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Show I - ' 'V,, ! ' , .4 f , ' , - f I ' 'i ' , 'r '5 1 , i 'L f H A V " ' y t K .- ' I ; 1 1 I ' I ' Viewmont High School's range judging team has won top honors in the state 4-H 4-H and Future Farmers of America flinniNfir TFAM (FFA) contest held recently at Snow JUUUII1U ILflll college. Team members are Clay Smith, Peggy Jessop and Wes Ba-teman. ducted by the range management manage-ment personnel of the Cooperative Cooper-ative Extension Service at Utah State University. Important additional assistance assist-ance was provided by the Soil Conservation Service, the U.S. Forest Service, the Society Soci-ety for Range Management and a number of school districts, dis-tricts, FFA chapters and Soil Conservation Districts. WES BATEMAN and Peggy Jessop are seniors at Viewmont. View-mont. Clay Smith is a junior. Wes is the son of Robert Bate-man. Bate-man. Peggy is the daughter of Cloyd Jessop. Clay is the son of Mick and JoAnne Smith, all of Bountiful. throughout the state come there to learn the basic principles princi-ples of the ecology and management man-agement of Utah's range ecosystems. They study range types from he salt, desert regions re-gions of the valley to the high meadows of the Wasatch Plateau. IN ADDITION, team members mem-bers attended one-day training and practice sessions in range judging at Logan and Tooele during the month of September. Septem-ber. The team's coach and sponsor was Randy Hoffman, vocation agriculture teacher at Viewmont. The range youth camp, the training sessions and the contests were all con- Viewmont High School's range judging team recently re-cently won top honors in Utah at both 4-H and Future Farmers of America competitions. competi-tions. The team, composed of Clay Smith, Wes Bateman and Peggy Jessop, placed first out of 13 teams competing in range judging at the annual FFA Field Day at Snow College in Ephraim, Oct. 19. SMITH HAD, by far, the top individual score among amo-ng the 42 participants in the contest. Bateman placed seventh and Jessop eleventh individually, which gave Viewmont the highest team total and allowed it to edge out strong teams from Manti and Tooele. Bateman also placed first and Smith second in a similar contest conducted by 4-H at its state competition in Logan on Sept. 14. RANGE judging activities test the technical knowledge and judgement of participants with regard to the ecology and management of rangelands. There are two main aspects to such competitions. First, contestants complete a plant identification course in the field. That phase involves not only naming a series of tagged tag-ged and numbered plants, but requires students to relate technical information about them such as growth form, life span, season of growth, origin, forage value and response to grazing. THE SECOND portion of the contest requires students to judge the condition (relative health) and trend of a small, roped-off plot of rangeland. This judgement is made by comparing the plant species and their relative abundance within the plot to a plant community com-munity which theoretically should grow on that site under pristine conditions. To make accurate assese-ments assese-ments of range condition and trend, students must consider co-nsider such physical factors as topography, climate, soil depth and texture, erosion condition, slope aspect and degree de-gree of shading and percent plant cover as well as observations observa-tions of the plants themselves. THE VIEWMONT team prepared well for the competitions. competi-tions. All three team members participated in the 1982 Range Youth Camp held in August Aug-ust at the Great Basin Experiment Station in Ephraim Canyon. The Range Youth Camp is an intensive week-long workshop in range management. High school students from |
