From the ARS News Service (the Agricultural Research Service), the USDA reports that the government is taking special care to restore habitats.

For plants on a military training site, getting run over by an assortment of hefty, wheeled or tracked vehicles is all in a day's work. But, the Army has a secret weapon for restoring and revegetating these sites when training maneuvers are over.

The military has enlisted the help of a team of Agricultural Research Service plant geneticists, led by Kay H. Asay, to develop training-resilient plants. Now in its sixth year, the project is based at the ARS Forage and Range Research Laboratory in Logan, Utah. The new plants are better able to withstand trampling by soldiers and grinding and crushing by vehicles. The Logan work has resulted in new plant varieties that stabilize erosion-prone slopes, landscape roadsides and provide forage for livestock and wildlife. ARS is the chief research branch of USDA. The ARS Forage and Range Research Laboratory is on the web at: http://www.usu.edu/~forage/frrl.htm

Imagine how nice it will be when these crush-resistant plants make it to the average backyard, playground, and schoolyard.

Talk

On a trip to Hong Kong last year, I had the opportunity to witness the beginning of land reclamation that will be used to build a Disney theme park. The process of turning water into land was impressive by itself-but what was most impressive to me was the number of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck images I saw in the windows of homes in remote villages that we explored. Now, these aren't the homes we are comfortable seeing. Many were nothing more than a lean-to made of boards that weren't much larger than a walk-in American closet. This might be the home to a family of five or six - or more. But on the window was a Disney sticker! Amazing!

I remembered this when I read that the Walt Disney Co. is expected to split its retail stores into two separate chains. The first retail format, Disney Play, is to feature plush dolls and toys. The other format, Disney Kids at Home, will focus upon lifestyle goods such as furniture, bed sheets and apparel. The revamping of the stores into one of the two formats should take three years and cost about $200 million, reports say. Some top-tier malls will get both Disney Play and Disney Kids at Home stores, but most malls are expected to get only one format or the other.