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New proposed National Wildlife Refuge in the Everglades

Good news! For overdeveloping Florida, a new 150,000 acre National Wildlife Refuge is being proposed in the Everglades. Read the press release.

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2011 01 08 Kirt Manecke Announcements Comments (0) Permalink

Don’t miss out! Make your year end contribution today

Don’t miss out. Invest in our work protect clean water, wildlife, natural areas and working farmland for future generations by making your end of the year tax-deductible contribution to LandChoices today by clicking on the “Donate Now” button below.

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Donate By Check
Please mail check, payable to “LandChoices”, to:
LandChoices, P.O. Box 181, Milford, MI 48381.

We Rely On You!
LandChoices is a 501c3 national nonprofit all volunteer organization. We do not receive any government funding and rely on the generous contributions from individuals like you.

Your contributions are tax-deductible to the full extent of the law and fund our work to protect Scout camps, clean water, wildlife, working farmland and natural areas.

Thank You!

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2010 12 19 Kirt Manecke Announcements Comments (0) Permalink

Cruel battery cages for chickens, gestation crates for sows

If you’ve ever wondered where most of your eggs, pork and bacon come from, view the unspeakable misery in the videos below. It seems some people in our great country have lost their conscious.

It’s time to end animal factories (also called “factory farms”) and bring back the family farm. Learn more and help end factory farms by supporting The Humane Farming Assocation.

From YouTube: “Hidden camera video footage exposing shocking animal abuse at a southern California egg factory farm will be released at a news conference on Tuesday by Mercy For Animals (MFA) a national animal protection organization. The footage recorded in August and September by a farm employee shows workers breaking the necks of chickens, live birds neglected on dead piles, birds suffering from open wounds, hens crammed in cages so small they cant walk, and corpses left to rot in cages with hens still laying eggs for human consumption.

Humane organizations are calling on Californians to vote YES! on Prop 2 this November. Prop 2 is a modest animal welfare measure that will simply ensure that farm animals can turn around and stretch their limbs.”

From YouTube: “On February 5th, members of Mercy For Animals held a silent protest outside the Annual Ohio Pork Congress in Columbus, Ohio. The eye-catching demonstration drew attention to the pork industry’s use of gestation crates–barren 2-foot wide metal stalls where pregnant sows are forced to spend most of  their adult lives before being slaughtered.

Sows in gestation crates are unable to walk or turn around and are forced to stand and lie on concrete slated floors covered in their own excrement for the duration of their four-month pregnancies. Barely able to move, the pigs develop crippling joint disorders, bruises, open soars, and lameness.”

Learn More
THE OPRAH SHOW: Lisa Ling Reports: How We Treat the Animals We Eat

Learn how to save your farm.

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2010 12 17 Kirt Manecke Buy Local
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Envisioning Better Communities: Video with Randall Arendt

Timothy Mennel from the American Planning Association (APA) interviews noted planner and LandChoices’ advisory group member Randall Arendt, author of Envisioning Better Communities, at the 2010 APA National Planning Conference in New Orleans to discuss the new book in the video below.

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2010 12 04 Kirt Manecke Conservation Subdivisions Comments (0) Permalink

Is your community preset to pollute water and destroy natural lands and wildlife?

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Click on the button to test your ordinance.

Is your community preset to pollute your rivers, lakes and other waterways, eliminate working farmland, and to destroy natural lands and wildlife? You may be surprised to learn that in most communities the answer is an astounding “Yes!”.

Most communities have comprehensive plans with wording like ”protecting rural character, farmland, and natural lands and wildlife”. The problem is that most communitys’ land use and subdivision ordinances are outdated and mandate the types of cookie cutter subdivisions that pollute water and destroy natural lands and wildlife one overdevelopment at a time.

Test Your Community’s Ordinance
On LandChoices’ DownloadTheOrdinance.org website, you can test your community’s ordinance by clicking on the “Test Your Existing Ordinance” button.

For example:

  • Does your ordinance designate preserving a minimum of 50% of the BUILDABLE land, in addition to the unbuildable wetlands, steep slopes and floodplains in new subdivisions?
  • Does your ordinance require a qualified landscape architect experienced with conservation subdivisions, and a physical planner, experienced in designing conservation subdivisions, to be involved from the beginning with the project?

Learn More
Learn more about conservation subdivisions at DownloadTheOrdinance.org.

Share: Preserve Water, Natural Lands and Wildlife Near You!
Please share this important information with your local planning commission and friends by clicking on the “Share/Save” button below.

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2010 11 18 Kirt Manecke Conservation Subdivisions Comments (0) Permalink

Putting the CAFO out to pasture

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I’m LOVING the book The CAFO Reader: The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (full disclosure: I received a complimentary review copy). “How It Should Be: Putting the CAFO out to pasture” is one of my favorite sections.

If you care about saving working family farms and ranches, animal welfare, and your community, you should read it too. The book will open your eyes to the house of horrors of animal and environmental abuses in Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that the food industry works hard to hide from the public. It’s unconscionable, and we subsidize it!

Why do I love this book? Because I’m learning about all the myths and unfair competitive advantages that keep Confined Animal Feeding Operations, also known as factory farms, in business.

CAFO Reforms
It’s time for the people of the United States to stand up and demand change. In the section,  ”How It Should Be: Putting the CAFO out to pasture“, I learned that the European Union leads the world in CAFO reforms. 

These changes are rooted in a report produced by the Farm Animal Welfare Council (FAWC), an independent advisory body established by the British government. The FAWC adopted the principles from the earlier 1965 Brambell Committee Report known as “The Five Freedoms.”

These essential principles have become the guidelines and codes of practice for various animal rights, animal welfare, and humane organizations around the world.

The Five Freedoms
1. Freedom from Hunger and Thirst—by ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigor.
2. Freedom from Discomfort—by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfortable resting area.
3. Freedom from Pain, Injury, or Disease—by prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
4. Freedom to Express Normal Behavior—by providing sufficient space, proper facilities, and company of the animals’ own kind.
5. Freedom from Fear and Distress—by ensuring conditions and treatment that avoid mental suffering.

Ending Animal Torture
The European Union has agreed to phase out the most egregious confinement techniques—battery cages (for laying hens) and gestation crates (for pregnant sows)—by 2012.

These five freedoms make perfect sense to me. There’s a lot more information in this article that speaks to reducing antibiotic use to protect humans and animals, greater transparency, humane slaughtering, and more.

Photo
Photo courtesy cafothebook.org.

Spread the Word
Please spread the word to help save family farms and end horrific factory farms by clicking on the Facebook “Like” button at the top of this article, and clicking on the “Share/Save” button below. And remember to buy local!

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2010 10 30 Kirt Manecke Buy Local
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Randall Arendt, Free webinar: Blending Conservation Design and the New Urbanism

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Randall Arendt. Photograph by Mari Harpur

Don’t miss this! Free webinar with noted planner and LandChoices’ member Randall Arendt: Blending Conservation Design and the New Urbanism.

Date/Time
Thursday, October 28, 2010 1:00 PM – 2:30 PM EDT.

About
This program  describes the crossover between Conservation Design and the New Urbanism, showing how they can be blended. In areas served by public water and sewer, conservation design techniques can be readily combined with TND principles to create walkable, mixed-use neighborhoods, often involving infill projects and incremental growth around the community’s outer edges.

This program shows how higher density neighborhoods can be designed around the central organizing principle of an open space network and incorporate distinctive features of the natural and cultural landscape, producing more sustainable results. This program is based largely on Randall Arendt’s last two books: Envisioning Better Communities and Crossroads, Hamlet, Village, Town.

This webcast is sponsored by the Connecticut Chapter of APA (American Planning Association).

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2010 10 24 Kirt Manecke Announcements
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CAFO – The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories

cafo_coverThe book, CAFO – The Tragedy of Industrial Animal Factories (Full disclosure: I was sent a review copy), is an incredible work that opened my eyes to the absolute horrors of factory farms.

It’s an enormous and powerful book that includes essays and large photos. The photos drive the point home that medieval practices towards intelligent animals occur everyday on factory farms.

Dismantlement
One of the essays I learned a lot from was “Dismantlement” by Erik Marcus of Vegan.com. While I’m not a vegetarian and I enjoy a good burger, I want animals treated humanely no matter their destination. I suspect many non vegetarians feel as I do.

Erik writes about “Trends in U.S. Meat Consumption”, “The Three Existing Movements for Animal Protection” (Limitations of the Vegetarian Movement, Limitations of the Animal Rights Movement, and Limitations of the Animal Welfare Movement), and “Building a Fourth Movement”.

The “Fourth Movement” that Erik writes about is “Creating a Dismantlement Movement”.  I think he’s onto something big! His ideas for agri-business reform make perfect sense, financially and from a moral standpoint. I won’t give his ideas away as I know you will want to read this terrific book.

Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Do
One other sickening thing I learned from this book, in the page titled “Nowhere To Go, Nothing To Do: Compulsive Behavior, Physical Abuse”, is that pigs are held in cage crates where they can’t turn around (see the photo on TreeHugger.com).

Until I started reading this book I naively thought thought that animal abuses like this only happened in third world countries! The way we treat these pigs is as horrific as barbaric bear farming.

Bar chewing is very common with pigs due to extreme boredom from the lack of stimulation. These animals have the right to play, exercise and enjoy the outdoor world and they are denied any decency. Death seems a blessing.

The Food Industry
It seems that many in the food industry either are not aware of these horrors or have chosen to look the other way.

Exempt From Animal Cruelty Laws
Did you know that farm animals are except from animal cruelty laws due to the lobbying efforts of the food industry, making animals more at risk to the cruel treatment on factory farms? Who are these people who work in this industry and come up with these unconscionable strategies!!!???

More reviews on this fantastic and educational book soon as I read my way through it.

Buy Local
In the meantime, to protect local working farmland, and to end brutal factory farms, buy local. Find your local farmer’s market at Local Harvest.

Take Action
Join the Humane Farming Assocation. I did and they do great work.

Help End Factory Farming
Please help spread the word about this amazing book by clicking on the Facebook “Like” button at the top of this article. Please click the “Share/Save” button below too.

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2010 10 09 Kirt Manecke Books
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Northern Virginia Conservation Trust

The following is a guest blog post by Michael Nardolilli, President, Northern Virginia Conservation Trust.

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NVCT acquired this four acre site in Loudoun County to protect the scenic viewshed that serves as a Gateway to Middleburg. Numerous mature trees provide clean air and wildlife habitat. The stone wall may date to Revolutionary War times. Meadow areas provide water recharge areas and habitat for migrating birds.

Land conservation in suburban and urban areas is a challenge. While there is an obvious need to preserve open space close to where people live and work, the development pressures can be overpowering.

Working in the shadow of the Nation’s Capital, the Northern Virginia Conservation Trust (or NVCT) knows those difficulties all too well. Yet, that makes our conservation victories so much sweeter.

Founded in 1994, NVCT is an accredited land trust that has saved over 5,700 acres of environmentally important lands in Northern Virginia. NVCT has preserved over 100 parcels through the use of conservation easements and land purchases and has been recognized as one of the best small profits in the Greater Washington DC area by the Catalogue for Philanthropy.

But additional work must be done in order to make “saving nearby nature” more than just a catchy tag line.

Continue reading ›

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2010 10 06 Kirt Manecke Land Conservation Comments (0) Permalink

Milford Farmers’ Market gets five stars!

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Photo courtesy Milford Farmers' Market.

The Milford Farmers’ Market in downtown Milford, Michigan is a five star market in my opinion! My congratulations and a huge thank you to everyone involved-vendors, staff, volunteers and sponsors.

The Milford Farmers’ Market is a volunteer organization which seeks to provide local farmers and artisans with profitable direct-marketing opportunities in an entertaining and family-friendly atmosphere.

Buy Local
The Milford Farmers’ Market is a fun, community event where you can buy local produce, breads, and other locally made items. I’ve bought wonderful Michigan made barbecue sauce, pies, fruit, vegetables and even soap!

Thank you to everyone involved in the Milford Farmers’ Market for helping make Milford an even better community and for supporting local farms and vendors. Leare more.

Stay Informed
Join the Milford Farmer’s Market on their Facebook page.
The Milford Farmers’ Market is a member of the Michigan Farmers Market Association.

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2010 09 30 Kirt Manecke Buy Local
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