Mediating Socio-Political Barriers to Water Quality Improvement in Surface Water on Grazed Wildlands

Acute and growing social and legal conflict over regulation of non-point source pollution in Washington State has hampered proactive efforts to improve water quality in streams dominated by grazed watersheds. Livestock farmers caught in the conflict over water quality experience legal risk, reduced quality of life, and financial risk. Nonpoint source pollution is “pollution that is not released through pipes but rather originates from multiple sources over a relatively large area”. This diffuse pollution is notoriously difficult to regulate. Because causality is often not definable, coercing behavior is problematic, and most efforts to address nonpoint source (NPS) pollution rely on promoting voluntary practices. Washington State University Extension, in partnership with the National Riparian Service Team and conservation districts, developed a water quality risk assessment outreach program to focus livestock managers and regulators on the drivers of riparian function and water quality, riparian and upland health rather than sporadically collected water quality monitoring data (Hall et al., 2014). The goal of this long-term outreach has been to influence both regulatory philosophy and farmer behavior. Cooperative Extension has operated as a classic boundary spanner organization (Guston, et al., 2001), (Carr and Wilkinson, 2005), facilitating social interaction in the policy/science/social conflict of water quality in grazing areas. The boundary-spanning role is likely even more critical toward behavior change outcomes in natural resource conflict than the land grant university‟s role as source and interpreter of scientific information. Boundary spanner organizations and individuals “exist at the frontier of the two relatively different social worlds of politics and science”, interacting with principal actors from both sides of the boundary, in order to create a “site of . . . coproduction, the simultaneous production of knowledge and social order” (Guston, 2001, p. 401). They have three defining characteristics: “1) they help negotiate the boundary between science and decision-making, 2) they exist between two distinct social worlds with definite responsibility and accountability to both sides of the boundary, and 3) they provide a space to legitimize the use of boundary objects” (Cash, 2001, p. 439). Boundary-spanning individuals are called to exercise cultural awareness in order to see past surface words and gestures to the underlying beliefs and values which are the true seat of behavior; they then exercise diplomacy to bridge this cultural chasm toward a mutually beneficial end

Animal Feeding Operations and Water Quality--Resources and Livestock in Balance

This article describes an education program that was developed to provide conservation district staff an understanding of state and federal water quality rules and guidance on when to recommend specific best management practices to livestock producers to protect water quality. Real farm case studies were used to teach site-specific conditions that would place a livestock owner at risk of having a significant negative impact on surface or ground water quality. Specific outcomes were case studies in PowerPoint presentations, best management fact sheets, and a livestock-influenced water quality risk assessment tool

Livestock-Influenced Water Quality Risk Assessment Tool

This article describes a livestock-influenced water quality risk assessment tool that was developed to assist livestock producers with conducting a self-assessment of their operation and management relative to a facility\u27s risk of negatively affecting water quality. The tool focuses on factors likely to influence designation of the operation as a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation by a permitting authority and was also designed to be used in cooperation with a technical service provider to make a site-specific assessment. The tool is available in paper format and an interactive Microsoft ExcelTM spreadsheet version

Developing Herd Health Education for and Assessing Risky Practices of Cow-Calf Producers

Bovine respiratory disease (BRD) is an often unrecognized problem in cow-calf herds. We describe a program we used to help producers identify and avoid practices that could increase their herds\u27 risk for BRD. The greatest knowledge gains occurred for the topics of costs associated with BRD, BRD risks at the feedlot, and biosecurity measures. Through producer self-assessments, we found that the number of risky practices conducted by producers ranged from none to 22 per operation, averaging 10 per operation. Extension professionals should consider combining producer self-assessment with education on management as an effective strategy for informing producers of risks in their operations

Inland Pacific Northwest pasture calendar

The Inland Pacific Northwest (PNW) region, historically referred to as the 'Inland Empire', extends from the Cascade Mountains in the west to former Glacial Lake Missoula in the Rockies in the east and from the Canadian border in the north past the Snake River Canyon in the south. The greatest agricultural enterprises are hay (from various forage species), irrigated and non-irrigated grassland pastures, rangelands, and livestock production. It is also home to numerous wildlife species and flyways for migrating birds. The Inland PNW Pasture Calendar is designed to be a comprehensive guide for improved grassland management in support of forage-livestock systems. Applying the principles described will lead to improved regional economic, ecological, and social sustainability. This publication describes the opportunities and challenges of sustainably raising harvested and grazed forages and developing forage-livestock systems in this incredibly diverse environment. Appendix Chapters provide key information on grass / legume / forb species, how pasture species grow and regrow, soil nutrient management and organic matter, grazing philosophies and systems, matching grazing needs for pasture production, and forage-related animal health issues. Learning these key principles and following best management practices described will lead to improved sustainability of forage-livestock systems

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Adaptive Grazing Management Using Surface Cover Change Detection on Shrub-Steppe

The Wild Horse Coordinated Resource Management group developed a unified grazing plan designed to maintain or improve rangeland health on the Puget Sound Energy wind facility and adjacent public land. Committed to adaptive management, the group selected two trend monitoring methods for measuring results of grazing: Land EKG® and the line-point intercept as described by Herrick, et al 2005. These would serve as an early warning system for negative trend, as objective documentation of positive changes, and as a guide for adjusting management inputs, primarily grazing timing, intensity, and duration of use, to achieve the landscape goals set by the group during its formation in 2006. WSU Kittitas County Extension has been responsible for collecting and interpreting this long-term monitoring data with the objective of establishing a model approach to sustainable rangeland grazing and rangeland health monitoring for other large grazing areas in the Intermountain West. This poster provides a comparison of the ability of two different monitoring methods, Land EKG and the line-point intercept as described by Herrick, et al, to detect change in surface cover attributes (percent basal area, litter, and bare soil) on high-condition shrub-steppe sites in central Washington. Land EKG relies on an ocular estimate to assign surface cover percentages within two or four 4.8 ft2 hoops on a transect line coupled with repeat photography. The line-point intercept uses point sampling at every meter on three 50-meter transect lines per site to collect canopy and surface cover data. Data were collected from 2007 to 2011 on six different sites within two large (~5000-acre) pastures managed with light stocking rates (\u3c20% utilization). We have evaluated the two methods’ ability to detect change rather than comparing the absolute values derived from the two methods. The direction of change in basal area was consistent across methods. Although the degree of change was not consistent, this is a notable finding as basal area is notoriously difficult to estimate. Percent litter was relatively inconsistent across methods, we suspect due in part to the high spatial heterogeneity of this plant community, annual changes in litter distribution at the microsite level based on the timing and severity of precipitation events that move litter, and the significant difference between the methodologies for measuring litter. Bare soil values were consistent more often than not; new technology for image analysis could be used to make quantitative measurements from Land EKG photographs. This data will be collected approximately every three years and used to guide grazing plans. Tipton D. Hudson, Rangeland & Livestock Management Faculty, Washington State University Extension, 507 Nanum Street, Suite 2, Ellensburg, WA, 98926, [email protected]