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Cities are using sheep to graze in urban landscapes and people love it

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NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Along the Cumberland River just north of downtown Nashville, Tennessee, tourists on party pontoons float past the recognizable skyline, but they also can see something a little less expected: hundreds of sheep nibbling on the grass along the riverbank.

The urban sheepherder who manages this flock, Zach Richardson, said sometimes the tourist boats will go out of their way to let their passengers get a closer glimpse of the Nashville Chew Crew grazing a few hundred yards away from densely populated residential and commercial buildings.

The joy people get from watching sheep graze is partly why they are becoming trendy workers in some urban areas.

“Everybody that comes out here and experiences the sheep, they enjoy it more than they would someone on a zero-turn mower or a guy with a leaf blower or a weed eater,” Richardson said.

Using sheep for prescribed grazing is not a new landscaping method, but more urban communities are opting for it to handle land management concerns such as invasive species, wildfire risks, protection of native vegetation and animal habitats and maintaining historic sites.

Nashville’s parks department hired the Chew Crew in 2017 to help maintain Fort Negley, a Civil War-era Union fortification that had weeds growing between and along its stones that lawnmowers could easily chip. Sheep now graze about 150 acres (60.7 hectares) of city property annually, including in the historic Nashville City Cemetery.

“It is a more environmentally sustainable way to care for the greenspace and oftentimes is cheaper than doing it with handheld equipment and staff,” said Jim Hester, assistant director of Metro Nashville Parks.

Living among the sheep — and often blending in — are the Chew Crew’s livestock guardian dogs, Anatolian shepherds, who are born and stay with them 24/7 to keep away nosy intruders, both the two-legged and the four-legged kinds. The flock is comprised of hair sheep, a type of breed that naturally sheds its hair fibers and often is used for meat.

Another important canine employee is Duggie, the border collie. With only a few whistles and commands from Richardson, Duggie can control the whole flock when they need to be moved, separated or loaded onto a trailer.

Across the country, another municipality also has become reliant on these hoofed nibblers. Santa Barbara, California, has been using grazing sheep for about seven years as one way to manage land buffers that can slow or halt the spread of wildfires.

“The community loves the grazers and it’s kind of a great way of community engagement,” said Monique O’Conner, open space planner for the city’s parks and recreation. “It’s kind of a new shiny way of land management.”

The grazed areas can change how fire moves, said Mark vonTillow, the wildland specialist for the Santa Barbara City Fire Department.

“So if a fire is coming down the hill and it’s going through a full brush field, and then all of a sudden it hits grazed area that’s sort of broken up vegetation, the fire behavior reacts drastically and drops to the ground,” vonTillow said. “That gives firefighters a chance to attack the fire.”

Even some universities have tried out herds of goats and sheep on campus property. In 2010, the University of Georgia had a privet problem that was overtaking a section of the campus not used by students or staff and pushing out native plants, said Kevin Kirsche, the school’s director of sustainability.

Rather than using chemicals or mowers, Kirsche said they hired Jennif Chandler to send in a herd of goats to strip the bark off the privet, stomp on roots and defoliate the branches.

“Bringing the goats to the site was an alternative means of removing invasive plants in a way that was nontoxic to the environment and friendly to people,” Kirsche said.

Around the same time, Richardson, the owner of Chew Crew who at the time was a UGA student studying landscape architecture, was inspired to create his own goat grazing business. The goats became the most popular four-legged creatures on campus, he said.

“What was fun and less expected was kind of the side projects and a life of its own developed around the Chew Crew,” Kirsche said. “We had art students doing time-lapse photography, documenting changes over time. One point we had a student dressed as a goat playing goat songs on the guitar and other students serving goat cheese and goat ice cream.”

Richardson, who moved his company to Nashville after finishing his degree, now prefers sheep over goats. Sheep are more flock-oriented and aren’t inclined to climb and explore as much as goats.

“I’ll never own another goat,” he admitted. “They are like little Houdinis. It’s like trying to fence in water.”

But sheep are not a silver bullet solution for all cities and their lands, according to O’Conner. “We want to educate the public on why we’re choosing to graze where we’re grazing,” she said.

Not every urban site is ideal. Chandler owns City Sheep and Goat in Colbert, Georgia, about 12.4 miles (20 kilometers) northeast of UGA’s campus in Athens, where her sheep graze on mostly residential properties and community projects such as Clyde Shepherd Nature Preserve in North Decatur, just outside of Atlanta.

In 2015, some of her sheep were attacked and killed by dogs who got through the electric fencing while in a public park. Those kinds of incidents have been rare, according to Chandler.

The sheep need to be moved regularly because they tire of the same plants and relocating reduces the chances of a predator attack, Chandler said.

Hundreds of sheep can impact the environment by spreading seeds. The city of Santa Barbara does environment surveys before bringing in grazers since it can also affect bird habitats and nests.

“Throwing like 500 sheep into an area is a much larger impact on the land and those soils than our native herbivores would have,” O’Conner said.

Along the levee of the Cumberland River, the side of the greenway where the park uses mowers looks manicured like a golf course. On the other side where the Chew Crew ewes are munching, an ecosystem is flourishing.

“There’s rabbits, butterflies, groundhogs, turtles, nesting birds,” Richardson said. “The list goes on. It’s way more diverse. Even though we’ve removed some of the vegetation, there’s still a habitat that can support wildlife.”

Richardson checks on his flock daily, but he also often receives pictures and videos that people take of the sheep because his phone is listed on the electric fence.

“If the sheep can be a catalyst to connect back to nature just for a split second or spark a kid’s imagination to go down to the river and catch a crawdad, I think more of that is good,” Richardson said.

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Canada’s Denis Shapovalov wins Belgrade Open for his second ATP Tour title

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BELGRADE, Serbia – Canada’s Denis Shapovalov is back in the winner’s circle.

The 25-year-old Shapovalov beat Serbia’s Hamad Medjedovic 6-4, 6-4 in the Belgrade Open final on Saturday.

It’s Shapovalov’s second ATP Tour title after winning the Stockholm Open in 2019. He is the first Canadian to win an ATP Tour-level title this season.

His last appearance in a tournament final was in Vienna in 2022.

Shapovalov missed the second half of last season due to injury and spent most of this year regaining his best level of play.

He came through qualifying in Belgrade and dropped just one set on his way to winning the trophy.

Shapovalov’s best results this season were at ATP 500 events in Washington and Basel, where he reached the quarterfinals.

Medjedovic was playing in his first-ever ATP Tour final.

The 21-year-old, who won the Next Gen ATP Finals presented by PIF title last year, ends 2024 holding a 9-8 tour-level record on the season.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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Talks to resume in B.C. port dispute in bid to end multi-day lockout

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VANCOUVER – Contract negotiations resume today in Vancouver in a labour dispute that has paralyzed container cargo shipping at British Columbia’s ports since Monday.

The BC Maritime Employers Association and International Longshore and Warehouse Union Local 514 are scheduled to meet for the next three days in mediated talks to try to break a deadlock in negotiations.

The union, which represents more than 700 longshore supervisors at ports, including Vancouver, Prince Rupert and Nanaimo, has been without a contract since March last year.

The latest talks come after employers locked out workers in response to what it said was “strike activity” by union members.

The start of the lockout was then followed by several days of no engagement between the two parties, prompting federal Labour Minister Steven MacKinnon to speak with leaders on both sides, asking them to restart talks.

MacKinnon had said that the talks were “progressing at an insufficient pace, indicating a concerning absence of urgency from the parties involved” — a sentiment echoed by several business groups across Canada.

In a joint letter, more than 100 organizations, including the Canadian Chamber of Commerce, Business Council of Canada and associations representing industries from automotive and fertilizer to retail and mining, urged the government to do whatever it takes to end the work stoppage.

“While we acknowledge efforts to continue with mediation, parties have not been able to come to a negotiated agreement,” the letter says. “So, the federal government must take decisive action, using every tool at its disposal to resolve this dispute and limit the damage caused by this disruption.

“We simply cannot afford to once again put Canadian businesses at risk, which in turn puts Canadian livelihoods at risk.”

In the meantime, the union says it has filed a complaint to the Canada Industrial Relations Board against the employers, alleging the association threatened to pull existing conditions out of the last contract in direct contact with its members.

“The BCMEA is trying to undermine the union by attempting to turn members against its democratically elected leadership and bargaining committee — despite the fact that the BCMEA knows full well we received a 96 per cent mandate to take job action if needed,” union president Frank Morena said in a statement.

The employers have responded by calling the complaint “another meritless claim,” adding the final offer to the union that includes a 19.2 per cent wage increase over a four-year term remains on the table.

“The final offer has been on the table for over a week and represents a fair and balanced proposal for employees, and if accepted would end this dispute,” the employers’ statement says. “The offer does not require any concessions from the union.”

The union says the offer does not address the key issue of staffing requirement at the terminals as the port introduces more automation to cargo loading and unloading, which could potentially require fewer workers to operate than older systems.

The Port of Vancouver is the largest in Canada and has seen a number of labour disruptions, including two instances involving the rail and grain storage sectors earlier this year.

A 13-day strike by another group of workers at the port last year resulted in the disruption of a significant amount of shipping and trade.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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The Royal Canadian Legion turns to Amazon for annual poppy campaign boost

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The Royal Canadian Legion says a new partnership with e-commerce giant Amazon is helping boost its veterans’ fund, and will hopefully expand its donor base in the digital world.

Since the Oct. 25 launch of its Amazon.ca storefront, the legion says it has received nearly 10,000 orders for poppies.

Online shoppers can order lapel poppies on Amazon in exchange for donations or buy items such as “We Remember” lawn signs, Remembrance Day pins and other accessories, with all proceeds going to the legion’s Poppy Trust Fund for Canadian veterans and their families.

Nujma Bond, the legion’s national spokesperson, said the organization sees this move as keeping up with modern purchasing habits.

“As the world around us evolves we have been looking at different ways to distribute poppies and to make it easier for people to access them,” she said in an interview.

“This is definitely a way to reach a wider number of Canadians of all ages. And certainly younger Canadians are much more active on the web, on social media in general, so we’re also engaging in that way.”

Al Plume, a member of a legion branch in Trenton, Ont., said the online store can also help with outreach to veterans who are far from home.

“For veterans that are overseas and are away, (or) can’t get to a store they can order them online, it’s Amazon.” Plume said.

Plume spent 35 years in the military with the Royal Engineers, and retired eight years ago. He said making sure veterans are looked after is his passion.

“I’ve seen the struggles that our veterans have had with Veterans Affairs … and that’s why I got involved, with making sure that the people get to them and help the veterans with their paperwork.”

But the message about the Amazon storefront didn’t appear to reach all of the legion’s locations, with volunteers at Branch 179 on Vancouver’s Commercial Drive saying they hadn’t heard about the online push.

Holly Paddon, the branch’s poppy campaign co-ordinator and bartender, said the Amazon partnership never came up in meetings with other legion volunteers and officials.

“I work at the legion, I work with the Vancouver poppy office and I go to the meetings for the Vancouver poppy campaign — which includes all the legions in Vancouver — and not once has this been mentioned,” she said.

Paddon said the initiative is a great idea, but she would like to have known more about it.

The legion also sells a larger collection of items at poppystore.ca.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 9, 2024.

The Canadian Press. All rights reserved.



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