers will be reached resulting in vertebrate pest control improvements on 300,000 acres.

Objective 1 Determine vertebrate pest control methods that currently exist or which could be modified and developed for organic farmers.

Objective 2 Identify suitability, economic costs, effectiveness and strategies to enhance usefulness of methods determined in Objective 1.

Objective 3 Increase the vertebrate pest control knowledge and skills of extension educators so they have the capacity to address the educational needs of both traditional and organic farmers.

Objective 4 Extension educators will educate farmers so they can implement legal, effective, efficient and environmentally safe vertebrate pest control practices which will increase profits of farmers through reduced crop losses due to vertebrate pests.

Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the view of the U.S. Department of Agriculture or SARE.

Primary Sidebar

Footer

SARE - Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education USDA
1122 Patapsco Building | University of Maryland | College Park, MD 20742-6715

This site is maintained by SARE Outreach for the SARE program and features research projects supported by the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, U.S. Department of Agriculture. SARE Outreach operates under cooperative agreement award No. 2018-38640-28731 with the University of Maryland to develop and disseminate information about sustainable agriculture. USDA is an equal opportunity provider and employer.

Sustainable Agriculture Research & Education © 2019
Help | Contact us