Is there honor in serving our country?  Emily Taylor believes so.  So much, that the Thomas More Prep Marian High School senior wrote about her belief and has been named the 2011 Hays VFW “Voice of Democracy” essay contest winner.

Taylor read her essay during Veterans Day ceremonies at the VFW Post 9076.  She talked about 1998 TMP graduate CW2 Bryan  Nichols, who died August 6th while serving in Afghanistan, and her brother, who is about to graduate from basic training at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri.

The “Voice of Democracy” contest is sponsored by the VFW Ladies Auxiliary.  Jodie Wear-Leiker chairs the local  event. 

The essay contest was begun in 1947 as a national scholarship contest for high school students.  The national VFW selects a different patriotic theme each year.

Thirty years ago, the Black-Footed Ferret was discovered in eastern Wyoming, after being considered extinct for some time.

A captive breeding program to repopulate the prairie mammal started 20 years ago by Dr. Dean Biggins of the U-S Geological Survey and Colorado State University.

Today, Black-footed Ferrets have been released at 20 reintroduction sites in the Great Plains, including Logan County, Kansas, where the project has made some landowners very unhappy.

U-S Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Dan Mulhern surveys the still-endangered animal twice a year.  Prairie dogs are the ferrets’ main food source.

Some Logan County ranchers consider the prairie dog a nuisance, and want to poison them, but a judge’s 2010 ruling prevents the county from poisoning prairie dogs on a site where ferrets — who prey primarily on prairie dogs — have been reintroduced. The Logan County Commission has appealed.

Mulhern’s plan to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of the ferret’s rediscovery met with some resistance in Oakley, where three locales denied access for a presentation.

The FHSU Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays offered its venue.  Nearly 1,700 people,  including students from as far away as Chanute,  from kindergarten to college-age, participated in Monday’s “Black-Footed Ferret Day.”

Tune in to Street Beat Eagle Community TV Channel 14 for more details

 

The Ellis Community Foundation broke ground Saturday morning for the Dennis Schoenthaler Memorial Walking Trail.

The purpose is to encourage a healthy lifestyle and to foster community involvement.  The project  already involves Fort Hays State University Leadership Studies students.

The concrete path in Creekside Park will be one- half- mile long, and five feet wide.

Schoenthaler lost his battle with cancer May 20^th  but had been envisioning the trail long before his death.   Attending the weekend ceremony were Dennis’s wife Ginger, their son Troy, daughter Bonnie Hahn and three grandchildren.

Cost of the concrete is  $13,500.   If you’d like to make a donation,  contact Dena Patee at the Ellis Community Foundation.

Tune in to Street Beat Monday for more on “Cruisin’ with Casey” on Eagle Community TV Channel 14.

BFF.  Best Friends Forever, and many Black-Footed Ferret researchers feel that passionately about the endangered mammal.

Wildlife biologists along with zoo/museum educators are hosting an all-day event at Fort Hays State University’s Sternberg Museum of Natural History to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the rediscovery of the endangered Black-footed Ferret.

More than 1,200 students, grades K-12 from area schools, are learning about BFFs today, with a closeup and personal view of one from the 20-year-old captive breeding program at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo in Colorado Springs, CO.

Another 1,000 university students will attend two presentations tonight presented by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service about the successful recovery of the Black-footed Ferret.

The Black-footed Ferret is endemic to the Great Plains region of North America.  It is related to weasels and is found nowhere else in the world.

It was thought to be extinct, when a small population was rediscovered in 1981 in Wyoming.  In order to save the species, the 18 ferrets that made up this remaining population were captured and moved to a captive breeding site.

Today, Black-footed Ferrets have been released at 20 reintroduction sites in North America, including Logan County in Kansas.  There  are about 1,000 individuals now living in the wild.

Watch for more on an upcoming Street Beat newscast, Eagle Community TV Channel 14.