Environmental notebook
Online submission set for art contest
This year, kindergarten-through-12th-graders can submit artwork online for the Wildlife of Arkansas Student Art Contest until March 15, according to an Arkansas Game and Fish Commission news release.
The free, open contest started eight years ago as a collaboration between Arkansas Wildlife Federation and Creative Ideas to encourage students to “explore and celebrate Arkansas’ wildlife,” according to the Wednesday news release.
The shift to an online submission process through the foundation’s website — arwild.org — is an effort to expand to new schools and areas of the state that may not have the funding to send in artwork by mail for scoring, according to the news release.
“With the impact of COVID-19, identifying ways to encourage youth to explore the outdoors is even more important. This program gets children interested in wildlife and the outdoors through direct observation and recollection in developing their works of art,” Sharon Hacker, founder of Creative Ideas and federation board member, said in the news release.
Winners in each grade receive cash awards, trophies and certificates. Pictures of the best-in-show and all first-place winning artwork — along with the entire list of winners — will appear in the summer issue of Arkansas Out of Doors magazine.
The competition is supported through a Game and Fish Commission education grant.
Resistent pigweed confirmed in state
Researchers with the University of Arkansas System Division of Agriculture confirmed pigweed in Mississippi and Crittenden counties, which could spell bad news for cotton or soybean crops, according to the division.
Tom Barber, extension weed scientist for the division announced Monday a confirmed strain of glufosinate-resistant Palmer amaranth — commonly known as pigweed. This is not surprising, Barber said.
The herbicide glufosinate — known as Liberty — is one of the few effective ways to control pigweed in soybeans and other crops, according to a post on the division’s website.
However, three rounds of glufosinate last summer did not control the pigweed in two fields in Mississippi County, Barber noted in a Monday article published on the Arkansas Row Crops Blog.
Samples taken from the county tested at least 15 times more resistant to glufosinate than the standard, according to the website. A sample taken from Crittenden County proved 3.5 times more resistant.