STATE OF IOWA PRESERVES LITTLE SIOUX BOY SCOTT CAMP IN THE LOESS HILLS
The Iowa Natural Resource Commission has approved the state’s Purchase of the former Little Sioux Boy Scout Camp that covers nearly 18-hundred acres In the Loess Hills.
The DNR is purchasing the property from the Iowa Natural Heritage Foundation for five-point-one million dollars. That’s three million less than the appraised value. The purchase is funded by a four-point-six-five million dollar USDA Forest legacy grant and 500-thousand from the Reap Open Spaces Funding grant as well.
The DNR says the land acquisition will protect one of the largest contiguous regions of forest in western iowa and result in more than 100 miles of connected public hiking trails. The Little Sioux Scout Ranch is a 1,800-acre Scout reservation located in Little Sioux, Iowa, about sixty miles north of Omaha, Nebraska in Iowa’s Loess Hills and 15 minutes east of Interstate 29. The former ranch is at the heart of the property with a 20-acre lake.
In 2003, Four boy scouts died when a tornado hit the camp, and a memorial to those scouts will remain in place. The DNR will close on the property this summer and it will be open to the public sometime this fall.
IOWANS URGED TO ‘STAMP OUT HUNGER’ AT THEIR MAILBOXES TODAY
Iowans are encouraged to leave food by their mailboxes this weekend as part of a coast-to-coast effort to fight hunger. Randall Lein (LEEN), a mail carrier with the U-S Postal Service in Ottumwa, says Stamp Out Hunger was started in 1993 by the National Association of Letter Carriers to help people who are food insecure.
kbiz09a :15 “bring it in”
Lein says there are certain types of food they want people to donate today.
kbiz09b (1) :12 “in need”
He says the most food they’ve ever collected in Ottumwa in one year was prior to the pandemic. Since its inception, Stamp Out Hunger has collected nearly 2 BILLION pounds of food. To find out if your community participates, go to:
https://www.nalc.org/community-service/food-drive/branch-lookup
IOWAN NOMINATED for THE DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION
President Trump has nominated an Iowan to a leadership role in the U-S Department of Education.
Businessman David Barker of Iowa City is a current member of the board that governs the three state universities. He has been nominated to be Assistant U-S Secretary of Postsecondary Education. After working as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Barker moved back to his hometown of Iowa City in 1994 and he has taught classes at the University of Iowa and the University of Chicago.
His appointment to head the U-S Education Department’s Office of Postsecondary Education must be confirmed by a vote in the United State Senate. Barker was recently confirmed by the Iowa Senate to another term of the state Board of Regents.
CORN GROWERS ASSOCIATION SUPPORT INDIA TRADE PLAN.
The president of the National Corn Growers Association said today that his organization fully supports the Trump administration’s effort to forge a new trade relationship with India, and corn growers urge the administration to include corn and corn co-products, such as ethanol and its byproducts, in any final agreement with the South Asian country.
Illinois farmer and NCGA President Kenneth Hartman Jr. says that “Building a more level playing field for all American products to access global markets is exactly what corn growers need, especially as we face a projected third consecutive year of negative returns.”
The comments came during an online press conference this week. The organization released data showing India would be a valuable market for the nation’s corn growers and benefit rural America if Trump administration’s opened up the market to American goods.
