Here are some stories of interest from our area.
The head of USD's foundation, Ted Muenster, has stepped down from his lead role, citing the need to raise more money for the Division I athletics USD is attempting to enter.
USD's eventual move to Division I athletics appeared to play a role in the move Muenster said the foundation has a new athletic fundraising emphasis.
"There should be someone with more experience with athletic fundraising," he said.The foundation hired David Herbster as new athletic development director. He started two months ago, but one person cannot do the job, Muenster said. The entire organization must be involved.
Muenster says athletics are overemphasized, and he hopes that athletics will not overshadow academic fundraising.
"Once you're in Division I competition, pressure mounts to win, and financial pressures are greater. We'll have to see how it all plays out," he said.
A new study is being conducted in the northeast part of the state to measure the effect of predators on the duck and pheasant population.
Trappers will remove predators - mostly skunks and raccoons - in two of the blocks of land from mid-March to mid-July, when the nesting season ends. No predator control will be done on the other two blocks.
Duck and pheasant nests are found, marked and checked frequently to see if there's a successful hatch or if a predator has found the nest and destroyed it.
Participants hope to draw some conclusions when comparing the hatch rate in the trapped tracts to the rate in the two parcels without predator control.
''The populations of those two predators are probably the highest ever recorded in history,'' said Chuck Dieter, a professor and wildlife biologist at South Dakota State University who's overseeing the collection of information on nesting success.
And in some good news, it looks like we are ready for an outbreak of West Nile virus. Wait. That's bad news. Crap!
Cases of West Nile virus are expected to soar soon, according to Jim Wilson, pesticide education coordinator at South Dakota State University.
"I think we are going to be seeing a rapid increase in incidents over the next few weeks," Wilson said. "We also are suggesting that if the community has a function planned, whether it be a rodeo or something similar, that they use a residual treatment" to help protect the public.
"We don't know how it is going to play out ultimately this year," said Lon Kightlinger, state epidemiologist in South Dakota. "We do know West Nile is here and it's making people sick."
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