News from the Media

AMHERST, Mass. – Katherine Zeller, a doctoral candidate in environmental conservation at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, recently won a Switzer Environmental Fellowship from the Robert and Patricia Switzer Foundation of Belfast, Maine, for her research on developing effective corridors for wildlife between protected areas and wildlife populations.  (UMass News Office 12/15/15)

Tiny Blackpoll Warblers have the longest migratory route of any New World warbler, making a nonstop flight over the Atlantic Ocean each fall from New England to northern South America each year, but a study forthcoming in The Auk: Ornithological Advances shows that individuals that breed in western North America migrate east first to fatten up before migrating across the water. (PhysOrg 12/10/15)
 

Where do your eggs come from?

A fresh dispute is brewing between animal rights and agriculture over a ballot initiative that would prohibit the confinement of pigs, calves and chickens, and prohibit the sale of meat and eggs in Massachusetts from animals that have been confined. UMass Extension educator, Carrie Chickering-Sears, comments. (Masslive 12/2/15)

The UMass Cranberry Station, in East Wareham, is scheduled for a face lift. The plan is to update the research facility, constructed in the 1960s, with modern laboratories and equipment. And Dr. Carolyn DeMoranville, director of the UMASS Cranberry Station, couldn’t be happier. (Kingston Wicked Local 12/1/15)

Cranberries in a variety of culinary creations are everywhere this time of year, a staple of the Thanksgiving and Christmas dinner table.

But for Carolyn DeMoranville, the tiny, tart fruit is her life year round. She is director of the Cranberry Experiment Station in Wareham, part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where all-things cranberry are studied, and she said this year’s harvest in Massachusetts -- where the cranberry is the state’s largest food crop -- will be robust, at more than 2 million barrels. (Boston Globe 11/23/15)

The Recorder (Greenfield) reports on outbreaks of Phtopthera capsici (a water-borne mold) on farms in Sunderland and Deerfield. Quotes UMass Extension vegetable specialists Katie Campbell-Nelson and UMass diagnostician Angela Madeiras. The Recorder, 11/12/15.

AMHERST, Mass. – The recent popular success and high demand for a tick testing service provided to Massachusetts residents by the Laboratory of Medical Zoology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has led LMZ director Stephen Rich to extend the program, despite loss of state funding, by offering towns a co-pay model. (11/4/15 UMass News Office)

With 75 percent of global fisheries overfished, there is a renewed interest in boosting aquaculture as well as great demand. Moreover, cultured seafood is safer to eat as the industry is heavily regulated at this time, experts said. The Department of Agricultural Resources (DAR) funds three aquaculture centers at Salem State University, the Barnstable County Cooperative Extension, and the Center for Sustainable Aquaculture at UMass Amherst. (SouthCoast Today 10/28/15)

Massachusetts state officials released a plan for boosting locally grown food – the first such plan since 1974.

"We have brought together an incredibly diverse and broad range of people involved in the food system, everyone from anti-hunger advocates to farmers to truckers to policy advocates, to try to figure out how we can build on the strength of the state's food system and collaborate in ways we haven't collaborated before," said Winton Pitcoff, the project manager overseeing the plan and a Plainfield resident. (Masslive 10/25/15)